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They Kill People

They Kill People

Name: They Kill People
Author: Kirk Ellis
ISBN: 9780826369376

Bonnie and Clyde, a Hollywood Revolution, and America's Obsession with Guns and Outlaws

by Kirk Ellis

Published by: University of New Mexico Press

Imprint: High Road Books

312 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 × 41.00 mm

Hardcover
9780826369376
Published: February 2026

£23.99

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A deep dive into the grit and glamor of America’s favorite criminal couple and the nation’s love affair with guns.

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 Clyde still 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 Clyde taps into a dark wellspring in the American psyche. Produced in a time of great social upheaval, with a country divided under a deeply polarizing president, the film addresses troubling questions about our country’s founding myth and its obsession with firearms, questions that remain part of our national debate.

They Kill People is the story of the making of Bonnie and Clyde. It is the story of the outlaws whose real lives were anything but glamorous. Most of all, it is the story of how violence and a predilection for firearms became a fundamental part of American identity.

"It’s a meaty yet accessible book that captures the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of the generation’s ur-text, capturing the unlikely nature of its creation and the somewhat dodgy nature of its legacy." - Mark Athitakis Los Angeles Times

"Well written and researched, this is a captivating read that will appeal to fans of the film as well as cultural historians." - Phillip Oliver Library Journal

"This is a thoughtful and frequently surprising look at a film that quite literally changed the way movies were made." - Booklist

“Kirk Ellis, a true connoisseur of cinema, deftly uses an iconic movie as a jumping-off point for a much larger study of America’s disturbing obsession with guns and our propensity not only for violence but for celebrating and romanticizing it. Ellis’s argument—that gun culture is central to our national identity—is hard to dismiss. They Kill People is a supple and far-ranging narrative that examines our country’s long, sordid trigger-happiness through the lens of film. You can’t read it without wondering, on multiple levels, What the hell’s wrong with us?” - Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide, Wide Sea

“Kirk Ellis has written a vibrant, astute, and vastly entertaining account of the making of one of the greatest American movies of the modern era. But They Kill People is not just an excellent movie book. It's also the story of a country struggling to escape the death grip of the Great Depression, its myths, its mortal wounds, and its obsession with fast cars, lethal weapons, and murderous celebrity outlaws. Ellis understands that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes, and he deftly connects the dots between the roaring ’30s, the rebellious ’60s, and our own troubled decade.” - Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and author of Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic

“Kirk Ellis examines the disturbing roots of this country's obsession with guns and outlaws in a book that's as rollicking as it is alarming. A brilliant exploration of how a fascination with violence reveals the darkest reaches of our American identity.” - Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America

“Released amid the social turmoil of 1967, Bonnie and Clyde’s counterculture depiction of two bank robbers during the Great Depression began a New Wave of Hollywood filmmaking and changed the industry’s rating system. Almost a half century later, Kirk Ellis’s compelling, dramatic reassessment of this unusually influential film demonstrates that Bonnie and Clyde is as relevant as ever. Packed with fascinating behind-the-camera stories—such as how star/producer Warren Beatty fought for the film’s re-release after Warner Bros. sensed the threat it posed and dumped it—this major study entertains as much as it enlightens.” - David Morrell, New Yok Times bestselling author of First Blood

“Ellis brings his award-winning writing and sharp eye for history to a brilliant and thought-provoking exposÉ of America’s obsession with guns and violence. Through the spectacle of real-life criminals Bonnie and Clyde and the Hollywood myth makers who made them legendary, Ellis serves up a haunting, irresistible, and riveting tale. I could not put it down!” - Kate Clifford Larson, author of Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer

“With They Kill People, Kirk Ellis has delivered an important work for fans of Arthur Penn’s classic and seminal movie Bonnie and Clyde, plus a compelling account of the real-life Texas criminals who inspired it. This exquisitely written book captivated me. I read it two sittings. It’s that good.” - W. K. Stratton, Western Heritage Award-winning poet and author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film

“In They Kill People, Kirk Ellis leads the reader through our history of gun-fueled outlawry with entertaining enlightenment.” - Bryan Cranston, producer/star of Breaking Bad