They Kill People: Bonnie and Clyde, a Hollywood Revolution, and America's Obsession with Guns and Outlaws [Hardcover]

Prodigiously researched, the work is a compelling braid of its subtitles. Cineastes will savor the detailed descriptions of the genesis and filming of the famous movie; historians, the backstory of America's romance with guns and violence; and Hollywood history buffs, the ways in which Bonnie and Clyde upended production codes and changed on-screen depictions of sex and violence for good. –Alta

On May 23, 1934, two borderline inept but ruthless criminals named Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker met their end in a hail of semiautomatic gunfire on a rural road in the Louisiana backcountry. The duo had terrorized Depression-era Middle America with a string of robberies and a brazen daylight prison escape, killing nearly a dozen police officers along the way.
A legend was born.

Thirty-two years later, a movie crew gathered on a Warner Bros. studio ranch to re-create the scene of Bonnie and Clyde’s violent demise. It was the end of a difficult shoot. Almost everyone involved knew they were on to something, but getting there had taken a toll on relationships both professional and personal.

The result was destined to become what is arguably the landmark film of the New Hollywood era. Nothing like it had ever been attempted anything similar had, in fact, been forbidden by censorship. When the lights finally came up after an agonizing moment of black, Hollywood would never be the same. Almost sixty years since it exploded onto American screens,Bonnie and Clydestill retains the power to shock, amaze, and provoke, as fresh and relevant today as when it was first released in 1967. The movie’s resonance goes well beyond the peerless filmmaking of director Arthur Penn, producer-star Warren Beatty, and their talented team of collaborators.

Bonnie and Clydetaps into a dark wellspring in the American psyche. Produced in a time of great social upheaval, with a country divided under a deeply polarizing presidenlóÓ