Have you seen a little 2007 movie called “Humboldt County”? P.B. has a role in it.
I think “Last Picture Show” is far and away the best thing he has ever done and one of the great films of the 1970s. At that time, around 1971, he and William Friedkin and Francis Ford Coppola were the golden boys with the great careers ahead of them. (Scorsese, Lucas and Spielberg were waiting in the wings.) I don’t think anyone imagined that he’d never come anywhere near topping “Picture Show.”
The Last Picture Show > Kids in teenage sexuality.
I’ve only seen 2 films of Bogdanovich (the other one Paper Moon) but I love them both dearly.
On a side note: Ryan O’Neal is a fucking creep.
actually his 90’s movie with River Phoniex, The Thing Called Love is a return to form in my opinion. I see traces of Renoir throughout his obvious love of the characters much in the way I do They All Laughed. This is when I like his work the most.
So what if he’s fallen a little off the popularity trail. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and PAPER MOON easily place him into the Pantheon, even if those were the only two films he’d ever done.
I think Targets deserves the “treatment.” The dvd release was, to say the least, lacking. I’ll vote Targets til my dying day.
The Last Picture Show
What’s Up Doc?
Targets
Paper Moon
Saint Jack
They All Laughed
Mask
The Thing Called Love
He has made some terrific to great films. I think he is under appreciated.
The Last Picture Show is a classic. Haven’t seen Paper Moon in years but I remember liking it. Also liked Saint Jack.
Hated They All Laughed and What’s Up Doc?(I have an aversion to anything Streisand).
Simply Bahhhbra….! Steve, I guess a Yentl-Mirror Has 2 Faces double features would be…. MOVIE HELL for you! lol.
I love what Sandra Bernhard said about her: “She went to Hollywood and she crimped her hair. And she went down the stoney end, she never wanted to go down the stoney end but somebody forced her down the stoney end. Come back to the five and dime, Barbra Streisand, Barbra Streisand.”
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW really was a last picture show of course — he would never come close to this again. But it’s a rare near-perfect American classic, one drenched in nostalgia but only rarely sentimental. The players are all quite fine: Silent Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, maybe the most certain and deliberate moral force since … well, since Christ is supposed to have walked our ground; Cloris Leachman, beautiful as the unhappy housewife in the tenderly rendered affair with Timothy Bottoms’ young Sonny; some early Ellen Burstyn; Jeff Bridges (one of our most under-sung actors, getting his career off to a solid start); and Cybill Shepherd in her first role (who spent the shoot in the sack with the director). There may be a stumble or two here and there, but unimportant. If you think you know this film well enough, watch it again. And if you don’t know it, watch it!
@MMoore-Good post-absolutely agree with you.Also I believe it was Randy Quaids first movie. Also have to give a lot of credit to Larry McMurtrys script from his novel.
Of course Last Picture Show and Paper Moon……. both superb… but what about ‘The Cat’s Meow’… a great little tale about a real event that happened in early Hollywood, very entertaining with a great turn by Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin.
my fav Bogdanovich quote.. ‘When I despair of humanity, I watch a Renoir film’…….. and his interview book with Orson Welles is unputdownable.
Paper Moon is great, mainly because of Alvin Sargent’s script; I personally found the directing, a tad, pretentious at times. Something about the wrestling scene seemed over done: but it had great tension, and an integral moment. Maybe it’s just me.
Peter Bogdanovich made Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc? and Paper Moon all back to back. Three for three. I think he has directed some great films, during the 70’s and since.
I think he’s more interested in studying films than making films….Paper Moon has more replay value than any movie I can think of…
Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin huh? I must see this.
After making some good movies he indulged himself with a lot of pet projects. The murder of his girl may have had something to do with it.
Now on DVD, Targets is better suited for devoted fans of psychotronic
cinema. It was, after all, originally a Roger Corman production, with that maverick filmmaker’s guerilla spirit affecting every detail.
There’s a drive-in movie setting, a clean-cut, gun-collecting psychopath in a windbreaker
who drives a 1966 Mustang convertible, and Boris Karloff playing an aging horror movie star.
Laszlo Kovacs uses a wide-angle lens for countless shots of greater L.A., circa 1967.
What more could one ask?
Well, how about a commentary track in which director Bogdanovich reels off
several dozen fascinating anecdotes about the picture business in late ‘60s
Hollywood.
Paper Moon is the best buddy/movie road picture I have ever seen.
I can’t find a flaw.
(“Cain’t haul nuthin’ in it” is my fourteenth favorite line from that movie.)
I like PB’s comments on the Paper Moon DVD track.
He often chimes in with “according to Orson Welles,”
or “John Ford always said,” which instills a sense of regret that today
we have almost no directors who look to Welles, Ford, and Hawks
as the best examples of how to direct pictures.
the only film i’ve seen by him was THE CAT’S MEOW, the only reason i liked it was because it was about the roaring 20s… it was sort of boringly shot and it could have been directed by anyone
Bogdanovich sometime has some interesting things posted at has blog “Blogdanovich” here
Bogdanovich also did second unit work and a script rewrite on Corman’s THE WILD ANGELS, one of the best movies ABOUT the ’60s made IN the ’60s.
I wanna see Targets,Nickelodeon,Daisey Miller(his Waterloo) The Burt Reynolds movie.
I love Paper Moon and They All Laughed( this movie is not for everyone but i love the opening with Roy Acuff Back in the Country playing as the cab is going over the Manhattan bridge among other things)
Peter’s contribution to film studies is great. His book on Orsen Welles IS THE BOOK on Orsen Welles. His Fritz Lang book is also great. I have yet to see Directed By John Ford but I hear good things.
The Cat’s Meow sounds interesting has anyone seen that?
Out of all the movies done the one I reallly really wanna see is Saint Jack!
He was funny in Humboldt County and The Sopranos.
Rudy…I challenge you to watch DAISY MILLER…it’s worse than it’s reputation. It is nerve-numbingly dull.
-He often chimes in with “according to Orson Welles,” -
or “John Ford always said,” which instills a sense of regret that today
we have almost no directors who look to Welles, Ford, and Hawks
as the best examples of how to direct pictures
. . . and yet, my sense of Bogdanovich’s career is that as a filmmaker he was/is in some ways held back by his reverence for thast era of filmmaking. He’s made some fine films, but never really fully actualized himself as a individual stylist (as did so many of his near-contemporaries who went on to have higher- profile careers).
^^Agree Matt, and i think it’s the reason his career ended to quickly, comparatively speaking. out of all the ‘big guns’ from that era, he was easily the most referential.. He did give his early 70’s films a slightly ‘Euro’ twist—Paper Moon is like Ford with a twist imo, and that twist is important—but overall, he was too reliant on classic stylistic modes.
I’d argue that he was caught between old and new Hollywood, even though he is readily identified with the latter. The reason his career decline is because he wasn’t making those kind of films that Scorsese and Coppola were making, particularly Scorsese. He wasn’t edgy in that kind of way. By the mid 70’s that transitional period was over and Bogo was left in the dust.
“Bogo was left in the dust.”
yet Cat’s Meow was better than any Coppola film of the last 20 years and any Scorsese film (except his Bob Dylan doc) since Casino
^^last Bogdanovich movie i saw was the one with River Pheonix and Samantha Mathis back in 1993 with love in the title.
We can debate the relatively merits of particular films, sure. I was talking more, though, about the general reception of his films and his general status as a filmmaker.
^^so was i. my opinion is this: 1)he wasn’t particularly original, and 2)his style was dated by the mid 70’s. hence his ‘lower’ status’ ;-)
yes you are right he has an old fashioned nature about him
that made him irrelevant before his time (tho Saint Jack should have made him a little more indie)
Welles had the same problem, he seemed like an old fashioned filmmaker before he should have.
Am suprised Woody Allen did not suffer the same fate.
^^yeah, Saint Jack was certainly different from his earlier work. It’s funny to think he came back with ‘Mask’ in the mid 80’s. a bland studio picture. then again, he was probably flat broke at that stage and wasn’t in a position to be choosy.
HansLucas
Does anyone have any opinions on Bogdanovich? I recently rewatched “Paper Moon” and “The Last Picture Show” and I find them to be absolutely fabulous. “Targets” with Boris Karloff is also a very interesting film. What the F happened to this guy after these movies?! His later work, after “Mask” and “They All Laughed”, which I personally did not care for either one, is horrible. It seemed as though he became complacent and almost lazy. I am embarrassed to have watched “The Thing Called Love”, because his name was on it. I consider “Paper Moon” and “The Last Picture Show” to be great achievements and am extremely dissappointed to see a great talent that did not continue to produce.
He was great on “The Sopranos” though.
Edit: Sorry, I guess I should have posted this in the Who Lost It? thread, because in my opinion my man Pete definitely had it and lost it.