When we bought the house, we had never owned anything but a secondhand Volvo,” filmmaker Robert Benton told The Observer of his 1979 home purchase in Wainscott, Long Island, with wife Sally. Now the Bentons are listing their Georgica Pond-front haven for $29.9 million, almost as many millions as years they have called Read More
“I really believe I’ve known two saints in my life, maybe three,” said writer-director Robert Benton via telephone from his office on Monday, three days after the death of his longtime friend Paul Newman. “William Sloane Coffin, who used to be head of Riverside Church and was a chaplin at Yale when the civil rights Read More
FEAST OF LOVE
RUNNING TIME 102 minutes
DIRECTED BY Robert Benton
STARRING Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair, Radha Mitchell
Robert Benton’s Feast of Love, from a screenplay by Allison Burnett and based on the novel by Charles Baxter, serves admirably as a playful respite from the Read More
On a recent rainy Tuesday evening at an empty screening room in Times Square, writer and director Robert Benton arrived without fanfare—good-naturedly waving away all talk of a car service to pick him up—to screen Feast of Love, which opens September 28. The 74-year-old, more salt than pepper in his hair and neatly trimmed beard, Read More
Harold Ramis’ The Ice Harvest, from a screenplay by Richard Russo and Robert Benton, based on the novel by Scott Phillips, plays out as a blacker and bleaker film noir than anything Mr. Ramis, Mr. Russo and Mr. Benton have ever undertaken in the past. Mr. Ramis, in particular, came into prominence in the 70’s Read More
Harold Ramis’ The Ice Harvest, from a screenplay by Richard Russo and Robert Benton, based on the novel by Scott Phillips, plays out as a blacker and bleaker film noir than anything Mr. Ramis, Mr. Russo and Mr. Benton have ever undertaken in the past. Mr. Ramis, in particular, came into prominence in the 70’s Read More
There’s a song by Rodgers and Hart with a memorable line that goes “Unrequited love’s a bore … and I’ve got it pretty bad.” In a nutshell, that line and, for that matter, the song title (“Glad to Be Unhappy”) could pretty much describe Love and Death on Long Island , a tidy, fresh, funny Read More
Robert Benton’s Twilight , from a screenplay by Mr. Benton and Richard Russo, begins with a splash of sunlight and swimming-pool water, and a flash of youthful flesh luxuriating in carnal congress in a Mexican resort hotel, and ends in the graying mists of the Hollywood hills, populated by variously damaged survivors with more past Read More
