By RAY KELLY
Serious movie fans know that before Peter Bogdanovich hit it big with The Last Picture Show, he directed the cult classic Targets with Boris Karloff. But Peter Tonguette’s new book on Bogdanovich is so exhaustive it delves into the footage Bogdanovich shot with Mamie Van Doren to be morphed with a Soviet sci-fi film and released as Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.
Further, Tonguette gets Bogdanovich to reveal that he included a nod to Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai in that forgettable Roger Corman release.
Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director is the book Bogdanovich fans have wanted for so long. It looks at Bogdanovich’s career from those early days to his most recent release, The Great Buster.
Published by University Press of Kentucky and due in stores July 21, Picturing Peter Bogdanovich includes recollections about The Last Picture Show, which garnered eight Oscar nominations, and subsequent efforts including Paper Moon, What’s Up Doc and Mask. The book also touches on his highly publicized relationships with Cybill Shepherd and Dorothy Stratten.
Tonguette, who penned Orson Welles Remembered in 2007, graciously fielded questions about his latest effort:
Given his own books interviewing John Ford and Orson Welles, how did Bogdanovich react to being the subject of such an extensive interview and look at his work?
When I first interviewed Peter in 2003 and 2004, it was for an article I was writing about his work. While I always had it in the back of my mind that I would like to continue interviewing him, and one day do a book on his life and work, I didn’t come out and say that at first. Happily, Peter really liked what I wrote, so when I eventually told him I’d like to turn our conversations into a book — and do a bunch of new interviews expressly for such a book — I think he was pleased.
Back in 2004, when Peter sent me a copy of his book The Killing of the Unicorn, he wrote in the inscription that my article was just about the smartest stuff he’d read about his own pictures — so I felt, at least, that we had a solid basis from which to begin!
What surprised you most over the course of your interviews?
I wasn’t surprised by Peter’s honesty and candor, but I was always impressed by it. I could ask him about anything, and I knew he would be game. Maybe it’s because Peter has been in my shoes — interviewing sometimes-uncooperative directors. But Peter is anything but.
A bit of a desert island screening room question. Bogdanovich has some 20 films to his credit as a director, what five would you deem essential and why?
The Last Picture Show, because it made Peter’s reputation and remains a powerful, influential movie; What’s Up, Doc?, because it never fails to inspire authentic laughter in audiences; Daisy Miller, because it brilliantly captures the tragic side of Peter’s personality; They All Laughed, because it is Peter’s most personal film; and the director’s cut of Mask, because it shows what a large and generous heart Peter has.
Do you agree with Martin Scorsese’s assessment that Bogdanovich’s work reflects classic American films?
Absolutely. Peter was the only member of the New Hollywood generation who sought to further the tradition established by Ford, Hawks and Welles. Peter was much misunderstood by critics who thought he was merely paying homage to those directors. In fact, he was following in their footsteps, directing as though the Golden Age had never ended. Even when Peter was directing movies that never would have been made in the classical era (such as the sexually candid Last Picture Show), he directed them in a classical manner.
In addition to Bogdanovich’s feature narratives, your book includes his documentaries: Directed by John Ford, Runnin’ Down a Dream and The Great Buster. How do you rate his work as a documentarian?
Peter’s documentaries are so personal. Peter tells the story of Buster Keaton, in Peter’s own words and his own voice, in The Great Buster. In Directed by John Ford, we even see Peter — in over-the-shoulder shots as he interviews John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart. That personal quality makes his documentaries quite distinctive.
In the interviews, Bogdanovich recalls working with Welles on The Other Side of the Wind and how he inspired him to shoot the Cat’s Meow. How much impact do you think Welles had on Bogdanovich as a director?
Considerable, but with a few caveats. The tone and spirit of Peter’s work is much closer to the human and humane work of, say, Leo McCarey or George Cukor than Welles. At the same time, Peter’s visual style can have a certain attention-grabbing visual pizazz that reminds me very much of Welles. For example, Peter has always shown a strong preference for deep-focus cinematography, ala Welles and Gregg Toland. In visual terms, his sequel to The Last Picture Show, Texasville, is like watching a remake of Citizen Kane, in color, in Texas, in the 1980s!
Welles fans are well-positioned to appreciate Peter’s later work. Just as we know that Chimes at Midnight and F for Fake are as good as or better than Kane, it isn’t such a leap to say that films like Texasville or The Thing Called Love are as good as or better than some of his early triumphs.
Bogdanovich had a number of high profile relationships: Polly Platt, Cybil Shepherd Dorothy Stratten and her sister, Louise. You remark that Dorothy Stratten was his soul mate. Did she have an impact on his work?
As Peter told me, They All Laughed would never have become the joyous, life-affirming movie that it is without Dorothy Stratten. Her presence in the film, and in his life, is the wellspring from which that movie emerged. Her memory inspires Peter’s work to this day, in big and small ways, but especially in the way his films celebrate and venerate women.
Bogdanovich will soon turn 81. Do you think we will see another feature film from him?
Like Welles, Peter is a relentless worker. My impression is that he’s constantly developing projects, or coming up with ideas for potential projects. I know he has several films he very, very much wants to make, especially Wait For Me, a ghost comedy directly inspired by Dorothy Stratten. When I asked him about that project in our book, I said it sounded to me like a personal project on the order of Chimes at Midnight. Peter agreed. I hope we get to see it, and soon.
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(Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director can be ordered online through University Press of Kentucky, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.)
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