Bonnie and Clyde (1967) — "They're young... they're in love... and they kill people." (with Christian Titus)
"They're young... they're in love... and they kill people."
Nine words. Two ellipses. One period that does more work than most entire sentences.
The structure is a masterpiece of weaponized grammar. "They're young" — in 1967, that single word carried the entire cultural weight of a generation. An ellipsis. Then "they're in love" — now you're in romance territory, Bogart and Bacall, screwball comedy, boy meets girl. Another ellipsis. The audience is comfortable. And then: "and they kill people." Full stop. Not an ellipsis. Not an exclamation mark. A period. Matter-of-fact. Unhurried. Unashamed. As if killing people naturally follows from being young and in love, as if this is simply the third item on the list.
The anonymous Warner Bros. copywriter who wrote this made one other crucial call: choosing "kill people" over "rob banks." A documented alternate version of this tagline exists — softer, more romantic, bank robbers as folk heroes. The "kill people" version is morally harder, funnier, more confrontational, and infinitely more honest about what the film actually is. Whoever chose that word over the safer option made the right call. We don't know who they were.
Here's the other thing worth knowing before you press play: Warner Bros. hated this film. Studio head Jack Warner called it a "four-piss picture." The studio tried to dump it in Texas drive-ins. This tagline was written by a marketing department working on a film their own studio had given up on — and the nine words they produced are now one of the most studied pieces of marketing copy in cinema history.
Joining Nate for this one is voice actor, audio producer, voice line producer, and VO coach Christian Titus — twenty-plus years as an actor, ten-plus in voiceover, based in New York, with credits spanning commercials, corporate narration, animation, video games, podcasts, and audio drama, and voice line production credits including Grand Prix of Europe and Kayara. Christian is a fellow NAVA member and exactly the kind of performer who has thought seriously about every craft dimension of what it means to put words into a character's mouth.
There is one more thing. Christian chose Bonnie and Clyde from the guest submission form thinking it was a different film. He watched the actual 1967 Arthur Penn film for the first time specifically to prepare for this episode. That first-time experience — unfiltered, no nostalgia, no childhood memory to protect — turns out to be one of the most valuable things a guest can bring to this show. The film hit him fresh. You'll hear it.
🎙️ Follow Nate Begle: natebegle.com | @natebegle on YouTube and @natebeglevo on Discord
Christian Titus is a New York-based voice actor, audio producer, voice line producer, and VO coach with over 20 years as a performer and 10+ in voiceover — whose credits span commercials, corporate narration, animation, video games, audio drama, and voice line production on Grand Prix of Europe and Kayara.
🔗 christiantitus.com | christiantitusvo.com | IMDb
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