Film: Sniping over new 'Bonnie and Clyde' movie

Tonya S. Holly -- Elvis relative and filmmaker -- is upset that reporters have been treating her planned production of "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde" as if the movie itself were a crime, like bank robbery.
Instead of focusing on the potential promise of the project, Holly says the media have been fixated on what she called "the catfight between my lead actress and Faye Dunaway."
Holly's lead actress -- the woman who will be the 2009 version of Depression-era bank robber Bonnie Parker -- is Hilary Duff, a pop singer and teen idol as well as a movie and TV star.
When Dunaway -- who starred in the landmark 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" -- learned that Duff would be her big-screen successor, she told the press: "Couldn't they at least cast a real actress?" This led to a feud in the press, with Duff commenting (probably accurately) about Dunaway: "I think that my fans that are going to go see the movie don't even know who she is."
Then Duff said of the 68-year-old, plastic-surgery-altered actress: "I might be mad if I looked like that, too."
Serious cinephiles, however, are more worried about the project in general than the casting of Duff or Kevin Zegers ("Trasamerica"), who is set to play Clyde.
Dunaway aside, Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" -- with Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow -- generally is regarded as one of the most significant American films of the past half-century, a Best Picture Oscar nominee that brought political astuteness and a European-art-house sensibility to the Hollywood gangster tradition.
Holly, 46, defended her interest in the outlaw duo.
"I'm very passionate about this story," said Holly, the movie's writer, director and producer, and a longtime Bonnie-and-Clyde aficionado who plans to begin shooting the $15 million production in late April in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
"The reaction has really blown my mind," she said, referring to critics of her project. "It's like the one from '67 is the only way anybody wants to see this story told. How many Jesse James movies have we seen? People don't get angry about that. What about Billy the Kid? I just want to tell the story the best I can."
Holly points out that the Beatty-produced Penn film wasn't the first screen telling of the story. Dorothy Provine was the ill-fated outlaw in "The Bonnie Parker Story" (1958); and Tracey Needham starred in the 1992 Fox TV movie "Bonnie & Clyde: The True Story."
In defense of Holly and Duff, we also might point out that Penn and Dunaway were consolation choices for the '67 film; originally, producers had hoped to hire Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut to direct, and Beatty had wanted Natalie Wood or Tuesday Weld for Bonnie.
Also true: Duff may be a "teen" star, but she's now 21 -- only two years younger than Bonnie, when Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down in Bienville Parish, La., on May 23, 1934. (Dunaway was 26 when "Bonnie and Clyde" opened in the United States in August 1967.)
Said Holly: "I think people should give Hilary a chance to do a breakout role, because if I remember correctly, it was a breakout role for Faye as well."
"The Story of Bonnie and Clyde" will be a project of Holly's Cypress Moon Productions company in Sheffield, Ala.; the company has one previous feature under its belt, the little-seen "When I Find the Ocean" with Diane Ladd, Lee Majors and Bernie Casey.
Holly -- whose great-grandfather was Elvis' great-uncle -- is better known for her position in the music than the movie industry. She owns Cypress Moon Studios in Sheffield. Her husband, Kelvin Holly, has been lead guitarist for the past 14 years in Little Richard's band.
Holly, who grew up in North Alabama, said her interest in Bonnie and Clyde dates to her teen years, when she found some old newspaper clippings about the pair. "When I was a kid and saw those newspapers, which I still have, I just became fascinated. It stayed in my head, and I started researching them.
"I think it's very sad, the response to my film," Holly said. "The critics have forgotten that these were real people -- Bonnie and Clyde were real. There are many, many ways to tell this story."

(John Beifuss is a reporter with The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. Contact him at beifuss(at)commercialappeal.com. His movie blog is www.thebloodshoteye.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)