Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich

Bogdanovich seated at a director's chair with a microphone in his hand

Peter Bogdanovich at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in 2008
Born July 30, 1939
Kingston, New York, United States
Occupation Film director, actor
Spouse(s) Polly Platt (1962–1971)[1]
Louise Stratten (1988–2001)
Partner(s) Cybill Shepherd (1971–1978)
Children 2

Peter Bogdanovich (Serbian: Петар Богдановић, Petar Bogdanović, born July 30, 1939) is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola. His most critically acclaimed film is The Last Picture Show (1971).

Career

Early life

Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe and born in the United States in Kingston, New York, the son of Herma (née Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His Austrian-born mother was Jewish, while his father was Serbian and an Eastern Orthodox Christian;[2] the two arrived in the U.S. in May 1939.[3] He was an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with acting teacher Stella Adler, and appeared on television and in summer stock.

Film critic

In the early 1960s, Bogdanovich was known as a film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich showcased the work of American directors such as Orson Welles and John Ford—whom he later wrote a book about, based on the notes he had produced for the MoMA retrospective of the director—and Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.

Bogdanovich was influenced by the French critics of the 1950s who wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma, especially critic-turned-director François Truffaut. Before becoming a director himself, he built his reputation as a film writer with articles in Esquire. These articles were collected in Pieces of Time (1973).

Move to Los Angeles and Roger Corman

In 1968, following the example of Cahiers du Cinéma critics Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer who had created the Nouvelle Vague ("New Wave") by making their own films, Bogdanovich decided to become a director. With his wife Polly Platt, he headed for Los Angeles, skipping out on the rent in the process.

Intent on breaking into the industry, Bogdanovich would ask publicists for movie premiere and industry party invitations. At one screening, Bogdanovich was viewing a film and director Roger Corman was sitting behind him. The two struck up a conversation when Corman mentioned he liked a cinema piece Bogdanovich wrote for Esquire. Corman offered him a directing job which Bogdanovich accepted immediately. He worked with Corman on Targets, which starred Boris Karloff, and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, under the pseudonym Derek Thomas. Bogdanovich later said of the Corman school of filmmaking, "I went from getting the laundry to directing the picture in three weeks. Altogether, I worked 22 weeks – preproduction, shooting, second unit, cutting, dubbing – I haven't learned as much since."[4]

Returning to journalism, Bogdanovich struck up a lifelong friendship with Orson Welles while interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichols's Catch-22 (1970). Bogdanovich played a major role in elucidating Welles and his career with his writings on the actor-director, most notably his book This is Orson Welles (1992). In the early 1970s, when Welles was having financial problems, Bogdanovich let him stay at his Bel Air mansion for a couple of years.

In 1970, Bogdanovich was commissioned by the American Film Institute to direct a documentary about John Ford for their tribute, Directed by John Ford (1971). The resulting film included candid interviews with the likes of John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda, and was narrated by Orson Welles. Out of circulation for years due to licensing issues, Bogdanovich and TCM released it in 2006, featuring newer, pristine film clips, and additional interviews with Clint Eastwood, Walter Hill, Harry Carey, Jr., Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and others.

Three hits

Much of the inspiration which led Bogdanovich to his cinematic creations came from early viewings of the film Citizen Kane. In an interview with Robert K. Elder, author of The Film That Changed My Life, Bogdanovich explains his appreciation of Orson Welles' work:

It’s just not like any other movie you know. It’s the first modern film: fragmented, not told straight ahead, jumping around. It anticipates everything that’s being done now, and which is thought to be so modern. It’s all become really decadent now, but it was certainly fresh then.[5]

The 32-year-old Bogdanovich was hailed by critics as a "Wellesian" wunderkind when his best-received film, The Last Picture Show, was released in 1971. The film gained eight Academy Awards nominations, including Best Director, and won two statues, for Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson in the supporting acting categories. Bogdanovich co-wrote the screenplay with Larry McMurtry, and it won the 1971 BAFTA award for Best Screenplay. Bogdanovich cast the 21-year-old model Cybill Shepherd in a major role in the film and fell in love with her, an affair that eventually led to his divorce from Polly Platt, his longtime artistic collaborator and the mother of his two daughters.

Bogdanovich followed up The Last Picture Show with the popular comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal, a screwball comedy indebted to Hawks's Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940). Despite his reliance on homage to bygone cinema, Bogdanovich solidified his status as one of a new breed of A-list directors that included Academy Award winners Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, with whom he formed The Directors Company. The Directors Company was a generous production deal with Paramount Pictures that essentially gave the directors carte blanche if they kept within budget limitations. It was through this entity that Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973) was produced.

Paper Moon, a Depression-era comedy starring Ryan O'Neal that won his 10-year-old daughter Tatum O'Neal an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, proved the high-water mark of Bogdanovich's career. Forced to share the profits with his fellow directors, Bogdanovich became dissatisfied with the arrangement. The Directors Company subsequently produced only two more pictures, Coppola's The Conversation (1974), which was nominated for Best Picture in 1974 alongside The Godfather, Part II, and Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller, which had a lackluster critical reception.

Three flops

Daisy Miller was unsuccessful at the box office. So were At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon. Feeling against Bogdanovich began to turn. "I was dumb. I made a lot of mistakes," he said in 1976.[6] He took a number of years off then returned to directing with a lower budgeted film, Saint Jack (1979) which was a critical success, although not a large hit. The making of this saw the end of his romantic relationship with Cybill Shepherd.

Dorothy Stratten and They All Laughed

Bogdanovich's next film was the romantic comedy They All Laughed which starred Dorothy Stratten, a former model who began a romantic relationship with Bogdanovich. Stratten was murdered by her husband. Bogdanovich took over distribution of the film himself.

Bogdanovich turned back to writing as his directorial career sagged, beginning with The Killing of the Unicorn - Dorothy Stratten 1960–1980, a memoir published in 1984. Teresa Carpenter's "Death of a Playmate" article about Dorothy Stratten's murder was published in The Village Voice and won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize, and while Bogdanovich did not criticize Carpenter's article in his book, she had lambasted both Bogdanovich and Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner, claiming that Stratten was a victim of them as much as of her husband, Paul Snider, who killed her and himself. Carpenter also criticized Bogdanovich for his "puerile preference for ingenues".[7] Carpenter's article served as the basis of Bob Fosse's film Star 80 (1983), in which Bogdanovich, for legal reasons, was portrayed as the fictional director "Aram Nicholas," a sympathetic but possibly misguided and naive character.

Bogdanovich took over distribution of They All Laughed himself. He later blamed this for why he had to declare bankruptcy in 1985.[8] He declared he had a monthly income of $75,000 and monthly expenses of $200,000.[9]

On December 30, 1988, the 49-year-old Bogdanovich married 20-year-old Louise Stratten, Dorothy's younger sister, whom he had begun dating when she was only 14, two years after Dorothy's death. The couple divorced in 2001. The marriage was viewed as a scandal because of his previous engagement to her sister.[10]

Mask and Texasville

Though he achieved success with Mask in 1985, Bogdanovich's 1990 sequel to The Last Picture Show, called Texasville was a critical and box-office disappointment. Both films occasioned major disputes between Bogdanovich, who still demanded a measure of control over his films, and the studios, which controlled the financing and final cut of both films. Mask was released with a song score by Bob Seger against Bogdanovich's wishes (he favored Bruce Springsteen), and Bogdanovich has often complained that the version of Texasville that was released was not the film he had intended. A director's cut of Mask, slightly longer and with Springsteen's songs, was belatedly released on DVD in 2006. A director's cut of Texasville was released on laserdisc, and was released on DVD by MGM in 2005. Around the time of the release of Texasville, Bogdanovich also revisited his earliest success, The Last Picture Show, and produced a slightly modified director's cut. Since that time, his recut has been the only available version of the film.

Bogdanovich directed two more theatrical films in 1992 and 1993, but their failure kept him off the big screen for several years. One, Noises Off..., based on the Michael Frayn play, has subsequently developed a strong cult following, while the other, The Thing Called Love, is better known as one of River Phoenix's last roles before his untimely drug-related death.

In 1997 he declared bankruptcy again.[11]

Bogdanovich, drawing from his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, authored several critically lauded books, including Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week, which offered the lifelong cinephile's commentary on 52 of his favorite films, and Who The Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors and Who the Hell's in It: Conversations with Hollywood's Legendary Actors, both based on interviews with directors and actors.

Later career

In 2001, Bogdanovich resurfaced with The Cat's Meow. Returning once again to a reworking of the past, this time the supposed murder of director Thomas Ince by Orson Welles's bête noire William Randolph Hearst, The Cat's Meow was a modest critical success but made little money at the box office. Bogdanovich says he was told the story of the alleged Ince murder by Welles, who in turn said he heard it from writer Charles Lederer.[12]

In addition to directing some television work, Bogdanovich has returned to acting with a recurring guest role on the cable television series The Sopranos, playing Dr. Melfi's psychotherapist. Bogdanovich directed a fifth-season episode of the series. He also voiced the analyst of Bart Simpson's therapist in an episode of The Simpsons, and appeared as himself in the "Robots Versus Wrestlers" episode of How I Met Your Mother along with Arianna Huffington and Will Shortz. Quentin Tarantino also cast Bogdanovich as a disc jockey in Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2. "Quentin knows, because he's such a movie buff, that when you hear a disc jockey's voice in my pictures, it's always me, sometimes doing different voices," said Bogdanovich. "So he called me and he said, 'I stole your voice from The Last Picture Show for the rough cut, but I need you to come down and do that voice again for my picture...'"[13]

Bogdanovich hosted The Essentials on Turner Classic Movies, but was replaced in May 2006 by TCM host Robert Osborne and film critic Molly Haskell. Bogdanovich is also frequently featured in introductions to movies on Criterion Collection DVDs, and has had a supporting role as a fictional version of himself in the Showtime comedy series Out of Order. He will next appear in The Dream Factory.

In 2006, Bogdanovich joined forces with ClickStar, where he hosts a classic film channel, Peter Bogdanovich's Golden Age of Movies. Bodganovich also writes a blog for the site.[14] In 2003 he appeared in the BBC documentary, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and in 2006 he appeared in the documentary Wanderlust.

In 2007, Bogdanovich was presented with an award for outstanding contribution to film preservation by The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) at the Toronto International Film Festival.[15]

In 1998, the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress named The Last Picture Show to the National Film Registry, an honor awarded only to culturally significant films.

In 2010, Bogdanovich joined the directing faculty at the School of Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. On April 17, 2010, he was awarded the Master of Cinema Award at the 12th Annual RiverRun International Film Festival. In 2011, he was given the Auteur Award by the International Press Academy, which is awarded to filmmakers whose singular vision and unique artistic control over the elements of production give a personal and signature style to their films.[16]

In 2012, Bogdanovich made news with an essay in the Hollywood Reporter, published in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, in which he argued against excessive violence in the movies:

Today, there’s a general numbing of the audience. There’s too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it’s not so terrible. Back in the ’70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, “We’re brutalizing the audience. We’re going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.” The respect for human life seems to be eroding.[17]

Bogdanovich and Shepherd are again re-teaming for the comedy film One Lucky Moon which is expected to be released in 2014. Luck Films will produce the film.[18]

Filmography

Directing credits

Year Film Other notes Rotten Tomatoes
1968 Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women Alternative Title: The Gill Women of Venus and The Gill Women
Credited as Derek Thomas
Targets Alternative Title: Before I Die
Also Writer/Producer/Editor		 88% [19]
1971 Directed by John Ford Documentary
The Last Picture Show Also Writer
BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director
Nominated - Academy Award for Best Director
Nominated - Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Direction
Nominated - Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film
Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Director
Nominated - Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay		 100% [20]
1972 What's Up, Doc Also Writer/Producer 91% [21]
1973 Paper Moon Also Producer
Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Director		 91% [22]
1974 Daisy Miller Also Producer 100% [23]
1975 At Long Last Love Also Writer/Producer 17% [24]
1976 Nickelodeon Also Writer
Nominated - Golden Bear		 14% [25]
1979 Saint Jack Also Writer
Venice Film Festival for Best Film		 58% [26]
1981 They All Laughed Also Writer 33% [27]
1985 Mask Nominated - Palme d'Or 93% [28]
1988 Illegally Yours[29] Also Producer 0% [30]
1990 Texasville Also Writer/Producer 55% [31]
1992 Noises Off Also Executive Producer 57% [32]
1993 The Thing Called Love 57%[33]
1996 To Sir, with Love II TV
1997 The Price of Heaven TV
Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Women TV
1998 Naked City: A Killer Christmas TV
1999 A Saintly Switch TV
2001 The Cat's Meow 75% [34]
2004 The Mystery of Natalie Wood TV
Hustle TV
2007 Runnin' Down A Dream Documentary 100% [35]
2014 She's Funny That Way[36][37] Alternative title: Squirrels to the Nuts
Also Writer

Acting credits

Misc.

Unmade Films

Bogdanovich was also fired off Duck, You Sucker! [44] and Another You (1991), the latter while during filming. He turned down directing A Glimpse of Tiger, The Getaway (1972), King of the Gypsies (1978),[45] Heaven Can Wait (1978), The Hurricane (1979) and Popeye (1980).[46] He also turned down the role played by Dabney Coleman in Tootsie (1982).[47]

He also directed some scenes of Love Streams (1984).[47]

Collaborations

Targets The Last Picture Show What's Up, Doc? Paper Moon Daisy Miller At Long Last Love Nickelodeon Saint Jack They All Laughed Mask Illegally Yours Texasville Noises Off She's Funny That Way
Cybill Shepherd (actress)
No
No
No
No
No
Eileen Brennan (actress)
No
No
No
No
Randy Quaid (actor)
No
No
No
No
John Hillerman (actor)
No
No
No
No
Ryan O'Neal (actor)
No
No
No
Madeline Kahn (actress)
No
No
No
John Ritter (actor)
No
No
No
Harry Carey, Jr. (actor)
No
No
No
George Morfogen (actor, producer, dialogue coach)
No
(act)
No
(act)
No
(dc)
No
(prod)
No
(act/prod)
No
(prod)
No
(act/prod)
No
(act)
László Kovács (director of photography)
No
No
No
No
No
No
Robby Müller (director of photography)
No
No
Polly Platt (production designer)
No
No
No
No

Books

Books by Peter Bogdanovich:

Audio commentaries

Director's commentaries

Scholarly commentaries

References

  1. ↑ Margalit Fox "Polly Platt, Producer and Production Designer, Dies at 72", New York Times, 29 July 2011
  2. ↑ Current Biography Yearbook - Google Books. Books.google.ca. 1973. Retrieved 2013-02-27.
  3. ↑ "Poughkeepsiejournal.com". Poughkeepsiejournal.com. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  4. ↑ "What They Learned From Roger Corman", by Beverly Gray, MovieMaker Magazine, Spring 2001, retrieved April 29, 2006
  5. ↑ Bogdanovich, Peter. Interview by Robert K. Elder. The Film That Changed My Life. By Robert K. Elder. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011. N. p56. Print.
  6. ↑ Bogdanovich directs his remarks to sex, violence Siskel, Gene. Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file) [Chicago, Ill] 21 Dec 1976: a1.
  7. ↑ Grace, Kevin Michael (2011-06-22) Happiness Implosion, The American Conservative
  8. ↑ Bogdanovich Files for Bankruptcy: Film's Failure Led to $6.6 Million in Debts Bankrupt By David Crook Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post (1974-Current file) [Washington, D.C] 19 Dec 1985: C1.
  9. ↑ BOGDANOVICH'S BANKRUPT MEMORIAL: BANKRUPT MEMORIAL Crook, David. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 19 Dec 1985: i1.
  10. ↑ Bogdanovich Weds Sister of His Murdered Lover Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 03 Jan 1989: V2.
  11. ↑ "Director Bogdanovich Declares Bankruptcy" LA Times June 04, 1997|ANN W. O'NEILL | TIMES STAFF WRITER accessed 17 June 2013
  12. ↑ "Interview with Peter Bogdanovich from March 9, 2008". Wellesnet.com. 2008-03-14. Retrieved 2013-02-27.
  13. ↑ "ESPN interview with Peter Bogdanovich". Sports.espn.go.com. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2013-02-27.
  14. ↑ Community.cstar.com
  15. ↑ "TIFF '07 - Films & Schedules La Grand Illusion:", by Sylvia Frank, Toronto International Film Festival Guide, September 2007, retrieved September 09, 2007
  16. ↑ 2011 Satellite Winners, December 2011.
  17. ↑ "Legendary Director Peter Bogdanovich: What If Movies Are Part of the Problem?". The Hollywood Reporter. 2012-07-25. Retrieved 2013-02-27.
  18. ↑ "Bogdanovich and Shepherd Re-Team for ONE LUCKY MOON". filmofilia.com. 20 January 2012. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
  19. ↑ "Targets". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  20. ↑ "The Last Picture Show". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  21. ↑ "What's Up, Doc?". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  22. ↑ "Paper Moon". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  23. ↑ "Daisy Miller". Rotten Tomatoes. 2009-07-25. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  24. ↑ "At Long Last Love". Rotten Tomatoes. 2011-06-11. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  25. ↑ "Nickelodeon". Rotten Tomatoes. 2011-01-03. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  26. ↑ "Saint Jack". Rotten Tomatoes. 2008-02-10. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  27. ↑ "They All Laughed". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  28. ↑ "Mask". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  29. ↑ "The New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  30. ↑ "Illegally Yours". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  31. ↑ "Texasville". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  32. ↑ "Noises Off...". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  33. ↑ "The Thing Called Love". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  34. ↑ "The Cat's Meow". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  35. ↑ "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-02-13.
  36. ↑ Bahr, Lindsey (February 11, 2013). "Casting Net: Jennifer Aniston joins Peter Bogdanovich film; Plus Sandra Bullock, Saoirse Ronan, and Nicholas Hoult". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 16, 2013.
  37. ↑ "Hollywood Insider: Deal Report". Entertainment Weekly (New York: Time Inc.): 27. February 22, 2013.
  38. ↑ Yule p 24
  39. ↑ Yule p 63
  40. ↑ Master Chef of Hardboiled Prose Diehl, Digby. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 01 Dec 1974: o67.
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 41.3 41.4 41.5 Yule p 179
  42. ↑ Yule p224
  43. ↑ Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach To Produce New Film By Peter Bogdanovich 'Squirrel To The Nuts' BY KEVIN JAGERNAUTH Indie Wire OCTOBER 29, 2010 accessed 12 May 2013
  44. ↑ Yule p 35
  45. ↑ Briefs on the Arts: Monet Study Added To Met Exhibition Bogdanovich Signs For Gypsy Film Mrs. Ford to Aid Group for Dance New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 25 Jan 1975: 13.
  46. ↑ MOVIES: Bogdanovich: '70s' golden boy regains his screen sheen Lawson, Terry. Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file) [Chicago, Ill] 17 Jan 1982: g18.
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 Yule p 180
  48. ↑ A Moment with Miss Gish, WorldCat.org; accessed November 27, 2014.

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