To Benton, making films is all relative

"How did I go from being the kid to being venerable?" asks Robert Benton, feigning vexation.

Benton, 74, is sitting in a conference room in the Ritz-Carlton, ostensibly there to promote his latest film, "Feast of Love," based on Charles Baxter's 2000 novel. In fact, Benton's doing what he does best, telling stories: about everything from his days as art director at Esquire, during its New Journalism heyday in the '60s, to how Paul Newman can't tell a joke. Trim, dapper, affable, Benton may not be a kid anymore, but he's far from elderly.

One way he got venerable was by winning three Academy Awards, for writing and directing "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) and writing "Places in the Heart" (1984). Another was through having co-written, with David Newman, what remains among the three or four most influential American movies of the past 50 years, "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967).

"I always wanted to work with Robert," says Morgan Freeman, in a telephone interview. Freeman heads the cast of "Feast of Love" - opening in Boston on Friday - with Greg Kinnear, Jane Alexander, and Fred Ward.

"There are directors and directors and directors and directors," Freeman says. "The standouts for me are the ones who work fast, know what they're doing, and leave you alone. Clint [Eastwood] is that way. Rob Reiner is that way. So's Robert."

For a directing career that's lasted 35 years, Benton hasn't made many movies, only 11. He's hopped among genres: from western ("Bad Company," 1972) to detective story ("The Late Show," 1977) to thriller ("Still of the Night," 1982). He's had big hits ("Kramer") and big flops ("Nadine," 1987). He's also shown a fondness for literary adaptation: besides "Kramer" and "Feast," there have been E.L. Doctorow's "Billy Bathgate" (1991), Richard Russo's "Nobody's Fool" (1994), and Philip Roth's "The Human Stain" (2003).

Benton sees one constant. "I think that underneath I've always been concerned about family or community," he says, citing his first screenplay. " 'Bonnie and Clyde' was about a family on wheels."

That concern has been there from the beginning, growing up in east Texas. "I remember once saying to my mother, 'I know you're my parents, and I know I've got uncles and aunts and cousins, but how am I related to everybody else in this town?' She had to explain to me the difference between family and community. I think I've still got it confused."

That confusion has meant a strong tilt toward ensemble in Benton's movies. Even when a movie's full of stars - like "Twilight" (1998), with Newman, Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, James Garner, and Reese Witherspoon - there's a sense of them functioning as a unit.

That ensemble quality is especially evident in "Feast." Set in a college town (Ann Arbor in the book, Portland, Ore., in the movie), the film is an elaborate mobile of love in many forms: marital, adulterous, parental, old, young, straight, same-sex. The still point in this romantically turning world is Freeman, as a philosophy professor, married to Alexander, whose next-door neighbor is the unlucky-in-love Kinnear.

It wasn't for lack of trying that it's taken Benton seven years to bring "Feast" to the screen. He sought to buy the rights as soon as he read the novel, but they'd already been sold. Noticing a few years later that nothing had happened, he had his agent make inquiries. The rights had passed to Tom Rosenberg, one of the producers of "Human Stain."

"So I called up Tom and I said, 'Tom, I love this book.' He said, 'I've given this screenplay to Allison Burnett, and I have a director. Sorry.' OK, God's trying to tell me something. About six weeks later, Tom calls me, 'There's been a scheduling problem with the director. Would you like to direct it?' . . .

"Morgan was already cast at that point. Normally my nose would have been bent way out of joint. I think they'd made certain architectural decisions about adapting the book that I thought were extraordinarily good. And I approved of all of them. In cast- ing Morgan - well, Dustin [Hoffman] used to say, 'There are things you can act and things you can't.'

"You can't act depth and wisdom, and Morgan has that, along with wit. Also, the thing I didn't realize, and didn't appreciate about Morgan's work, is that he can listen better than any actor I've ever worked with. I don't mean listen to the director. Most actors when they're in a scene where another actor is talking, they're waiting to say their line. A good actor is listening. That's the essence of any great actor: He simply is there, he's present, he does it."

Casting is 90 percent of directing, Benton has said. "I try to cast carefully, and then give actors room and not say any more," he says. "The only actor I knew I wanted was Greg Kinnear, because I feel Greg Kinnear is as close as we have now to Jack Lemmon. He's funny and he can break your heart. He's an extraordinary actor."

Benton hopes his next project will be another literary adaptation, a script he's done of John O'Hara's 1934 novel "Appointment in Samarra." He knows it's an uphill struggle, though.

"You've got indie movies, and they do a terrific job. It's like the European movies when I was starting out. Look at something like 'Capote' or 'Brokeback Mountain.' So that's one side. And these movies aimed at adolescent males are the other, the movies dictated by the demographics of the moviegoing population. Somehow middle-of-the-road, middle-class movies disappeared. They've created a cultural climate in this country that's like 'Fast Food Nation.'

"But I don't want to sound like sour grapes. I also think the opposite is true. Because of the digital revolution, because of the Internet, movies are going to change in some dramatic way. You're going to have five-minute movies, you're going to have 12-hour movies. It's going to be cheap enough to make bold and experimental movies you couldn't before. So if I was a young person I'd say this is the time to be in movies but not the time to be in corporate movies."

So where does that leave someone "venerable," like Benton? "Smug!" he guffaws.

"It's hard [getting his movies made] but, so far, it's not impossible. There'll come a day when it's impossible, but that hasn't happened. I love doing this."