cult film freak: RIP THE FIRST TRUE MOVIE GEEK DIRECTOR PETER BOGDANOVICH

Written by James M. Tate / 1/07/2022 / No comments / boris karloff , memorial , peter bogdanovich , seventies , sixties

RIP THE FIRST TRUE MOVIE GEEK DIRECTOR PETER BOGDANOVICH

1/07/2022 | No comment

Peter Bogdanovich directs himself in SAINT JACK circa 1979

The late PETER BOGDANOVICH started out writing about films before making them, and, predating the cinema-loving likes of John Landis, Joe Dante or Quentin Tarantino, he was the first bonafide retro-minded movie geek wherein his debut TARGETS is one of the first pop-culture-referencing semi-meta vehicles (both Boris Karloff and Peter basically playing themselves using different names)...

And he befriended the very legends he wrote about from groundbreaking auteurs Howard Hawks to John Ford to Alfred Hitchcock to Sam Fuller (who he's named after in TARGETS) and most famously Orson Welles...

Peter Bogdanovich basically playing himself with Boris Karloff in TARGETS circa 1968

And while Bogdanovich's true masterpiece is (still) THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, making him a B&W-leaning time-period-directing phenom like his mentor Welles, he'd follow poor Orson in other ways: The financially-strapped icon would sporadically live with Peter while years later Peter slept in one of Quentin Tarantino's guest rooms....

But what both made and broke Bogdanovich was having the guts to try new things by mirroring old ones — an ongoing attempt to merge the sparse 1970's Renaissance (that EASY RIDER started yet PICTURE SHOW cemented) with Hollywood's lavish Golden Age ranging from slapstick comedies to musicals, not always successfully but always unique and... overall... from beginning, middle and end: "He was some kind of a man!"

Peter Bogdanovich with Nancy Hsueh in TARGETS

Timothy Bottoms and Peter's girl Cybil Shepard in his classic The Last Picture Show

Peter directed Tatum and dad Ryan O'Neal in PAPER MOON winning Tatum an Oscar

Ironically Ryan O'Neal later played a version of Peter in Irreconcilable Differences

Peter again directing himself here in SAINT JACK with Ben Gazarra with Monika Subramaniam

Peter Bogdanovich directs himself in SAINT JACK circa 1979

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Tags : boris karloff , memorial , peter bogdanovich , seventies , sixties

James M. Tate

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