Jack Warner held the rights to a film he found repulsive and wanted to bury, and the most powerful critic of the era agreed with him enough to launch a multi-column crusade against it. That film was Bonnie and Clyde, which went on to shatter cinematic taboos around violence and become a defining masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. This episode follows the chaotic making of the 1967 film, from a script written by admirers of the French New Wave to a release that sparked a civil war among critics.

The conversation covers the French director who wanted to shoot Texas in New Jersey in January, Warren Beatty buying the rights in Paris, Arthur Penn’s repeated refusals, and casting that included Gene Wilder’s screen debut and a Texas schoolteacher pulled from a crowd. It examines Penn’s decision to remove the polyamorous relationship from the script so audiences would bond with the outlaws, the pioneering use of squibs, the anachronistic Foggy Mountain Breakdown, and the historical distortions, including the defamation suit brought by Frank Hamer’s family. It ends with Bosley Crowther’s downfall, Joe Morgenstern’s retraction, Pauline Kael’s 9,000-word defense and ten Oscar nominations.

• Why Jack Warner saw a gritty gangster picture as a humiliating regression for his studio
• How sanding down the characters’ sexuality made the violence feel like a personal betrayal
• The famous cigar photo of Bonnie that police, not the gang, released to the press
• How Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War reportedly kept Warner from selling off the film
• Newsweek’s reversed review and the studio ads that weaponized the controversy