The First Gangster

Ol’ Willis would most likely think it fitting.

“The Newton Boys,” Richard Linklater’s filmed adaptation of the life and times of Willis Newton and his three brothers, the most successful larcenists in American history, had been plagued all spring by record rains, punishing hail, hip-deep mud and even a tornado that took 27 lives just a few miles from the film’s set in Bartlett, Texas.

And the bad news isn’t over: on this, the last night of filming, in Bartlett, just three days after the deadly twister forced the crew to take cover in two bank vaults, the air is tinged with the familiar gelid green of impending disaster and the warning has been sounded again. This time, the front looks to be headed straight for Bartlett.

Crew members, who have been shooting nights all week, have warily watched and listened to weather reports, holding the film’s cast in Austin until the all-clear sounded around 8 p.m. “I looked at the TV, and of all places, now it’s in the town we’re shooting in,” says a weary Dwight Yoakam, one of the film’s stars, during a turnaround between scenes. “We called the production office and they said, ‘Don’t go yet.’ No kidding.”

The millennial weather would suit Willis Newton, a hardscrabble son of the Texas plains who, having grown up in the cotton farming town of Uvalde, Tex., had an instinctive understanding of nature and its cruel vicissitudes. When he turned to robbing banks for a living, the safes, vaults and guards he confronted were like any other force of nature to be conquered through wile and will and brute strength. Willis, played in the movie by Matthew McConaughey (who was also born in Uvalde), had been robbing banks and trains for five years before calling his older brother, Jess (Ethan Hawke), and younger brothers Doc (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Joe (Skeet Ulrich), to join him.

For four years, the Newton Boys barnstormed Texas, the Midwest and Canada, robbing 80 banks and six trains, by their own lights garnering more money than the James Brothers, the Dalton Gang, Butch Cassidy and all the other big outlaws put together. They snagged $3 million alone in their most famous heist, the robbery of a mail train in Rondout, Ill., in 1924. And they never fired a fatal shot.

Tonight, downtown Bartlett--a former railroad terminus built at the turn of the century about 55 miles north of Austin--is standing in for Hondo, Tex., where the Newton Boys pulled off a daring two-bank job in one night. According to the oral history of Willis and Joe Newton, a cold norther’ was blowing in Hondo that night. And indeed, the week’s storms have resulted in an unseasonably cool breeze that makes the huge Ridder fan blowing potato flakes all but unnecessary.

Bartlett’s stately downtown buildings have had their facades rebuilt to bring them into 1921, the year of the Hondo robberies, and cotton batting has been placed on window ledges to simulate snow. Yoakam, who plays Brent Glasscock, the explosives expert who “taught Willis everything he knew,” jumps up and down and blows on his hands; Hawke, who has grown a dapper mustache for his role, shivers convincingly.

The five lead actors, all dressed in period cotton twill trousers and suspenders, gather in a circle around Linklater, who wears his uniform of denim cutoffs, black sneakers and a Panavision T-shirt, and proceed to block the scene--the second one they have filmed as a group.

McConaughey will pretend to shimmy down a telephone pole--having just cut the wires, a Newton trademark--and share with his brothers his idea to hit two banks at once. His head jutting forward with single-minded purpose, McConaughey is the picture of what made Willis not only the most successful criminal of his era, but one who embodied America’s quintessential traits: charismatic, industrious and convinced that the banks, insurance companies and the government were just as criminal as he was.

It’s Willis, Linklater says, who drew him to the Newton Boys’ story in the first place.

“I immediately identified with him,” he explains during a 1 a.m. lunch break in his trailer. “That’s why I’m so fascinated with him, because I see parts of myself in him. Someone who will manipulate everyone around him to get what he wants, and do it in a charming way. I mean, what’s a film director?”

Willis was also a fascinating transitional figure. “The four-second pitch for 4-year-olds and studio executives is that this is the film that takes place after the last Western and before the first gangster picture,” says co-screenwriter Clark Walker, who is married to Linklater’s producer, Anne Walker-McBay. “Our story is about Willis Newton, the first gangster, the American to change the American dream from the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer to respect through a million dollars.”

Linklater first heard the story of the Newton Boys in 1994, after author Claude Stanush wrote an article about the gang for Smithsonian magazine. Stanush, who lives outside San Antonio, met Willis and Joe in 1973 when the two were 84 and 72, respectively; the three men became friends and eventually Stanush produced a 30-minute documentary about them and helped record their oral history, which he published as “The Newton Boys: Portrait of an Outlaw Gang.”

The book has become “our bible,” according to Linklater, who co-wrote the script with Stanush and Walker. “The core of [the movie] has always been the truth or something that really happened. When in doubt, whenever we’ve strayed, we just go back to what really happened. How many messengers were on the train? 12? OK, we’ll have 12. The truth is a good backbone.”

In the pursuit of truth, tonight Ulrich has nestled a plug of chewing tobacco--a real chaw, not a prop--in his right cheek, much like Joe, the youngest Newton who was an accomplished bronco buster before tagging along with his big brothers. Joe, who died in 1989 at the age of 88, is often portrayed as the most reluctant of the Newton Boys, and the most repentant.

“It’s easy to label him that,” says Ulrich, who has taken a cigarette break with Hawke and D’Onofrio during a set-up. “That’s kind of the tough thing--you don’t want to play it up too much. I think he actually kind of enjoyed robbing banks and enjoyed the money. I know he loved cars--he had a weakness for cars and girls.”

“He did,” affirms Hawke.

“I think we all did,” says D’Onofrio.

In “The Newton Boys,” Hawke plays Jess, who like Joe was an accomplished horseman. Although he was the eldest, Jess, whom Hawke describes as “the family drunk, “deferred leadership of the gang to his younger, more enterprising brother. Doc [D’Onofrio] is best known for being the one who got Willis into trouble in the first place: When as a teenager he stole some cotton from a gin, Willis was fingered as his accomplice and put in jail, where he became embittered for life and learned the ways of crime from more hardened mentors.

Hawke, who starred with Julie Delpy in Linklater’s 1994 romance, “Before Sunrise,” was the first to sign on to “The Newton Boys” two years ago; the rest of the actors were cast shortly thereafter (Julianna Margulies and Chloe Webb are playing Willis’ and Glasscock’s wives). Although Yoakam, who turned in a stunning performance last year as the hateful, doomed Doyle in Billy Bob Thornton’s “Sling Blade,” has been offered several scripts since then, “a lot of them were lesser versions of this bullying redneck character,” he says, “and I don’t find anything real intriguing or inspirational in exploring that same melody again.”

The main attraction for Hawke, Ulrich and D’Onofrio, was the ability to do a combination Western-gangster picture with unconventional protagonists. “The reason why you haven’t heard of the Newton Boys, who pulled off the greatest train robbery in American history, is solely because they never killed anybody,” Hawke says. “They weren’t a bunch of thugs. They really were out to have a good time. I think that’s actually very telling, that if you want to get famous in this country . . . “

“You can even relate it to the business we’re in,” D’Onofrio breaks in. “The biggest movie stars are the ones who carry guns in films.”

“That’s why we did it,” says Ulrich, “hoping to be the next Bruce Willis.”

“But it’s good to do a gangster movie where you don’t actually have to shoot anybody,” says Hawke. “I think it’s kind of wonderful in that way. They were out to enjoy themselves, and that’s why we all like playing these parts. We’re not talking about a bunch of maniacs here, or psychopaths.”

“And no matter what the story is truly about, it’s nice to see characters interacting, and the human qualities about them,” D’Onofrio says. “We have a lot to play with because we’re brothers.”

Hawke brightens. “This is ‘The Godfather’ of the white trash farmer,” he says, excitedly.

McConaughey has declined to be interviewed for this story, citing the need to focus completely on his performance. And indeed, this is arguably the most demanding role he has taken on since Linklater cast him in his first movie role in the 1993 film “Dazed and Confused”--even more demanding than his over-hyped starring role in last summer’s “A Time to Kill” and subsequent appearances in “Contact” and Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad.” McConaughey is in virtually every scene of “The Newton Boys,” and like Willis, the whole operation seems to be resting on his shoulders.

One thing this is not, Linklater assures, is a star trip, which have been in blessedly short supply considering a cast that includes five healthy egos. “There are all those little things, but they’re more the joking, subtle tensions that any five people who had to work together in an office would have,” Linklater says of his young guns. “Matthew sets a good tone, because I guess officially he’s the--you know--and he’s really giving and making it real. So if he doesn’t have an attitude, no one else should.”

It’s not surprising that Linklater, 35, can’t bring himself to utter the word “star;” after all, he’s known for making them, not casting them: McConaughey, Renee Zellweger, Parker Posey and Milla Jovovich all got their starts in his films. Linklater’s first movie, shot in 1989 for $23,000 in his adopted hometown of Austin (where he still lives and where his production company, Detourfilms, is headquartered), went on to become a low-budget legend, and even codified a piece of the American vernacular.

Still, this is the man whose most expensive movie, “Dazed and Confused,” cost $6 million. Whose most complicated special effect was reproducing Madonna’s Pap smear. And who, when Fox 2000 pushed “The Newton Boys” back early last year, simply called his friend Eric Bogosian and had a modestly priced ensemble production of “SubUrbia” in front of the camera 8 weeks later.

Linklater insists that even with a budget of $20 million, a cast and crew of more than 200 people, marquee names, more than 80 locations and more than 40 company moves, “The Newton Boys” isjust as intimate as his previous films. “Ethan says it’s just like ‘Before Sunrise,’ ” Linklater says. “To him, it feels the same. People are like, ‘Oh, it’s a big studio film.’ No, it’s a bunch of actors sitting around talking, no matter how crazy it gets, even with 100 extras in a ballroom with a band and all this stuff going on.”

As much as Linklater has maintained the independent work ethic while filming “The Newton Boys,” surely he must have sensed his league had changed earlier this year, when he found himself in the position of making Steven Spielberg himself blink. When McConaughey was cast in “Amistad,” Spielberg’s film about a mutiny on board a 19th century Spanish slave ship, it didn’t look like the actor could be in Austin in time to start shooting “The Newton Boys” in April.

“First we got the call, Steven wants Matthew, it will only push you eight weeks,” Linklater recalls. “And I’m like, ‘Only eight weeks? I’ve already started, I have people on the payroll, I’m going to lose people, I’m sorry, no.’ Then I was having conversations like, ‘We’ll compensate you, whatever you need.’ And I’m going, ‘Well, it’s not a summer movie, it’s a spring movie. And it’s Texas. If you can make the nights longer and the temperature about 20 degrees cooler, sure.’ [Spielberg’s] producer was like, ‘Well, we can definitely compensate you, but even Steven can’t lower the temperature.’ ”

Linklater has made a few more allowances, hiring outside the family of crew and creative people he has worked with since “Slacker.” Rather than completing post-production in an Austin recording studio, as he was able to do with “Before Sunrise” and “SubUrbia,” he will be editing the final sound mix at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. John Pritchett, who usually works for Robert Altman, is recording sound.

And Linklater is using cinematographer Peter James, best known for his work with Bruce Beresford, as his director of photography rather than Lee Daniel, his longtime friend and collaborator. “I was just going for a richer look, and there’s the level of experience, too,” Linklater explains, murmuring that he and Daniel are sure to work together again. “It’s a big movie,” he says, shrugging.

‘The Newton Boys” is indeed a big movie, which is probably what Willis Newton had in mind in 1948, when he sent his lawyer to Hollywood to sniff out prospects for the movie of his life. But it’s not too big, and therein lies all the difference. Claude Stanush entertained more than a half-dozen offers to option his book over the years, but he demurred until he met a director he felt could do justice to the Newtons’ multilayered story.

“Richard is imaginative and original, and I think he’s very good at nuance,” Stanush says when explaining what some naysayers deemed a risky choice to direct a sprawling historical drama. “Everyone else wanted to do a Western, or a chase movie with the Texas Rangers.”

Stanush’s voice drops as the actors assemble for one more take. McConaughey spent five hours with the 79-year-old author before filming started, intently listening and taking notes while Stanush regaled him with stories of Willis and his exploits. “Matthew is not an intellectual, but he’s smart and he has an intuitive sense about things,” Stanush says whispers.

“You know, later on, Willis had a way of ratcheting his voice upwards when he got excited, and I find Matthew is doing that.” Stanush pivots to watch McConaughey pretend to shimmy down the pole one more time, then turn to his fellow actors and deliver his pitch. Listening to McConaughey’s voice take on the familiar rising cadence, Stanush turns to a visitor and chuckles softly. “That’s ol’ Willis,” he says, shaking his head.