By RAY KELLY
Peter Bogdanovich, the successful New Hollywood director who co-authored This is Orson Welles and co-starred in The Other Side of the Wind, passed away today. He was 82.
The Last Picture Show and What’s Up Doc? filmmaker died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter, Antonia Bogdanovich, told The Hollywood Reporter.
With the success of those pictures and Paper Moon, Bogdanovich was lauded by critics and audiences, but his hot streak cooled with a series of high-profile flops: Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon. He went on to direct 20 films and documentaries, most recently the comedy She’s Funny that Way in 2014 and the 2018 documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration. Bogdanovich was planning to direct One Lucky Moon, from a script he co-wrote at the time of his death.
Throughout his career, he championed the golden age of Hollywood’s greatest directors: John Ford, Howard Hawks and Welles.
Bogdanovich, then a writer, had befriended Welles before his success with The Last Picture Show. Welles asked him to work with him on the interview book This is Orson Welles and later to co-star in Welles’ Hollywood comeback project The Other Side of the Wind.
During filming, Welles asked his young friend to promise to finish The Other Side of the Wind in the event he died before finishing the film.
It was a promise Bogdanovich kept in 2018. He worked with producers Frank Marshall, a long time friend and production manager during the 1970s shoot, and Filip Jan Rymsza, as well as editor Bob Murawski to complete the film for Netflix.
“Peter was a passionate filmmaker and storyteller, who referred to films as ‘pictures’ and taught me the difference between the terms ‘cineaste’ and ‘cinephile’,” Rymsza told Welelsnet. “He was a living, breathing film history course and I will forever cherish his stories.”
Marshall, one of Hollywood’s most successful producers, told Wellesnet that it was Bogdanovich who gave him his start.
“It’s hard to put into words what Peter meant to me,” Marshall said. “He gave me my first job on a movie and became my mentor. We made 10 pictures together, our last being the finishing of The Other Side of the Wind and completing his promise to Orson.”
He added, “Peter lived and loved movies, watching them, making them, writing about them and talking about them. He was a brilliant filmmaker. His knowledge of cinema was astounding, and he was always so generous with his encouragement and support of young filmmakers. His passion and joy for movies was infectious, he told great stories and we laughed a lot together. ”
“I loved him and will miss him greatly.”
Bogdanovich told Wellesnet in a 2018 interview that he believed Welles would have been pleased with the work he, Rymsza, Marshall and Murawski did.
“It’s a guess, but I surmise that he would’ve been very touched and pleased that we expended our best effort to get it done in the best possible way. And I think he would’ve been very appreciative of that,” Bogdanovich said. “As far as the outcome, I mean the way it finally looks, I think it’s close enough to what he had in mind. I think we pass muster. I’m sure there are things he would’ve changed, but we did the best we could. We certainly tried. We definitely tried to keep his vision of the picture as much as we possibly could without having him here.”
As a writer, Bogdanovich wrote more than a dozen books beginning with The Cinema of Orson Welles in 1961 and most recently, Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors, in 2004.
His own career was examined in the 2020 book Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director by Peter Tonguette.
Bogdanovich, who studied acting under Stella Adler in the 1950s, made a number of appearances in front of the camera, including a stint on The Sopranos.
Among his last screen credits was playing a film director in It: Chapter Two. His character sported a black and white pin with an acronym referring back to his The Other Side of the Wind days, VISTOW — Volunteers in Service to Orson Welles.
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