Once Peter Bogdanovich burst into Soviet cinema. With scissors and acetate glue. Its chief, the legendary film adventurer Roger Corman, who educated almost all filmmakers in America, took a copy of the Soviet science fiction film Planet of Storms (1962) and made two American films from it - Journey to a Prehistoric Planet (1965) and Journey to a Planet of Prehistoric women "(1968). Of course, it is very strange to see actors like Georgy Zhzhonov, who were deprived of their real names and surnames in the credits, giving fictitious American ones, in a somewhat strange movie. The legal rationale for such creativity seems even stranger, because it simply does not exist.
Peter Bogdanovich later talked about this work like this: “Roger Corman came to me and asked:“ Could you take a few frames with women?
AIP won't buy a film if we don't put women in it. ”
And I figured out how to shove women in there, shot for five days, and we edited it.
I read the offscreen text because no one could figure out what was what.
It was just a little cheap thing that we did, and people think I was the director when I actually only shot ten minutes. "
So, with the fraudulent transformation of the stunning at that time film by Klushantsev of the Lennauchfilm studio into a low-grade bullshit, one might say, the career of director Peter Bogdanovich began, whose name must now be pronounced with a breath.
However, in the credits to this work of art, Bogdanovich is listed as a certain Derek Thomas.
Peter Bogdanovich is generally a curious person. A big movie lover (here usually his biographers are delighted that he watched 400 films a year). The only education he received was acting. Apparently, his family did not live in poverty at all, having remained in America on a tourist visa (dad is a Serbian pianist, mom is from a wealthy Jewish family), so some questions about his controversial financial adventures can be explained by the habit of living in grand style since childhood.
In fact, his very first film was Targets (1968) with producer Roger Corman.
Boris Karloff starred here for the last time, who is also deeply revered in American cinema.
It was a thriller that was even included in the book 100 Must-See Movies While You Are Alive.
In the film, using the scissors and glue method (as they would now say, copy-paste), fragments from Corman's film "Terror" were used.
This is how the young Jack Nicholson appeared on the screen, who is also considered a student of Corman, like many other actors and directors, who would later form the backbone of the so-called new Hollywood cinema.
The young director was noticed first of all by the studios - I don't know what about the viewer there.
And it was this that later helped Bogdanovich to get work on the first "normal" film in his filmography.
In fact, with The Last Picture Show and its wild success, everything is somehow unusual.
Well, judge for yourself: a young man before the collision with Corman, who in 22 weeks taught him how to shoot, edit, sound films and run for coffee, was mainly engaged in film journalism, adored critics from the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and Truffaut, and wrote about cinema for Esquire magazine ...
Yes, it has been seen and read.
Moreover, his work as a film journalist allowed him to get to know Orson Welles and even make friends with him.
And Orson Welles is respected in America.
Moreover, there is the term "Wells boys" - these are the masters who fell under the influence of the scale of the personality of Orson Welles.
But he was drawn to Hollywood by a completely different person - director Frank Tashlin, who is known for his work on the Looney Tunes cartoons. He realized that the guy had a dream to turn from a journalist into a director in the manner of Peter's idols - Godard, Chabrol and the same Truffaut. Peter went to Hollywood with his wife Polly Platt, who was a much more educated girl than Bogdanovich - in any case, she graduated from Carnegie University of Technology and understood everything in theatrical costumes. And yes, she later became the first female costume designer to be admitted to the Guild of Film Artists. Moreover, she, for example, was the person who made Groening draw, finally, "The Simpsons" and discovered Wes Anderson. But that will be later, much later.
In the meantime, she advised her husband to take the debutante Sybill Shepard for the first picture.
With which her husband, in the most banal, clichéd way, will start an affair, which will lead to the end of the marriage between Bogdanovich and Platt.
Everyone is good in The Last Picture Show - very young Shepard, Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges.
And yes, Jeff Bridges was once a boy too, although many will not believe it.
The film about the American hinterland is made surprisingly deeply and boldly.
And it's not even about the abundance (at that time) of nudity, but about the feeling that all the Uryupinsky people of the world are a separate universe, where the same teenagers live, the same Women of Difficult Destiny, the same men.
Adjusted for climate, car brand, beer, and the name of the PE teacher.
It's a very mature, very well made film.
As if not even for years and not for length of service in the profession.
But the subsequent excitement that arose after the release of the film generally discourages me.
We can say that a debutant, a native of not this business, was given eight Oscar nominations and two of them were awarded.
It's fantastic.
The box office is also very good - at a cost of 1.3 million, the film grossed $ 29.1 million.
Probably, the money from this picture allowed Bogdanovich to buy a mansion in the fashionable area of LA Bel Air.
The very mansion in which he allowed Orson Welles to live, when the great and revered Welles in America simply stupidly had nowhere and nothing to live on.
"The Last Picture Show" was an adaptation of the book by writer Larry McMurtry, he also wrote "Texasville", according to which Bogdanovich would later, in 1990, film the sequel to "The Last Picture Show".
And yes, this is the same writer who, based on someone else's story, will write the script for Brokeback Mountain.
The next film, What's Up, Doc? (What's Up, Doc ?, 1972) is the exact opposite of The Last Picture Show. If you remember, the phrase "What's Up, Doc?" - from the cartoon about Bugs Bunny. And all this movie, if not considered as a tribute to Bugs Bunny, looks like some kind of endless professional disaster. Besides, it also falls apart into separate scenes and, in general, in my opinion, is rather idiotic. We've seen comedy and funnier. It is played by Barbra Streisand, who was even allowed to sing one song, and Ryan O'Neill, an exceptional handsome with a fool ... In general, Italians get such things much better and more organic. Nevertheless, the picture turned out to be super successful - with a budget of 4 million, it grossed 66 million. It was the third grossing film of the year in America. The first was The Godfather.
I sometimes think: why am I so obsessively quoting budgets, collections of different films from different directors?
Here's why.
American cinema is so arranged that if there is a real box office, you are a superdirector, hero and idol.
But if you made a brilliant movie that failed at the box office, you become pretty quickly literally nobody.
Well, unless you're Woody Allen.
So, with a rather stupid film, Peter Bogdanovich becomes a superhero and a handsome man whom everyone loves: Francis Ford Coppola hands in a pen, and William Friedkin opens a beer. He entered the so-called A-list of the industry - the top list. Moreover, it is with Coppola and Fridkin that he starts a company, which is simply called the "Company of Directors". This is such a production company at Paramount. At the same time, Paramount gives the guys a complete creative carte blanche and does not interfere with the work of geniuses.
On the move, three directors make three films: Coppola is shooting the political thriller The Conversation, Fridkin is to make Boys from the Blue Hill Academy, and Bogdanovich is to make Paper Moon. In fact, it turned out that Fridkin could not do anything at all, "The Conversation" was excellent, but not very commercial cinema, and only Bogdanovich collected the box office with his "Moon". And then it became clear that according to the agreement, Bogdanovich had to share his money with the rest, and he did not like it so much that the company quickly closed. But maybe it's for the best. We, of course, can say as much as we like how cool Bogdanovich understands the history of cinema and its theory from books, but when the script for "Star Wars" was brought to them, Bogdanovich was the first who spoke out against the "Company of Directors" to release this film ... But everything could have turned out completely differently.Star Wars still golds the handle for everyone who fits into this universe. The expert's instinct let down.
But he did shoot Paper Moon (1973).
In fact, it's sad to realize, but this is the pinnacle of Bogdanovich's career as a director - it is this amazing comedy of the era of the Great Depression.
A light comedy, played out, in fact, between actor-dad Ryne O'Neill and daughter Tatum O'Neill (it is difficult to say about a nine-year-old child an "actress", if only because, as you know, children and dogs play the best in movies).
Two cute little crooks.
The movie was shot with a great sense of time, style and measure.
Let today's artisans bang their heads against the wall at the sight of a nine-year-old child smoking - who cares about their opinion when it comes to a piece of art?
The film, based on the novel "Addie's Prayer" by Joe David Brown, cost $ 2.5 million and brought in $ 30.9 million.
This success only strengthened Bogdanovich's position on the list of America's super directors.
But the next picture, "Daisy Miller" (Daisy Miller, 1974), based on the novel by Henry James in 1878, with the new muse of Bogdanovich Sybill Shepard buried the independent company "Company of Directors" completely.
Bogdanovich later made excuses: “This is a good picture, there is nothing wrong with it” ... “I knew when we were shooting it that it was non-commercial”… “If I were smarter, I would not have done something so non-commercial”.
He says the film's financial failure "eroded the studio's confidence" in him.
That is, you can earn as much money as you want for the studios, but as soon as you slightly lower the level of earnings, you immediately lose confidence.
Nevertheless, someone noticed that the picture was done very carefully, and it was even nominated for an Oscar in the Best Costumes category, but the Great Gatsby won.
And then the new muse Sybill Shepard presented Bogdanovich with a collection of Cole Porter's songs.
Well, who among us does not like to faint at night looking at the piano or guitar I've Got You Under My Skin.
Even U2's Bono loves.
Porter is a really outstanding composer, but it would be better if she gave him a gun or a Magic Wand from Hitachi - they just became fashionable among girls then.
Because the movie At Long Last Love (1975), based on 18 Cole Porter songs, was a flop.
It was stylish, it was a tribute to great musical films of the 30s such as "The Merry Widow", but reviewers immediately stated that no one had ever heard the worst performance of Cole's songs.
Well, yes - and Sybill Shepard and Burt Reynolds sang, who else is there to sing?
Bogdanovich spent 5 million, and collected 2. It was not at all on time.
But with the criticism of the next film, "The Dream Traders" (Nickelodeon), I disagree. The film about the early filmmakers of the States is not just stylish and imbued with a love for the profession, which then did not differ from a booth, it is completely accurate in every detail. By the way, I would like to dwell on one thing: in the film they are afraid all the time, and also fight, fight and shoot with certain agents of the patent agency. What does a movie and some kind of patent agents have to do with it?
And the fact is that the whole intrigue is based on the fact that Monsieur Edison, the great, so to speak, inventor, believed that all decisions regarding the film process belonged to him, and forbade those who did not pay him to make films. And show, however, too. And he unleashed an army of agents of the patent office on the new filmmakers, who in the end began to act just like bandits - they broke into the sites, smashed equipment, beat people. In some territories they had stronger positions, in others - almost none. So that's why the new independents moved to California, or rather, LA - because they all fled from Edison's patent thugs and the government. Hollywood was born. And in fact, Bogdanovich's film shows a subtle transition from an almost bootlegging get-together to a big profession that is about to be born.
In general, regardless of the quality of the film, it flopped at the box office.
Bogdanovich blamed the studio for failing marketing.
But this was his third failure in a row, and not a trace remained of his authority in the eyes of the studio.
Bogdanovich stopped making films for three years and at this time again took up writing - he collected his interviews and articles in collections.
Then he shot Saint Jack.
Sybill Shepard literally earned the film rights with her breasts - she sued Playboy magazine for publishing her nude footage from The Last Picture Show.
Part of the court agreement was the transfer of film rights to Paul Theroux's novel Saint Jack.
The film was produced by Roger Corman, so it was difficult to expect a wide scale.
Cast - Ben Gazzara and George Lazenby (the most disgusting James Bond).
The genre is crime comedy, and it's not bad at all.
Bogdanovich himself considers him one of his best films, but realizes that no one really saw him.
His second favorite film of his own is They All Laughed (1981), a romantic comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Stratten.
Playboy star Dorothy Stratten did not work well.
This is a whole story, which is described, among other things, in the movie "Star-80" by Bob Foss.
She was introduced to Bogdanovich by Hugh Hefner, and Sybill Shepard was merged.
They became a couple, he immediately took her into a new picture.
But while production was going on, Stratten's ex-husband came and simply killed her.
The role of Bogdanovich in this whole scandal in the press, in books and even in the cinema is assessed extremely negatively.
There were screams that he and Hefner were vile sexual exploiters.
Although what Bogdanovich has to do with it is not clear at all.
He even chose an epitaph for her grave himself - from Hemingway.
By the way, in the film by Bob Foss, Dorothy Stratten is played by Mariel Hemingway.
And Peter is a consistent person, so after a while he began dating the late Dorothy Stratten's sister, 20-year-old Louise, and even married her for a while.
Bogdanovich was involved in the distribution of the film "They All Laughed" himself.
He filed for bankruptcy in 1985, and he blames the 1981 distribution for it.
Here I see some oddities.
In a statement, he points out that he has gone to an extreme and receives only $ 75,000 a month, while his expenses are $ 200,000.
Moreover, one dollar in 1981 is like three today.
What did he spend 600 thousand modern dollars on?
However, his 1985 film "The Mask" with Cher was noticed in Cannes and even gave Cher something as a reward.
Well, who wouldn't give Cher if she has already arrived?
And the film is the story of a real guy with a rare disease called cranio-diaphyseal dysplasia.
But the "Mask" was accompanied not only by success among critics: with a budget of 7.5 million, the film grossed 48.2 million. And the Oscar for makeup.
It would seem that a black streak has passed for the director, and he is trying to confirm the commercial success with the comedy "Illegally Yours" (Illegally Yours, 1988) starring Rob Lowe.
But it turned out to be not just a failure - with a budget of 13 million, the collection was 259 thousand dollars.
How this can happen without the strongest mistakes in distribution and marketing in the modern film process is unclear.
But it's a fact.
The sequel to The Last Picture Show, 1990's Texasville, also flopped.
And the critics did not appreciate it.
It didn't work out on its own early glory.
The film "Crazy Stage" (Noises Off, 1992) seems very good even to me.
Probably because it is based on a 1982 English play by Michael Frain.
Moreover, you also know this play - in Russia it goes under the title "Noise Behind the Scene", and for the first time it was shown by the Theater.
Mossovet staged by Inna Dankman already in 1987.
It's great that even such seemingly completely Hollywood actors in a bad sense of the word like Christopher Reeve ("Superman") play from their roots - in a theatrical way.
The author of the play, Frain, liked the film.
But the film failed - with a budget of 12 million, he collected only 2 million. Here it is somehow offensive.
A good film, however, has a strict genre framework with excellent acting.
In 1993, he directed The Thing Called Love, about a career dream in Nashville, the capital of country music.
River Phoenix, Samantha Mathis.
This is River Phoenix's last film role.
Moreover, due to the death of River, part of the box office, especially in the southern states, went sideways and the film became the least profitable picture of 1993.
Then Peter was busy with books and bankruptcy (already the second in a row) and appeared only in 2001 in Locarno with the film "Death in Hollywood" The Cat's Meow, a beautifully and modestly staged story of the death of filmmaker Ince aboard tycoon William Hirst's yacht in 1924.
Kirsten Dunst looks good here, everything is very Art Deco.
Only at a cost of 7 million, the film collected half.
It seems that Bogdanovich followed the path of Woody Allen without the support of Woody.
But he didn’t miss much, he’s still a professional actor.
Therefore, he starred in "The Sopranos", and a big fan of his work Tarantino shot him in both "killbills".
Plus he taught at the university and so on.
In 2014, his last film was released - the eccentric comedy "Miss Trouble" She's Funny That Way.
The scriptwriters include not only Peter Bogdanovich, but also Louise Stratten, with whom he divorced a long time ago.
It's just a 2005 script - about a prostitute who is going to become a Hollywood actress.
The film was screened at the Venice Film Festival.
Well, stability is a sign of skill: with a budget of 10 million, he raised 6 million. Who cares?
Bogdanovich did not shoot any more films, and on January 6, 2022, he died.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.