Peter BogdanovichBlogdanovich is the blog of director, producer, writer, actor, film critic, and author Peter Bogdanovich. He has directed over 25 feature films including international award winners The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Daisy Miller, Saint Jack, Mask; cult favorites Targets, Texasville, Noises Off, They All Laughed, and A The Thing Called Love, among stars he’s introduced: Cybill Shepherd, Tatum O’Neal, Madeline Kahn, John Ritter, Sandra Bullock; has directed stars Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Michael Caine, Cher; best-sellers Who the Devil Made It: Who the Hell's In It, The Killing of the Unicorn; standard texts John Ford, This is Orson Welles; and was a recurring guest-star on the popular HBO series The Sopranos.
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OWN First Look: Alfre Woodard On The Fierce Competition...
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Did Woody Allen Rip Off 'The Flintstones'?
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Peter Bogdanovich
At Long Last: The Definitive Version of "At Long Last Love"
- By Peter Bogdanovich
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- June 6, 2013 10:00 AM
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- 30 Comments
Way back in 1975, 20th Century-Fox released a musical comedy I had written and directed, which was suggested by, and consisted of, numerous songs by Cole Porter. Like the recent Les Miserables, all the singing was performed live---as opposed to lip-syncing pre-recorded tracks---and a great many of the numbers were done in long, continuous shots, without much cutting. It was actually the first time anyone had done a musical live like that since the early '30s. The studio loved the dailies, and rushed to get a great New York booking at the glorious Radio City Music Hall. Unlike all original Broadway musicals, which preview out-of-town for weeks sometimes, we had exactly two previews and consequently were never able to get the picture into the right balance between songs and dialog scenes---which is the toughest and most important thing to perfect in a musical---and so we were rushed into opening a show that really wasn't ready at all.
Five by Renoir
- By Peter Bogdanovich
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- May 21, 2013 9:33 PM
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- 5 Comments
Jean Renoir (1894-1979), generally now considered the finest picture maker the West has produced, never made a bad movie, so they're all worth watching, especially if you're interested in films comparable in quality to Mozart's music. From his first mature period (1931-1939), which included such famous masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, you might want to try the 1932 satirical comedy, Boudu Saved From Drowning (available on DVD). It stars the incomparable Michel Simon as a wildly undomesticated tramp saved by a deeply middle-class shop owner, and shows how little the fellow appreciates the good deed, seducing most of the women in the house --- wife, daughter, maid --- and generally behaving atrociously, hilariously.
TWO BY WELLES: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT & THE STRANGER
- By Peter Bogdanovich
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- May 10, 2013 3:00 PM
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- 2 Comments
Perhaps the most difficult-to-see of Orson Welles' films --- and his own personal favorite --- is Chimes at Midnight, his amazing consolidation of the Falstaff sections of five Shakespeare plays into what the venerable theatre critic Brendan Gill described in The New Yorker (at the time of its tiny 1967 U.S. release under the title Falstaff) as a brand new play by William Shakespeare, for which Welles deserved our undying gratitude (available in foreign DVDs presented in English).
AMERICANA: THREE PERIODS
- By Peter Bogdanovich
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- April 24, 2013 11:57 AM
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- 1 Comment
David O. Selznick produced (and co-scripted and even directed bits of) that 1946 western epic Duel in the Sun (available on DVD) in a wild, headlong attempt to outdo in every way his success seven years earlier with the epoch-making Gone With the Wind; as well as to forever extinguish (his then-lover, soon wife) Jennifer Jones' wholesome Song of Bernadette image (a 1943 Oscar to her for that, a role Selznick helped her get) and replace it with Sex Goddess of All Time.
ROGER EBERT: THE CRITIC WHO LOVED MOVIES
- By Peter Bogdanovich
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- April 6, 2013 10:01 AM
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- 3 Comments
Most critics make their reputation by writing scathing and very amusing reviews. Not Roger Ebert. He made "thumbs up" his signature, and wrote his best pieces about films he liked or adored. It's much easier to write a negative notice, but it takes real skill to write engrossingly about something you value. Roger made a career out of that. He definitely accentuated the positive. And brought a lot of people to good movies.
THE LUBITSCH FILE - PART 2
- By Peter Bogdanovich
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- March 28, 2013 12:42 AM
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- 1 Comment
And so we continue with the Lubitsch films I saw from 1952 through 1970, with the ratings and commentary from my movie-file cards. As I said in Part 1, my admiration and affection for Lubitsch was great back then, but it has grown a good deal stronger as I've aged. His wisdom and wit and compassion now impresses me more than ever, and his ineffable, unmistakable style has become all the more precious.
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