EXTREMISM [A Non Book]
David Newman and Robert Benton, Milton Glaser [Designer]
David Newman and Robert Benton, Milton Glaser [Designer]: EXTREMISM [A Non Book]. New York: The Viking Press, 1964. First edition. Oblong octavo. Laminated printed paper covered boards. Decorated endpapers. Unpaginated. Fully illustrated in black and white, with elaborate graphic design and typography throughout. Faint foxing early and late, otherwise a fine, fresh example with mildly rubbed covers.
7.5 x 4.75 hardcover book that approached the political climate of the 1964 election season with humor and whimsy.
From David Newman’s obituary, August 7, 2003: “Bonnie And Clyde (1967), one of the most influential American movies of the last four decades, was written by Robert Benton and David Newman, who has died after a stroke aged 66. Like the eponymous couple in the film, Newman and Benton were a team. They wrote seven scripts together, but Bonnie And Clyde, their first work of any kind for the cinema, remains their best. They met in 1964, when working for Esquire magazine. Newman recalled: "Benton, who was arts editor, and I immediately set up a kind of sympathetic friendship. We also found out that we both loved the same movies, especially the French new wave."
“They decided to attempt an American version of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless through the story of two desperados of the 1930s, after Newman had come across a book called The Dillinger Days by John Toland.”
Robert Benton's films and screenplays make up some of the most important and defining works of the American cinema. From Bonnie and Clyde to Nobody's Fool, Benton's examinations of the common man thrown into extraordinary circumstances are viewed by many as some of the most quintessentially American films ever produced.
Benton was born September 29, 1932 in Waxahachie, Texas, near Dallas. Intending to become an artist, he served a stint with the Army as a diorama painter before landing an assistant's job at the art department of Esquire. In 1958 he became the magazine's art director, a position he held through 1964, then a contributing editor through 1972.
During that period, he wrote three books and began a long and fruitful collaboration with writer David Newman, first on special pop-culture projects at Esquire (among them the annual college issue and the Dubious Achievement Awards), then on "Extremism: A Non-Book" in 1964 and the short-lived Broadway musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman in 1966. They next tackled the movies, making a fortuitous start with their original script for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, one of the most influential films of the 1960's. It earned them a nomination for an Academy Award. They followed this with screenplays for the western There Was a Crooked Man (1969) and the zany What's Up Doc (1972, with Buck Henry). Benton then ventured into directing with Bad Company (1972), a highly-regarded Civil War-era western. In 1977, he wrote and directed the critically lauded The Late Show, an homage to the hard-boiled detective genre. The following year, he collaborated again with Newman, Newman's wife Leslie and Mario Puzo on the screenplay of the hit Superman.
Milton Glaser (born June 26, 1929) graduated from Cooper Union and co-founded Push Pin Studios, along with fellow Cooper grads Edward Sorel, Seymour Chwast, and Reynold Ruffins in 1954. Glaser and Chwast directed Push Pin for twenty years, while it became a guiding reference in the world of graphic design. His work is displayed in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Milton Glaser, Inc. was established in 1974 in Manhattan, and is still producing work in a wide range of design disciplines, including corporate identities (logos, stationery, brochures, signage, website design, and annual reports), environmental and interior design (exhibitions, interiors and exteriors of restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels, and other retail environments), packaging (food and beverage packaging), and product design. He’s a living legend.