THE HIGH ACHIEVER (REMEMBERING PETER BOGDANOVICH)

 

Peter Bogdanovich packed more into his life before his twenties than many people achieve in a lifetime.

A celebrated critic, actor, writer and director, he started acting aged 15 - performing 10 plays in 10 weeks with a professional theatre company in Traverse City in Michigan.

By 16, he talked his way into studying acting in the celebrated Stella Adler Academy in his teens.

By 19, he acquired the rights to a Clifford Odets play and directed it off Broadway.

But that was Bogdanovich - highly ambitious, really focused and not afraid to fail.

At one time compared to Orson Welles, he famously passed on 'The Godfather,' 'Chinatown,' 'The Exorcist' and 'The Way We Were' at the summit of his career in the 1970s.

And like Welles, who he befriended and lived with for a period, success came early in his filmmaking career with many believing he peaked with his most celebrated film 'The Last Picture Show'. 

Born in Kingston, New York in 1939, his father was a Serbian painter of Orthodox Christian heritage and his mother was Jewish and arrived as visitors to the US just as World War II was erupting in Europe.

With his parents securing immigrant status, Peter was raised in Manhattan and from an early age went to the cinema with his dad who took him to see classic silent movies in the city's revival theatres.

It was there where his love affair with cinema began and by the age of 10 he counted Howard Hawks' 'Red River,' John Ford's 'She Wore A Yellow Ribbon' and René Clair's 'The Ghost Goes West' among his favourite films.

“I started keeping a card file of everything I saw from the age of twelve, twelve and a half,” he later revealed.

Over a period of 18 years, Bogdanovich amassed between 5,000—6,000 cards about the movies he'd seen.

At the age of seven, he learned he had had a brother who died when his father featured a blonde boy in one of his paintings and explained who it was.

His mother never spoke about what happened.

Bogdanovich told Vulture Magazine: "It was a kitchen accident.

"She was boiling some soup and the kid got near the soup and she got scared and she went to try to stop him from touching the soup and the soup fell on him and he died of shock.

"I don't know how they survived that moment. It happened I think in 1938. The kid was a year and a half old." 

In his twenties, Bogdanovich's passion for cinema and theatre led to him becoming a critic.

He struck up a friendship with the New York Times' Andrew Sarris and Eugene Archer, talking about movies into the wee small hours and describing it as a great learning experience.

Bogdanovich started to review plays and films for newspapers and became the film programmer at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

At the age of 24, he hosted a retrospective of the work of Orson Welles and also showcased the work of Howard Hawks and John Ford.

Influenced by the Cahiers du Cinema cineastes in Paris like Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard, he started to entertain thoughts of making his own movies.

Like Truffaut and Godard, he had become a regular film critic - writing for Esquire.

However he finally took the plunge in 1966, moving to Hollywood with his first wife Polly Platt in a bid to gain experience in the film industry.

Within a year his paths crossed with Roger Corman who recognised him from his work as a writer about movies in Esquire.

"He said: 'You're a writer. I read your stuff in Esquire. Would you like to write a movie?'"

For a $300 fee, he did a rewrite on 'The Wild Angels' with Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra which Corman directed in 1966.

One of Corman's biggest hits, its success so pleased him he offered Bogdanovich the chance to direct.

His first movie was the 1968 sci-fi film 'Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women' with Mamie van Doren, using the pseudonym Derek Thomas and was adapted from a Soviet Union movie.

Later lauded by the cult English director Alex Cox, Bogdanovich provided the voice of the narrator.

Footage from the film has since been used in several music videos.

His next film, the acclaimed 1968 thriller 'Targets' was directed under his own name and starred Boris Karloff, the singer James Brown and featured him in a small role.

It would later be championed by Quentin Tarantino who in 2020 claimed it was one of the most political movies Corman ever funded, advocating gun control and also the best he produced.

However it was Bogdanovich's next film that would really put him on the map.

Written and directed by Bogdanovich, he first got his idea for 'The Last Picture Show' while waiting in line in a drugstore and catching a glimpse of the cover of Larry McMurty's novel among a rack of paperbacks.

Noting it was an interesting title and the blurb on the back indicated it was about young people growing up in Texas, he decided not to buy it.

However by coincidence his wife was given a copy of McMurty's novel by the actor Sal Mineo who told her and Bogdanovich he had wanted to be in a film of it but he was too old.

Bogdanovich, his wife Polly Platt and McMurty set about adapting the novel and he discussed the project with Orson Welles who he had befriended in Hollywood and influenced his decision to shoot the movie in black and while.

Casting a relatively unknown cast comprising of Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid and Timothy Bottoms, with Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman also given key roles, the film was shot in McMurty's home town of Archer City in north central Texas, near the border with Oklahoma.

Bogdanovich had a small role as a disc jockey in the film.

'The Last Picture Show' opened to huge critical acclaim in the US and around the world and saw him being lumped in the same bracket as cineaste filmmakers like Francis Coppola, Brian de Palma and Martin Scorsese who were starting to make their mark. 

It would scoop six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, with Leachman and Johnson walking home with statuettes in the Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor categories.

McMurtry and Bogdanovich would win a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay.

It would be 19 years before Bogdanovich would return to the characters in a sequel 'Texasville' with Bridges, Shepherd, Bottoms, Leachman, Quaid and Brennan reprising their roles in middle age but the colour film fell short of audience and critical expectations.

In 1992, he recut both 'The Last Picture Show' for laser disc and 'Texasville' for a screening on The Movie Channel, reinstating a number of dramatic scenes in the latter with Bridges and Shepherd in a bid to get the film to how it was originally intended.

In 1971, he also helmed a documentary 'Directed by John Ford' which drew mixed reviews despite featuring interviews with Henry Fonda, John Wayne, James Stewart, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Maureen O'Hara.

While admiring his work, Bogdanovich had a tetchy relationship with the Irish American director who he believed had talked Wayne out of working with him on a movie 'The Streets of Laredo' which Fonda and Stewart had committed themselves to.

Based on a script by Larry McMurty which would eventually become the acclaimed Western novel and miniseries 'Lonesome Dove,' Bogdanovich was bruised by the experience and claimed the film would have been his masterpiece.

By the time 'The Last Picture Show' was released, his marriage to Polly Platt was over and he became romantically involved with Cybil Shepherd who would be his partner for seven years. 

The couple had had two daughters during their marriage - Antonia and Sashy - who both flirted with acting but eventually carved out lives outside the Hollywood goldfish bowl.

After the success of 'The Last Picture Show,' he was riding high and teamed up with Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal and Madeline Kahn for the 1972 screwball romantic comedy 'What's Up Doc?' 

A huge success with audiences and critics, it was the third highest grossing film of that year.

His follow-up 'Paper Moon' was a black and white Great Depression era comedy drama with Ryan O'Neal and his young daughter Tatum playing a father and daughter.

The first project of The Directors Company - a production company he had formed with Francis Coppola and William Friedkin, it also featured Kahn and was another critical and commercial success, earning him a Best Director nomination at the Golden Globes.

Tatum O'Neal also won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar - making her the youngest recipient of the award.

His hot streak ended a year later, however, with 'Daisy Miller' - a period drama based on a Henry James novella which Orson Welles had recommended he read and which Coppola and Friedkin were not keen on.

He had asked Welles to originally direct but when he refused, Bogdanovich took the project on with Cybill Shepherd in the title role of a young American socialite visiting Europe and Barry Brown, Cloris Leachman and Eileen Brennan among the cast.

Panned by most critics, it struggled to draw an audience and was the last movie from The Directors Company.

Shepherd, Burt Reynolds, Kahn, Duilio Del Peter and Brennan appeared in his next movie, the 1975 jukebox musical comedy 'At Long Last Love' which featured a Cole Porter score.

Rush released by 20th Century Fox after disastrous test screenings in San Jose and Denver, it drew savage reviews with critics lambasting Shepherd's dancing and it tanked at the box office.

Reynolds would later claim the film was not as bad as people claimed and had suffered because film critics had not forgiven one of their own for starting to make movies.

But he also observed Bogdanovich had also not helped its prospects by going on the chat show circuit and arrogantly talking about how bad many critics were.

"So they were waiting with their knives and whatever," he recalled 

"And along came Peter who finally gave them something they could kill him with.

"Unfortunately there I was, between Cybill's broad shoulders and Peter's ego. And I got killed along with the rest of them."

Regretting reshaping the film around Reynolds' character under pressure from the studio, Bogdanovich would later recut the film for television.

Happier with this version edited by Jim Blakely, it would also surface on Netflix.

He would cast Reynolds as an arrogant lead actor in the silent movie industry comedy 'Nickolodeon' which saw him team up again with Ryan and Tatum O'Neal along with Stella Stevens, John Ritter, Brion James and M Emmett Walsh.

Based on stories told to him by Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh, he would later recall that pressure from EMI to play up the comedic elements of the story meant it didn't quite turn out to be the film he envisaged.

Drawing more critical brickbats, it was his third commercial flop in a row and Bogdanovich was so disheartened, he took a three year break from directing.

Bogdanovich instead appeared as himself in John Cassavetes' much derided 1977 psychological drama 'Opening Night' with Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara.

His next project was 'Saint Jack' in 1979 - an adaptation of a Paul Theroux novel whose rights were acquired by Cybill Shepherd after she successfully sued Playboy for publishing photos of her from 'The Last Picture Show' without her permission.

Starring Ben Gazarra, George Lazenby and Denholm Elliott, the film about a pimp in Singapore earned good reviews, with critics like Roger Ebert hailing it as a return to form.

However its commercial performance underwhelmed and in an interview with the New York Times in 2016, the director would blame distribution issues.

His next project was a 1981 romcom 'And They All Laughed' - starring Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazarra, Patti Hansen, John Ritter, Colleen Camp and the Canadian Playboy model Dorothy Stratten.

Taking its title from a George and Ira Gershwin song,  the tale about a New York detective cheating on his girlfriend was released after Dorothy Stratten was gunned down by her husband.

The model had been in a relationship with Bogdanovich and feeling sorry for him after her murder, Frank Sinatra allowed the director to have the rights to several songs at a cheaper rate 

Acquired for distribution by 20th Century Fox after its original backer Time Life stopped its film production arm, the film fell foul of disappointing test screenings in Minneapolis and Providence, Rhode Island and was pulled from general release.

This led to Bogdanovich moving to distribute the film himself but it fared badly at the box office - ultimately resulting in him declaring bankruptcy in 1985.

"It was a nightmare," he later told the screenwriter Sheila O'Malley.

"Dorothy was murdered and I went crazy. I decided I would buy the film back from Fox and I lost my shirt distributing it which was insanity.

"Unfortunately, nobody stopped me. So it didn't get great distribution because you can't self-distribute. It's impossible.

"For example, we played 15 weeks at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills. It was a great success. We got a great theater in Westwood and it broke all records and they pulled it right out because Paramount wanted the theater for 'Reds'."

Now regarded along with Michael Cimmino's 'Heaven's Gate,' William Friedkin's 'Cruising' and Francis Coppola's 'One from the Heart,' as a moment when the studios love affair with the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers waned, the film has built up a cult status with Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino among its biggest advocates.

His next film project for Universal Pictures was the 1985 biographical drama 'Mask' with Cher in which Eric Stoltz played Rocky Dennis who suffered from a facial disfigurement.

The movie was a hit with audiences and critics, earning Stoltz and Cher Golden Globe nominations and an Oscar for the Make Up and Hairstyling team of Michael Westmore and Zoltan Elek.

There was also an appearance as himself in 1986 in an episode of the ABC sitcom 'Moonlighting' with Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis.

In 1988, he married the Canadian actress Louise Stratten - a sister of Dorothy Stratten.

At first the relationship was frowned upon by her mother, given the age difference and his previous relationship with Dorothy, with her stating her belief that she felt it was born out of guilt for what happened to her other daughter.

Around the same time, he released 'Ilegally Yours' - a Florida set screwball comedy about blackmail with Rob Lowe and Colleen Camp for United Artists which saw half the audience walk out in test screenings.

As he tried to rescue the film, Dino de Laurentis' production company also hit turbulent financial times and the release kept being pushed back.

Eventually de Laurentis cut the film and it took a serious critical and commercial shellacking, with Variety claiming it was a nadir for Bogdanovich and Lowe's careers.

After the disappointing reviews and commercial performance of 'Texasville,' Bogdanovich opted to do a US movie version of Michael Frayn's farce 'Noises Off' with Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, Christopher Reeve, Marilu Henner, Julie Hagerty, John Ritter and Denholm Elliott for Disney's Buena Vista Pictures.

Frayn was mostly happy with how Bogdanovich had transferred his play onto the big screen but did quibble with the ending.

After a mixed bag of reviews, the movie struggled to reach an audience and was a commercial dud.

In 1993, he appeared as himself in CBS's hit Alaskan comedy drama 'Northern Exposure'.

There was a mixed reception too for his 1993 Nashville comedy drama 'That Thing Called Love' with River Phoenix, Sandra Bullock, Samantha Mathis and Dermot Mulroney.

The release was limited to many of the southern states of the US.

Coming on the back of the recent drug overdose death of Phoenix, Bogdanovich suspected Paramount scaled back its distribution plans out of concern that it might be accused of exploiting his tragic demise.

The director believed Phoenix's death also changed the tone of the movie.

"It was a totally different movie before," he told Amy Longsdorf in Allentown, Pennsylvania's The Morning Call newspaper.

"It had a hopeful quality and now it doesn't. The ending is ambiguous but, because River died, it becomes very sad. 

"The last thing you're left with is that he is dead, even though his character is alive.. It was supposed to be bittersweet but it turned out being more bitter than sweet."

Not for the first time in his career, Bogdanovich's film would gain a cult following in subsequent years.

The 1990s saw Bogdanovich direct a series of TV anthology tales and TV movies of variable quality.

He directed in 1995 an episode of Showtime's miniseries 'Picture This' in which famous directors like Norman Jewison, John Boorman, Joe Dante and Bob Rafelson fashioned one off dramas about works of art.

Bogdanovich's episode 'Song of Songs' was inspired by Botticelli's 'Primavera' and featured George Segal, Sally Kirkland and Brooke Adams in a story about a bakery store owner whose marriage crumbles when he gets involved initially in a confrontation with a lingerie shop proprietor and then succumbs to her charms.

The director also cast himself in a minor role.

He also contributed an episode that year to Showtime's neo-noir anthology series 'Fallen Angels' along with Tom Hanks, Steven Soderbergh, Phil Joanou, Tom Cruise, Alfonso Cuaron, John Dahl and Agnieszka Holland.

Eric Stoltz played a detective for him in the episode entitled 'A Dime A Dance' whose probe into the death of a nightclub dancer is shut down.

Cybill Shepherd also talked him into appearing as himself in an episode of her hit CBS sitcom 'Cybill'.

A year later he directed Sidney Poitier and Daniel J Travanti in CBS's 'To Sir With Love II' - a sequel to the 1967 film which saw Poitier's teacher Mark Thackeray relocating to Chicago to teach in a tough inner-city school. 

It got mixed reviews from TV critics - although many felt Bogdanovich's involvement elevated the project.

The reviews were worse for his next TV movie 'The Price of Heaven' with Cicely Tyson and George Wendt in 1997, with one describing his direction as ham-fisted.

That same year, Barbra Streisand executive produced another TV movie he directed 'Rescuers: Stories of Courage - Two Women'.

Elizabeth Perkins and Sela Ward played women in Poland and France who risked their lives to save Jewish families from the Nazis.

On the big screen, Noah Baumbach cast him as a group therapist Dr Howard Poke in the acclaimed 1997 romcom 'Mr Jealousy' with Eric Stoltz, Anabella Sciorra and Marianne Jean Baptiste. 

Baumbach also persuaded him to take on a role in 'Highball,' a Brooklyn comedy that was shot in six days with funds left over from 'Mr Jealousy'.

Starring alongside Baumbach, Justine Bateman, Eric Stoltz and Rae Dawn Chong, it was only released as a DVD extra when Baumbach realised he didn't have enough money to do his story justice. 

There was also a role in a CBS TV movie 'Bella Mafia,' scripted by Lynda La Plante, with Vanessa Redgrave, Nastassja Kinski, Jennifer Tilly, Illeana Douglas, Dennis Farina and Franco Nero.

He directed in 1998 for Showtime 'Naked City: A Killer Christmas' with Scott Glenn, Courtney B Vance and Laura Leighton.

A year later, he made an appearance in '54' - Mark Christopher's critically lambasted drama about New York's famous Studio 54 nightclub with Ryan Philippe, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell and Mike Meyers.

Sofia Coppola also directed him in a cameo role as a school principal in a short film 'Lick the Star'. 

1999 also saw him direct David Alan Grier, Vivica A Fox and Al Waxman in a well received ABC TV movie comedy 'A Saintly Switch' about an ageing NFL star and his stay at home wife swapping bodies.

In arguably his best known acting role, David Chase cast Bogdanovich as the psychiatrist to Lorraine Bracco's shrink Dr Jennifer Melfi in HBO's 'The Sopranos'.

In a recurring role, he appeared in 14 episodes as Dr Elliot Kupferberg and he was particularly pleased to flex his acting muscle.

"After the second day of shooting, David Chase called me and asked me if I'd acted before," he told the Guardian newspaper in a 2000 interview..

"No-one seemed to have been aware that I had been trained as a kid by Stella Adler. I have been acting since I was 15 years old and I enjoy it as much now as I ever did."

In 2004, during the fifth season of the show, Bogdanovich directed an episode called 'Sentimental Education' in which James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano struggles to get his son Robert Iler's AJ to behave and his maternal cousin, Steve Buscemi's Tony Blundetto also starts to go off the rails.

Emilio Estevez persuaded him to take on a minor role in the 2000 movie 'Rated X' in which Estevez and his brother Charlie Sheen played brothers in the porn industry.

In 2001, his marriage to Louise Stratten ended. 

The divorce coincided with the release of his historical drama 'The Cat's Meow' whose story was based on the mystery surrounding the death of the film mogul Thomas H Ince on William Randolph Hearst's yacht in November 1924.

Starring Kirsten Dundst, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Tilly, Joanna Lumley and Cary Elwes, his modestly budgeted film got mostly positive reviews but was more of an arthouse curio - failing to make its $7 million budget back.

Long time admirer Quentin Tarantino, who at one stage he lived with, cast him as a disc jockey, in a smart nod to 'The Last Picture Show,' in 'Kill Bill, Vol. 1' with Uma Thurman and in its sequel a year later 'Kill Bill, Vol. 2'.

2004 saw Bogdanovich direct a two part miniseries 'The Mystery of Natalie Wood' for ABC with Justine Waddell as the movie star, Michael Weatherly as Robert Wagner and Colin Friels but it didn't impress the critics.

He also directed Tom Sizemore in the ESPN biopic 'Hustle' about the Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose's addiction to gambling.

In 2007, Bogdanovich directed a four hour music documentary 'Runnin' Down A Dream' about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers that featured interviews with George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Jeff Lynne, Stevie Nick's, Dave Grohl and Rick Rubin and was released commercially on DVD.

Critically acclaimed, it won a Grammy for Best Music Film.

In the 2000s there were also guest appearances in NBC's 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent' and Fox's 'The Simpsons'.

After 13 years absence from cinemas, Bogdanovich returned with a feature film, directing the screwball comedy 'She's Funny That Way' with Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, Will Forte, Jennifer Aniston and Rhys Ifans.

It was to be his last work for the cinema, securing a video on demand release after receiving its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Reviews, once again, were mixed and it fell short of recouping its $10 million budget.

That year there was another role in a Noah Baumbach movie 'While We're Young' with Naomi Watts, Ben Stiller, Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, playing an MC at an event for Charles Grodin's documentary filmmaker character Leslie Brietbart. 

There was a guest role as the elderly father of Ray Romano's film producer Rick Moreweather in Epix's TV version of Elmore Leonard's 'Get Shorty' with Chris O'Dowd.

In 2018, Bogdanovich returned to one of his first loves - silent cinema - with the documentary 'The Great Buster - A Celebration'.

Reflecting on the career of Buster Keaton, the acclaimed documentary featured interviews with Quentin Tarantino, Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Cybill Shepherd, Bill Hader, Mel Brooks, Richard Lewis, Norman Lloyd, Johnny Knoxville and Werner Herzog which saw them enthuse about the comedic genius and daring of the silent movie icon.

In 2018, Bogdanovich also played a part in the eventual release of Orson Welles' on-off 1970s project 'The Other Side of the Wind' which he appeared in with John Huston, Susan Stasberg, Edmond O'Brien and Mercedes McCambridge.

He also featured in Morgan Neville's 'They'll Love Me When I'm Dead', a Netflix documentary on the troubled making of Welles' film.

Bogdanovich had a brief cameo as a director called Peter in Andy Muschietti's sequel 'It, Part II'  with Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader and Bill Skarsgard.

His last role was in the 2020 comedy movie 'Willie and Me' with Willie Nelson.

A prolific writer on film, he wrote several books on Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Fritz Lang, Allan Dwan between 1961 and 2004.

And despite his many bruising experiences in Hollywood, he never lost his love for cinema.

In latter years, he battled Parkinson's Disease and died from health complications as a result of the condition.

Francis Coppola, Jeff Bridges, Barbra Streisand, Laura Dern, Cher and Guillermo del Toro all paid tribute.

His 'Last Picture Show' and 'Texasville' star Bridges, however, summed up very well the huge sense of loss.

He tweeted: "I loved him and will miss him. What a wonderful artist. He’s left us with the gift of his incredible films and his insights on the filmmakers he so admired. I love you Peter."

(Peter Bogdanovich passed away at the age of 82 on January 6, 2022)