STEALING CASH - AND HEARTS, TOO; IN `THE NEWTON BOYS,' CONSUMMATE ROBBERS DRAW ON VAULT FULL OF COURTLY SOUTHERN CHARM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

A little-known slice of Texas history - an unusual enough occurrence in itself, Lone Star folk being so proud of their heritage and all - has been brought to the screen by a somewhat unlikely source.

Richard Linklater, the Austin-based filmmaker who not only coined a term for a whole generation with his feature ``Slacker'' but went on to define its casual characteristics in ``Dazed and Confused,'' ``Before Sunrise'' and ``subUrbia,'' has taken quite a change in direction with his new film, ``The Newton Boys.''

Where did this most contemporary of directors interest in a clan of outlaws who bridged the era of cowboys and Indians and the Roaring '20s come from?

``Texas is home, and a lot of my stories are based there,'' Linklater shrugs, as if the answer were self-evident. ``Attitude, culture, music; to me, it's all there. And it's a personal story, something I felt really close to.''

Indeed, the story of the nation's most successful bank robbers would be a corker regardless of where it was set.

Four young men from a large family of cotton farmers and horse breakers, poor but dishonest Willis, Joe, Jess and Dock Newton knocked over more than 80 banks between 1919 and 1924, hauling in, according to ringleader Willis' claim, ``more money than Jesse James, Butch, Sundance, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Dalton brothers put together.''

Professional courtesy 

So why are those comparative pikers infinitely better-known than the Newtons? Partially because the Texas brothers never killed anybody; perhaps even more because the Newtons had a certain sense of professional discretion.

``They didn't talk about it until years later, when the statutes of limitations ran out,'' says Claude Stanush, an award-winning journalist who befriended Willis and Joe Newton in their twilight years, has written books, magazine articles and a documentary film about the gang, and who co-wrote the feature film's screenplay. ``They were very shrewd, like systems analysts you'd have today. They studied everything, pulled most of their jobs at night and left no traceable evidence.''

``What I loved about these guys was that they were consummate professionals who just kept their mouths shut,'' Linklater adds. ``Right now, in society, there are these incredible criminals who've gotten away with it that we just don't know about. Compared to successful pros like that, publicity seekers like Bonnie and Clyde were idiots.''

Which is not to say that the Newton boys didn't have personality to spare. As portrayed in the movie by Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich and Vincent D'Onofrio, they were seductive charmers with personal styles that mixed courtly Southern manners and good ol' boy exuberance.

In fact, when the Newtons finally were captured and convicted - for a train robbery outside of Chicago that netted more loot than any railroad job in American history - they essentially sweet-talked their ways into absurdly light sentences. After short stays in Leavenworth Prison, all of the brothers except Dock took up honest livings and survived to ripe old ages.

Long road to film

Stanush, whose screenwriting work dates back to ``The Lusty Men,'' Nicholas Ray's fine 1952 drama about the personal lives of rodeo cowboys, had been trying to get a Newton project going in Hollywood for years. ``But producers always wanted to turn it into a Texas Rangers thing, all chases and cops-and-robbers stuff,'' the 80-ish writer says.

Linklater was the first director interested in making a more authentic tale. To do that, however, he had to immerse the production in period detail, everything from learning the prevailing attitudes of the day to rounding up preserved, vintage Model T's for the gang's getaway cars.

For a guy whose only previous foray into filming the past involved re-creating his high school graduation in ``Dazed and Confused,'' that was just one of numerous new challenges ``The Newton Boys'' presented.

``The difference is mainly in the storytelling,'' Linklater says. ``I've usually done pieces that are about the character and the moment of time they're in. This one is more like an epic story, and it's a true story. It was a big tale to tell.

``The other difference was in the design. We're re-creating a period so far in the past that everything was different, so everything had to be created. If the goal is authentic reality, you have to nail the details. At the same time, though, no one lives in the past. I had to remind the actors that this was the characters' real world at any given moment, and we didn't want a stuffy museum-piece feel.''

Little chance of that happening. For the actors, playing cowboys and gangsters at pretty much the same time was irresistible fun.

``It was a blast,'' says Ulrich, who plays Joe, the youngest, most thoughtful Newton. ``There were guns, horseback riding, great old cars. The clothes were a lot of fun to wear, too, and beautiful. But hot; we were shooting in San Antonio in 102-degree weather, wearing three-piece woolen suits. It was almost unbearable, but it did something for your performance, too - made you feel like you were really there in that time and place.

``The best thing was that Rick really allowed us to bring the film to life,'' adds Ulrich, who's on a hot streak of a different kind after appearing in ``Scream'' and ``As Good as It Gets.'' ``He didn't ask us to take on anything, even though these were real, historical figures. It was all allowed to come to us as it came to us, and I think that takes a tremendous amount of confidence in a director.''

Hometown boy

Perhaps ``Newton'' meant the most to Matthew McConaughey. Not only is the star of ``A Time to Kill'' and ``Amistad'' a Texan born and bred, he grew up in Uvalde, the Newtons' hometown.

``I didn't know about them until Rick told me their story,'' says McConaughey, who got his first big acting break in ``Dazed and Confused.'' ``After that, I went back to Uvalde and started asking around. I met some people who knew the Newton boys, and I even learned that my dad took my oldest brother to get his first horse from Joe Newton!

``I even found ladies in town who still had crushes on them and everything and said the Newtons were just the most consummate gentlemen.''

Who robbed banks.

``Y'know, everyone likes a bit of the wild soul,'' McConaughey reckons. ``Yeah, you want someone that you can rely on, but there's a boyish charm to never really adhering to the confines of responsible citizenship. I dunno; it's fun to break the law a li'l bit. I know I like getting away with things.''

Linklater hopes he's gotten away with a new step in his creative development.

``Connections from film to film? You try to learn with each one and grow and deal with a different part of yourself,'' the director says. ``I think the difference between this film and everything else I've done is that, for the first time, I have a not-very-introspective, self-analytical lead.

``Willis is very active, trying to physically manifest his world. It was fun to hang out with those kind of characters for awhile, because there's a part of me that's like that.''

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `BOYS' WILL BE...

Ethan Hawke, Matthew McConaughey, Vincent D'Onofrio and Skeet Ulrich steal the show in a true story of bank robbers

(2) One of the hallmarks of the gang in ``The Newton Boys,'' portrayed by Ethan Hawke, left, Vincent D'Onofrio, Skeet Ulrich and Dwight Yoakam, is that they never killed anybody.

(3) The Texas heritage of director Richard Linklater, right, prompted him to chronicle the lives of a very successful bank-robbing family in ``The Newton Boys.''