Benton’s screenplay by Tom Stoppard angered E.L. Doctorow because they made too many revisions to his novel Billy Bathgate. They did, however, get Billy Bathgate’s picnic right.
The picnic is a pivotal moment in Billy’s romantic education. It takes place in rural upstate New York, a strange environment for Billy, a native of the Bronx, who has scarcely walked on anything but pavement. Now he’s sitting in a forest beside Drew Preston, gangster Dutch Schultz’s mistress, on a rocky outcropping above the wild rushing Onondaga Creek.
Usually, there is food at Doctorow’s picnic, but Benton provides only wine. The result is that Preston gets drunk enough to ask Billy to tell her how Dutch Schultz murdered her lover, Bo Weinberg. “How was it when Bo died? Could you tell me, please?” she asks. Seeking to please, Billy artlessly begins commentary of how Bo was taken for a boat ride during which his feet were cemented into a bucket before Schultz ordered him to drown. Preston, below deck in the ship’s cabin, knows the outcome but not the details.
Momentarily shocked, Preston abruptly jumps into the creek. Fearful that she’s a suicide, Billy rushes to help but is surprised to find her calmly swimming in the cold water. Embarrassed and flummoxed because she is naked, Billy is awed by Preston’s sexuality—and aware of his lust. Shyly, Billy offers Preston her dress and helps dry her off.
* Doctorow’s picnickers’s lunch is store-bought chicken salad sandwiches (wrapped in wax paper), fruit, napoleons, and local wine. Benton only provides the wine.
Featured Image: Nicole Kidman as Drew Preston and Loren Dean as Billy Bathgate
See E. L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate: A Novel. New York: Random House, 1989; Robert Benton. Billy Bathgate (1991). The screenplay by Tom Stoppard is based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel (1989), Janice Stewart Heber. “The X-Factor in E. L. Doctorow’s “Billy Bathgate”: Powerless Women and History as Myth.” Modern Language Studies 22, no. 4 (1992); Minako Baba. “The Young Gangster as Mythic American Hero: E. L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate.” Melus: Varieties of Ethnic Criticism (1993)