Peter Bogdanovich

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jazzo
Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2013 12:02 am

Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#176 Post by jazzo » Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:26 pm

Thanks for the very considered responses, guys. If I hadn't rewatched it a couple of days ago, I would definitely sit down with it again, and try to view through your more positive lenses. I love having my mind changed about films. Still fresh, though, so perhaps in a year or two.

I love NOISES OFF.

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domino harvey
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#177 Post by domino harvey » Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:40 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:15 pm
I'm of the opinion that Noises Off! and The Thing Called Love is one of the strongest double-punches from a major
director in the last 30 years.
Well, and I’d say they are Bogdanovich’s two worst films! So, I think jazzo ends up somewhere between our extremes...

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jazzo
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#178 Post by jazzo » Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:44 pm

Story of my fucking life...

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#179 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:49 pm

And I can’t stand Noises Off! for the most part- so all extreme opinions accounted for

beamish14
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#180 Post by beamish14 » Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:56 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:49 pm
And I can’t stand Noises Off! for the most part- so all extreme opinions accounted for
Ha! Well, for me, it's always been a "comfort food" film. I can just turn it on at any point and derive extreme pleasure from it.
David Mamet's State and Main also falls into this category, which might be odd for some, considering that it deals heavily with
statutory rape in the entertainment industry.

I like the first 40ish minutes of Illegally Yours, too, but that one peters out quickly afterwards.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#181 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Apr 16, 2020 2:03 pm

State and Main is excellent, no objections there

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jazzo
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#182 Post by jazzo » Thu Apr 16, 2020 2:08 pm

Jesus, are we all in agreement about State and Main? Domino?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#183 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Apr 16, 2020 2:12 pm

Mamet brings people together

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domino harvey
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#184 Post by domino harvey » Thu Apr 16, 2020 3:40 pm

State and Main is wonderful. “It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction” is a Top 5 Mamet quote

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jazzo
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#185 Post by jazzo » Thu Apr 16, 2020 4:29 pm

Not to derail this thread even further, but this one made me laugh out loud , oh, so many years ago:

"I don't know what her problem is. She takes off her shirt to do a voice-over. What's her problem? The country could draw her tits from memory."

It's actually a very sweet film, too.

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bearcuborg
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#186 Post by bearcuborg » Thu Apr 30, 2020 5:21 pm

Bringing it back to Peter, here’s the first few episodes (with transcripts too) of TCM’s new podcast with Peter.

I’ve been enjoying Peter on TCM lately. I finally caught up with his Buster Keaton doc. It’s not very good when it tells his life story but when Peter narrates his favorite clips it’s more interesting.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#187 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Oct 18, 2020 1:07 pm

It was mentioned earlier in this forum that it may not be possible to re-issue the director's cut of Texasville on BD because it was unknown if the proper materials exist. I'm still trying to track down more info on this, but a google search landed on this quote from what appears to be a 2003 newsgroup exchange hosted by critic Fred Camper:

"PB is not averse to recutting. He felt Columbia rushed him on Texasville, so he went back and recut it to achieve a better balance between comic and dramatic elements. Finished only on tape, that version was broadcast by Showtime with the unexpurgated Picture Show. It hasn't been shown theatrically because it doesn't exist on film." It's possible this guy is misinformed (for starters, he appears to get the cable channel wrong - see below), but still, it again raises the possibility that a costly re-creation of that edit would have to be done.

Anyway, some more bits and pieces I've dug up, including a late 2018 interview that suggests a film element wasn't created for the director's cut (though to be clear, Bogdanovich only states that a film print was not available)...

From an April 5, 1992 article in The Morning Call:

"....when Texasville premieres next month on the Movie Channel, it will be 28 minutes longer than its theatrical version.

"This is the way Texasville should have been seen when it was originally released," [Bogdanovich] said. "We had to take out a lot of the dramatic scenes between Jeff (Bridges) and Cybill and between Jeff and Timothy Bottoms.

"There was also a wonderful scene at the Centennial when Cybill sings a hymn. The balance between comedy and drama was off, so when the movie turned out to be a drama, people were thrown. Whereas the correct version, the longer version, has a better balance."

Why wasn't this "correct" version shown in theaters?

"We were cutting the picture under a lot of pressure," he said. "It didn't turn out like we wanted -- at all. It was rather sad. So now we're glad to have this second chance."

From an interview with Bogdanovich published 11/2013 in IndieWire:
Q: At Long Last Love just came out in a new cut. Are there any alternate cuts lying around or movies you’d like to tweak?

A: Well, that was quite an amazing story about how that came about… But there’s a director’s cut of Texasville that came out on laserdisc and I would dearly like for that to come out. It’s a much better film than the one that was released. It was available on Pioneer laserdisc for a while but that’s gone the way of the dodo bird. And I finally got Nickelodeon out in black-and-white on DVD and that was a big triumph. It’s a much better picture in black-and-white. As Dave Kehr in the New York Times said, “it becomes a totally different picture.” And he’s right – it does. But most of my films I’ve had problems with like Mask or Nickelodeon, have come out in versions that I prefer.

Q: Have you talked to Criterion about Texasville?

A: Yeah, we’ve talked about it and we’re still discussing it.

Interview with Bogdanovich from 9/2018 for Vulture/NYMag:

Q: Speaking of producers who bothered you: There are a lot of director’s cuts in the line-up of your Quad retro.

A: I wanted them to show the director’s cuts; I didn’t want to run the other versions. One problem is that Texasville is not available in the director’s cut except on a laserdisc, which they weren’t going to show. I’m trying to get the Criterion Collection to let me put together the director’s cut of Texasville, which is better in the sense that it’s a lot sadder. Because there’s 25 minutes missing [from the release version]. I wanted to reissue The Last Picture Show in theaters before we released the new film. The head of the studio when we were preparing to make the picture was Peter Guber, and he said, “Fine.” While we were shooting, Frank Price replaced him. Frank Price did not like me, and I did not like him, because he had already fucked up Mask, and I had fought with him on that. He didn’t want to reissue The Last Picture Show. He referred to that as “cheating.” I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. And the movie wasn’t available at the time. So we cut a lot of the sadder parts that referred back to the earlier film — because audiences wouldn’t have had a chance to see it — and that left it more of a comedy.

And from a prior post:
Peter Bogdanovich wrote:When we were preparing Texasville, Peter Guber agreed to let me recut The Last Picture Show by adding certain footage to it. The picture had not yet appeared on video so the idea was to add some footage and make a new version of it and put it out in theaters prior to the opening of Texasville. That started to happen...I reviewed all the material and decided there were about seven minutes I wanted to put back in...I put back about seven minutes and then Frank Price took over Columbia and Frank didn't like me because of the situation that happened at Universal on Mask, so Frank pretty much sabotaged that plan, which was to bring Picture Show out and then Texasville, so that was sabotaged and didn't happen. What did happen was that Texasville had to be totally recut because I had to lose certain stuff that wouldn't make any sense if you haven't seen Picture Show. It wasn't available anywhere. So that was unfortunately very sad. Texasville came out and was perceived incorrectly because it wasn't what we made. It was perceived as too much of a comedy when in fact the original Texasville was more evenly balanced between comedy and drama. Subsequent to that the long version of The Last Picture Show was finished on 35mm and on laserdisc and is available on Criterion laserdisc, seven minutes longer...Pioneer did a director's cut of Texasville so that also exists on laserdisc in a version that's twenty-five minutes longer. But the only way to see those two pictures the way we would have like them to be shown one after the other is on laserdisc.

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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#188 Post by beamish14 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:58 pm

Does anyone have much info on City Girl, Martha Coolidge's feature debut, which Bogdanovich produced in 1982? The film belatedly got a very small release in 1984, after Coolidge's film Valley Girl became a modest hit. It's extremely difficult to find nowadays, and I wonder who possesses the home video rights nowadays. I'm curious about the project's genesis as well.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#189 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:10 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:58 pm
Does anyone have much info on City Girl, Martha Coolidge's feature debut, which Bogdanovich produced in 1982? The film belatedly got a very small release in 1984, after Coolidge's film Valley Girl became a modest hit. It's extremely difficult to find nowadays, and I wonder who possesses the home video rights nowadays. I'm curious about the project's genesis as well.
I see that a VHS rip is up on Vimeo (as well as her actual debut, Not a Pretty Picture) for free. I may be able to help, and will either PM you or post info publicly here if I get any intel that pertains to the thread.

beamish14
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#190 Post by beamish14 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:15 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:10 pm
beamish14 wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:58 pm
Does anyone have much info on City Girl, Martha Coolidge's feature debut, which Bogdanovich produced in 1982? The film belatedly got a very small release in 1984, after Coolidge's film Valley Girl became a modest hit. It's extremely difficult to find nowadays, and I wonder who possesses the home video rights nowadays. I'm curious about the project's genesis as well.
I see that a VHS rip is up on Vimeo (as well as her actual debut, Not a Pretty Picture) for free. I may be able to help, and will either PM you or post info publicly here if I get any intel that pertains to the thread.
Much obliged! I really appreciate it.

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soundchaser
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#191 Post by soundchaser » Tue Jan 19, 2021 7:33 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:58 pm
Does anyone have much info on City Girl, Martha Coolidge's feature debut, which Bogdanovich produced in 1982? The film belatedly got a very small release in 1984, after Coolidge's film Valley Girl became a modest hit. It's extremely difficult to find nowadays, and I wonder who possesses the home video rights nowadays. I'm curious about the project's genesis as well.
Bogdanovich talks about it a little in the new book of interviews Peter Tonguette released last year:
Peter Bogdanovich wrote:I lost my shirt on that. Colleen came to me and said, “Martha has run out of money, and she’s making her first movie.” She made a documentary called Not a Pretty Picture, about when she was raped. I was interested in women’s problems and women’s issues. They showed me some of the movie—it was called Anne and Joey—and I thought it was rather charming. The girl was good, and the guy was good. They needed about a half-a-million dollars to finish it, so I put up the money. We did finish it. It became quite good—I helped her in the cutting—and we ended up calling it City Girl. We did a few previews, and we kept getting it right. Just when we got it right, we ran out of money. We never could afford to pay for the music rights.

...It was never released, but she has it—I gave it back to her. I’m sure it’ll end up in some archive. It’s worth seeing. It’s not a bad little picture. But it cost me a lot of money.
So it sounds like Coolidge herself owns the rights to it, if I’m understanding correctly.

beamish14
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#192 Post by beamish14 » Wed Jan 20, 2021 4:21 pm

Thank you for that. I've had Tonguette's book in my to-buy queue for a while.

I really hope Bogdanovich publishes an all-encompassing memoir about his entire career. He didn't look like he was in the greatest shape when he was on TCM last year.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#193 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:34 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:10 pm
beamish14 wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:58 pm
Does anyone have much info on City Girl, Martha Coolidge's feature debut, which Bogdanovich produced in 1982? The film belatedly got a very small release in 1984, after Coolidge's film Valley Girl became a modest hit. It's extremely difficult to find nowadays, and I wonder who possesses the home video rights nowadays. I'm curious about the project's genesis as well.
I see that a VHS rip is up on Vimeo (as well as her actual debut, Not a Pretty Picture) for free. I may be able to help, and will either PM you or post info publicly here if I get any intel that pertains to the thread.
Almost a year later, I have a response to this from a close credible source:

Some guy who did some producing work on the side (mostly for pornographic films, from what it sounds like) got a tax credit and had to spend the money within a hasty window of time, so he chose to make a movie. He hired Coolidge (they were both working in Canada at the time), based on a snapshot premise. She then had to hire two random writers to create something out of it, and also had to hire non-union actors, which was hard to do. One of these actors, who played a male stripper in the film, was a very eccentric fellow who disappeared from the film and called the director from a mental institution, where he was being treated for falling in love with a horse. The shoot was wild, the AD was selling drugs with an all sober recovery crew, creating many problems, and the guy who fronted the money was involving in mob dealings and hiding out during various intervals without a line of communication.

They ran out of money part-way through production, so Coolidge left Canada and couch-surfed in NYC, putting ads in tabloids trying to connect with Wall Street investors to back the project, which didn't work. She then moved to L.A. and continued to couch-surf attempting to get financing, while also starting a career. She connected with a mutual friend of Bogdanovich, and he agreed to finance the project because he had a fair amount of money at the time and, still grieving from the death of Dorothy Stratten, wanted to “save” a movie based on a woman trying to make it independently in a man’s world (as well as just having a "saving" mentality at the time, reportedly, which made sense with his sensitive state).

They finished the film, and toured it at a few festivals, but music rights (specifically a Thin Lizzy song) made it too expensive to release, as Bogdanovich also ran out of money by this point. The film was released illegally in Europe, which accounts for rips online. After not hearing from Bogdanovich for years, even though he owned the film he turned it over (as well as the debt that came along with it, which I don't believe was very large) as an unprompted, kind gesture. There are apparently rumblings someone might be interested in releasing it, but we shouldn't hold our breath.

There is a terrific anecdote about the hassle of getting the film back though (that could itself be the synopsis of a screwball comedy): Once the rights returned to Coolidge, they had to get the original negative back, which was still in Canada, so it was loaded onto a 747 to fly to L.A. However, multiple engines on the plane failed en route and it had to emergency land in Las Vegas, where at the time there was no customs. Also on board was apparently 70,000 pounds of lobsters. Due to the lack of customs, the airport refused to go in and retrieve the film canisters (or the lobsters, to whoever they were being shipped). While this is all taking place, Coolidge and Peter are waiting in L.A. (I think at the airport), taking and making calls on the fiasco. Peter is freaking out, lying down with a wet towel on his face to calm down, and eventually calls the White House, where apparently John Ford’s daughter worked(?!) He got the ear of the president, and arranged for a volunteer pilot to fly the plane back to Canada (with one working engine) to fix the other engines, because it had to happen on Canadian soil, and then fly to L.A. Those poor lobsters. Once they had the film, there were undiagnosable 'bubbles' on various elements of the film's original negative, likely effects from the lobsters (fermentation from sitting in the hot Las Vegas desert for who-knows-how-long?), so they had to remove those frames and cut different frames together that don’t gel but apparently you can’t tell the difference in motion.

One more amusing Peter Bogdanovich anecdote (though this one sounds like a 'you had to be there' comic observation): He apparently liked to sing publicly but was objectively terrible- with a voice like Frank Sinatra out of key. During one event, Charles Aznavour(!) was present, and Bogdanovich wanted to sing for him, did, and Aznavour's face was pricelessly dumbfounded. He made an innocuous comment and left the party.
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Sun Nov 28, 2021 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Never Cursed
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#194 Post by Never Cursed » Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:49 am

That entire story needs to be a movie. Hell, change the names and it sounds like the treatment for a lost Altman film or something

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#195 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 28, 2021 2:13 am

So my source actually said "70,000" pounds of lobster (not 7,000), but without looking it up I just assumed that was impossible and omitted a 0. Looking it up now, I'm surprised to see that it's not only easily possible, but probably makes more sense considering the intention of the flight was to carry mass cargo. Why use a 747 to transport such a small amount of weight to L.A. when it's clearly an economic choice of plane for an economic mission of food supply? That's even more wild.

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Altair
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#196 Post by Altair » Sun Nov 28, 2021 2:29 am

This is the most spectacular story - the production of the film, its recovery, the idea that Bogadnovich had a source in the White House... Thank you for sharing.

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soundchaser
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#197 Post by soundchaser » Fri Jan 07, 2022 8:42 pm

senseabove wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:19 am
soundchaser wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:39 pm
I’ve been working on a redux of those missing numbers from At Long Last Love - I may have to post one tonight.
Which numbers would those be and where were they sourced from? I remember reading about two cut numbers, but not that any had ever surfaced...
(Cross-posting from another thread.)

So back in 2020 I did an amateur color restoration of a faded 16mm print of "Etiquette" and an extra verse of "Tomorrow," but the original transfer was done in a very rudimentary way (camera filming off the wall). I've since been able to get the two small sections professionally scanned at 2K resolution, and I think the difference is (to quote Cole Porter) night and day. (For reference: here's a shot from the old version, and the same shot from the new one.)That said, this new scan does reveal some of the flaws inherent in the source material - namely its overall fuzzyness, blown-out highlights, and kind of washed-out midtones. And it looks like "Etiquette" faded at a different rate depending on the frame, so the color levels fluctuate even in the unrestored scan. I tried my best to minimize this flickering, but it's still noticeable.

For "Tomorrow" I tried some frame-by-frame cleanup (which I’ve been working on sporadically for a few months), but the film is just speckled and dusted to heck. Hopefully it's not too rough a watch. "Etiquette" has some pretty nasty tramlines running down the whole length of the number, but I couldn't really do anything about them without negatively affecting that area of the frame and/or slowly losing my sanity. YouTube's compression also does a number on the grain structure, so if anyone wants the higher-quality .mpg files, feel free to PM me.

All those caveats aside: I do think these new scans are as close as we'll get to seeing these numbers restored to their full glory until someone can get their hands on a full 35mm print in the correct aspect ratio. :) (Same with the numbers cut out early on during the preview period, of which there are several.)

Etiquette
Tomorrow

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#198 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:27 pm

Excellent work, soundchaser. Just wow, thanks for sharing!

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senseabove
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#199 Post by senseabove » Fri Jan 07, 2022 9:57 pm

soundchaser wrote:
Fri Jan 07, 2022 8:42 pm
Etiquette
Tomorrow
That's awesome, soundchaser. Thanks for sharing your work on those. Do you know the provenance of the 16mm print you used? The cut history of ALLL is a lot more complex than I realized!

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soundchaser
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Re: Peter Bogdanovich

#200 Post by soundchaser » Fri Jan 07, 2022 11:54 pm

Given the aspect ratio, I suspect it was made for a television broadcast. Possibly ABC?

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