September 23-29, 2004

art

Peter Bogdanovich

by Interview by Frank Halperin

Given Peter Bogdanovich's encyclopedic knowledge of film history, it's only fitting that his speaking engagement in Philly will be at the Free Library. Long before he achieved wunderkind commercial and critical acclaim for The Last Picture Show, his 1971 masterpiece of bucolic existentialism, Bogdanovich was a precocious scholar of cinema, screening over 500 movies a year while meticulously cataloging and critiquing each one on index cards—over 5,000 in all. This celluloid academia would lead him into programming film exhibitions at the New Yorker Theatre and contributing extensive articles to Esquire during its New Journalism heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Bogdanovich's new book Who The Hell's In It (Knopf, $35) illuminates his numerous personal and professional encounters within Hollywood's star machine. Stella Adler, the renowned acting coach with whom he studied when he was 16, is but one of 25 celebrities included within; from James Cagney and Audrey Hepburn to John Cassavetes, Sal Mineo and River Phoenix, Bogdanovich's galvanizing first-person recollections, combined with his erudite analysis of their respective work, make it an extraordinary chronicle of 20th-century film culture.

Having overseen the recently released DVD director's cut of Mask and preparing for the premiere of his new film Hustle, a Pete Rose biopic that will premiere this Saturday on ESPN, Bogdanovich graciously set aside a Sunday afternoon to talk about the book, the Rose pic and his recurring role on The Sopranos.

City Paper: How long did it take to produce Who The Hell's In It, and how does it compare to Who The Devil Made It, your previous work about film directors?

Peter Bogdanovich: I'd say it took about five years. Not five years straight—I made some movies during that time—and there was one intense period of several months when I was desperately trying to finish it. I thought I'd never get it done [laughs]. I had written some of it before, and it had appeared in various places. But it was all rewritten, augmented and redrafted for the book. It was more of a challenge than Who The Devil Made It, since the bulk of that was Q&A. But the new book is virtually all prose, descriptive passages, which obviously takes much longer to write.

CP: How did you get involved with The Sopranos?

PB: It's a funny story. In 1993, David Chase was executive producing Northern Exposure. He called me out of the blue, said they were planning an Orson Welles tribute episode and asked if I'd play myself on the show—it was a year after my book This Is Orson Welles came out. I liked the quirkiness of the series, so I said sure. After he saw the episode's dailies, he said, "You're very good—you've got a lot of presence, and you ought to act more.' Seven years later, he calls me again, says, "We're going into our second season on The Sopranos, and the Dr. Melfi character is having so much trouble with Tony that she's gonna need a shrink herself. Would you be interested in playing the shrink's shrink?' I said I'd be thrilled. I loved the show from the beginning, even before I was on it.

CP: How did the Hustle project come about?

PB: I was sent the script, totally unexpected, and was asked if I'd like to do it. It was a very good script by Christian Darren—it impressed me. It's very much a human story, sad—I think Rose is a tragic figure. The network had Tom Sizemore in mind to play Rose, and I told them I thought he'd be great, encouraged them to make the deal. And he's awfully good in it.

CP: Do you continue to watch the enormous amount of films that you once did? How about the index card chronicling?

PB: No, I see very few films now. I don't have as much time—time seems to go quicker as you get older. And I don't have that much interest, I'm sad to say. I find a lot of today's mainstream movies to be shallow. I don't know … some of them are good, but I miss a lot of what's out there. People say, "What'd you think of this?' and I haven't seen it! [Laughs.] I try to catch up on movies they say I really should see, but I don't go to the movies that much. I'll watch older films I like, I'll occasionally look at them again. I wrote out the index cards from 1952 to 1970. After I made The Last Picture Show, I didn't want to do them anymore. It was kind of a self-educational process. I still have them, though. Wes Anderson saw them and keeps saying I should publish them—who knows, maybe someday.

Peter Bogdanovich, Wed., Sept. 29, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341.