On Movies | He'll tell you one about Newman and Willis

Work as long as

Robert Benton

has in movies - he coscripted

Bonnie and Clyde

in 1967, he wrote and directed

Kramer vs. Kramer

in 1979, he did the same with

Places in the Heart

a decade later - and you have stories to tell.

A cute one, from the set of Nobody's Fool, his 1994 collaboration with author Richard Russo that got Paul Newman an Oscar nomination, goes like this:

"When we were doing Nobody's Fool, we cast Bruce Willis," recalls Benton. "On the first day of rehearsal, Bruce came in, and Paul said, 'I'm very pleased to meet you.'

"And Bruce said, 'No, we've worked together.'

"And Paul said, 'No, we haven't.'

"And Bruce said, 'Yes, we have. . . . We did a scene together before.'

"And Paul said, 'Am I losing my mind? I've never worked with you, I know.'

"So Bruce comes in the next day, and he had a tape, and it was cued up to a scene from [1982's] The Verdict, in which Paul is giving a summation. And there in the background, as an extra in the courtroom, is Bruce Willis."

Benton, bearded, bright-eyed and happy to chat, just turned 75. He was in town not long ago to talk up Feast of Love, the 11th film on his director's resume, the 15th or so on his writer's CV.

An adaptation of a novel by Charles Baxter ("The older I get, I think I'm better off adapting - I'm not good at plot"), the film tracks the intersecting trajectories of a few folks in Portland, Ore. Morgan Freeman is a sagacious college professor weighed down by a devastating loss, Jane Alexander is his loving wife, Greg Kinnear owns a corner cafe where lattes are served to the locals, Selma Blair is his wife, Stana Katic is the woman who steals Selma Blair away, Radha Mitchell is a real estate agent Kinnear's character starts a rebound romance with, Toby Hemingway is a troubled young barista, and Alexa Davalos is the young beauty who walks into his life - and into the cafe, to get a job.

Fred Ward and Billy Burke are in there, too. Feast of Love opened Friday.

"This all began about five years ago," says Benton, who lives in New York and Amtrak-ed down to Philly for the day. "Richard Russo, who's a good friend of mine, said, 'Here's a book you ought to read.' So I did."

When Benton investigated, he found out that the book had already been optioned, a director attached. A few years later, another producer had it, another screenplay had been written, another director attached.

"OK, bad luck two times around," he says. But not so fast:

"About four or five weeks later, the producer, Tom Rosenberg, called me back. 'Look, the director has a scheduling problem,' would I be interested? I said, 'Of course, I'd be interested.' He sent me the script, I liked the script, I told him. But then he said, 'There's another problem. We have already cast one of the roles, the role of Harry has been cast with Morgan Freeman.' "

And Benton had to think about this.

"I get very touchy about my prerogative as a director when it comes to casting. But I thought about it and I thought about something Dustin Hoffman used to say: 'There's acting, and there's behavior. And you cannot act behavior. You cannot act wit, you cannot act the erotic impulse, and you cannot act a kind of moral gravity.'

"And I thought about that, and thought about Morgan Freeman. The one thing this character, Harry, needs - as both the narrator of the film and the point-of-view character who then morphs into being the central character of the film - is a moral gravity. And I thought Morgan is one of the two or three people who can really do it.

"And so I said yes."

Short subjects. In an interview with MovieWeb.com, David Duchovny reports that it looks like The X-Files 2 will happen, and could go into production as early as December. "We would all love it if we could keep it a secret and just give everybody a fresh experience of not knowing what the movie's about. I know if I was a fan of the show I would kind of be excited to be surprised," he told the online film fan site. . . . With dollar signs in their eyes, Paramount and DreamWorks have announced that they're greenlighting Transformers 2, promising more Japanese toy robots and special-effects conflagration from that Ingmar Bergman of the 21st century, director Michael Bay. Variety reports that the studios have already penciled in June 26, 2009, as the opening date for the sequel. Transformers, released this summer (and back in theaters right now on the Imax circuit), has a worldwide gross of $696 million. Frightening. . . . State of Play, a film adaptation of the much-praised BBC political drama, is taking shape, with Oscar winner Helen Mirren the latest to climb on board. Fight Club costars Brad Pitt and Edward Norton have the leads, with Rachel McAdams and Robin Wright Penn also signed up. The Last King of Scotland's Kevin Macdonald is at the helm.