Peter Bogdanovich | |
|---|---|
_-_cropped.jpg) Bogdanovich in 1973 | |
| Born | (1939-07-30)July 30, 1939 Kingston, New York, U.S. |
| Died | January 6, 2022(2022-01-06) (aged 82) Los Angeles,California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1959–2022 |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Partner(s) | Cybill Shepherd (1970–1978) Dorothy Stratten (1980) |
| Children | 2 |
Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. He started out his career as a young actor studying underStella Adler before working as a film critic forFilm Culture andEsquire and finally becoming a prominent filmmaker of theNew Hollywood movement. He received accolades including aBAFTA Award andGrammy Award, as well as nominations for twoAcademy Awards and twoGolden Globe Awards.
Bogdanovich worked as a film journalist until he was hired to work onRoger Corman'sThe Wild Angels (1966). His credited feature film debut came withTargets (1968), before his career breakthrough with the dramaThe Last Picture Show (1971) which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and the acclaimed filmsWhat's Up, Doc? (1972) andPaper Moon (1973).[2][3] Other films includeSaint Jack (1979),They All Laughed (1981),Mask (1985),Noises Off (1992),The Cat's Meow (2001), andShe's Funny That Way (2014).
As an actor, Bogdanovich was known for his roles in theHBO seriesThe Sopranos andOrson Welles's last film,The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which he also helped finish.[4]
Bogdanovich directed documentaries such asDirected by John Ford (1971) andThe Great Buster: A Celebration (2018). He received a Grammy Award for Best Music Film for directingRunnin' Down a Dream (2007), a documentary aboutTom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He also published numerous books, some of which include in-depth interviews with friendsHoward Hawks,Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles. Bogdanovich's works have been cited as important influences by many major filmmakers.[5]
Peter Bogdanovich (Serbian Cyrillic:Петар Богдановић) was born inKingston, New York, the son of Herma (née Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a pianist and painter.[6][7] His father was of Serbian descent and his mother was of Austrian Jewish descent. Bogdanovich was fluent in Serbian, having learned it before English.[8][9] He had an older brother who died in an accident in 1938, at eighteen months of age, after a pot of boiling soup fell on him, though Bogdanovich did not learn about his brother until he was seven and did not know the circumstances of his death until he was an adult.[10] His parents both arrived in the U.S. in May 1939 on visitors' visas, along with his mother's immediate family, three months before the onset of World War II.[7][11] In 1952, when he was twelve, Bogdanovich began keeping a record of every film he saw on index cards, complete with reviews; he continued to do so until 1970.[12][13] He saw up to four hundred films a year.[14] He graduated from New York City'sCollegiate School in 1957 and studied acting at theStella Adler Conservatory.[8]
In the early 1960s, Bogdanovich was known as a film programmer at theMuseum of Modern Art in New York City, where he programmed influential retrospectives and wrotemonographs for the films ofOrson Welles,John Ford,Howard Hawks, andAlfred Hitchcock.[8][15] Bogdanovich also brought attention toAllan Dwan, a pioneer of American film who had fallen into obscurity by then, in a 1971 retrospective Dwan attended.[16][17] He also programmed forNew Yorker Theater.[8]
Before becoming a director, he wrote forEsquire,The Saturday Evening Post, andCahiers du Cinéma as a film critic.[8][15] These articles were collected inPieces of Time (1973).[18]
In 1966, following the example ofCahiers du Cinéma criticsFrançois Truffaut,Jean-Luc Godard,Claude Chabrol, andÉric Rohmer, who had created theNouvelle Vague ("New Wave") by making their own films, Bogdanovich decided to become a director. Encouraged by directorFrank Tashlin, whom he would interview in his bookWho the Devil Made It, Bogdanovich headed for Los Angeles with his wifePolly Platt and in so doing, left his rent unpaid.[19][20]
Intent on breaking into the industry, Bogdanovich would ask publicists for movie premiere and industry party invitations. At one screening, Bogdanovich was viewing a film and directorRoger Corman was sitting behind him. The two struck up a conversation when Corman mentioned he liked a cinema piece Bogdanovich wrote forEsquire. Corman offered him a directing job, which Bogdanovich accepted immediately. He worked with Corman onTargets, which starredBoris Karloff, andVoyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, under the pseudonym Derek Thomas. Bogdanovich later said of the Corman school of filmmaking, "I went from getting the laundry to directing the picture in three weeks. Altogether, I worked 22 weeks – preproduction, shooting, second unit, cutting, dubbing – I haven't learned as much since."[21]
Returning to journalism, Bogdanovich struck up a lifelong friendship withOrson Welles while interviewing him on the set ofMike Nichols'sCatch-22. Bogdanovich played a major role in reviving Welles and his career with his writings on the actor-director, particularly through his rebuttal, in the pages of Esquire, of Pauline Kael's book The Citizen Kane Book: Raising Kane, a 1971 attack on the centrality of Welles' contribution to the film. (Bogdanovich's book-length interview with Welles,This is Orson Welles, was not released until 1992.) In the early 1970s, when Welles was having financial problems, Bogdanovich let him stay at hisBel Air mansion for a couple of years.[8]
In 1970, Bogdanovich was commissioned by theAmerican Film Institute to direct a documentary aboutJohn Ford for their tribute,Directed by John Ford. The resulting film included candid interviews withJohn Wayne,James Stewart, andHenry Fonda, and was narrated by Orson Welles. Out of circulation for years due to licensing issues, Bogdanovich andTCM released it in 2006, re-edited it to make it "faster and more incisive", with additional interviews withClint Eastwood,Walter Hill,Harry Carey Jr.,Martin Scorsese,Steven Spielberg, and others.[22]
Much of the inspiration that led Bogdanovich to his cinematic creations came from early viewings of the filmCitizen Kane. In an interview withRobert K. Elder, author ofThe Film That Changed My Life, Bogdanovich explains his appreciation of Orson Welles's work:
It's just not like any other movie you know. It's the first modern film: fragmented, not told straight ahead, jumping around. It anticipates everything that's being done now, and which is thought to be so modern. It's all become really decadent now, but it was certainly fresh then.[23]
The 32-year-old Bogdanovich was hailed by critics as a "Wellesian" wunderkind when his best-received film,The Last Picture Show, was released in 1971. The film earned eightAcademy Award nominations, includingBest Director, and won two statues, forCloris Leachman andBen Johnson in the supporting acting categories. Bogdanovich co-wrote the screenplay withLarry McMurtry, and it won the 1971BAFTA award for Best Screenplay. Bogdanovich cast the 21-year-old modelCybill Shepherd in a major role in the film and fell in love with her,[24] an affair leading to his divorce fromPolly Platt, his longtime artistic collaborator and the mother of his two daughters.[25]
Bogdanovich followed upThe Last Picture Show with thescrewball comedyWhat's Up, Doc?, starringBarbra Streisand andRyan O'Neal.[8] Bogdanovich then formedThe Directors Company withFrancis Ford Coppola andWilliam Friedkin and co-owned byParamount Pictures.[26] Paramount allowed the directors to make a minimum of twelve films with a budget of $3 million each. It was through this entity that Bogdanovich'sPaper Moon was produced.[27]
Paper Moon, aDepression-era comedy starringRyan O'Neal that won his 10-year-old daughterTatum O'Neal an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, proved the high-water mark of Bogdanovich's career. Forced to share the profits with his fellow directors, Bogdanovich became dissatisfied with the arrangement. The Directors Company subsequently produced only two more pictures, Coppola'sThe Conversation (1974, which was nominated for Best Picture in 1974 alongsideThe Godfather Part II), and Bogdanovich's Cybill Shepherd vehicle,Daisy Miller, which had a lackluster critical reception and was a disappointment at the box office.[8] The partners of The Directors Company all went their separate ways after the production ofDaisy Miller.[26]
Bogdanovich's next effort,At Long Last Love, was a musical starring Shepherd andBurt Reynolds. Both that and his next film,Nickelodeon, were critical and box-office disasters,[8] severely damaging his standing in the film community. Reflecting upon his recent career, Bogdanovich said in 1976, "I was dumb. I made a lot of mistakes."[28]
In 1975, he suedUniversal for breaching a contract to produce and directBugsy.[29] He then took a few years off, then returned to directing with a lower-budgeted film,Saint Jack, which was filmed inSingapore and starredBen Gazzara in the title role.[30] The film earned critical praise, although was not a box-office hit.[31] The making of this film marked the end of his romantic relationship with Cybill Shepherd.[32]
Bogdanovich's next film was the romantic comedyThey All Laughed which featuredDorothy Stratten, a former model andPlayboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 andPlaymate of the Year in 1980,[33] who began a romantic relationship with Bogdanovich. He took over distribution ofThey All Laughed himself. Bogdanovich later blamed this for his filing for bankruptcy in 1985.[34] He declared he had a monthly income of $75,000 and monthly expenses of $200,000.[35]
Shortly after the film finished shooting, Stratten was murdered by her estranged husbandPaul Snider, who then killed himself.[25] To cope with the tragedy, Bogdanovich began writingThe Killing of the Unicorn, a memoir detailing the relationship between Stratten and himself, the making ofThey All Laughed and her murder. "I wanted to understand what happened to her," said Bogdanovich, "I felt I couldn't move forward with my life, creative or otherwise until I did." Bogdanovich said the book was meant to be delivered toWilliam Morrow and Company in August 1982, "but new facts kept coming to light and so it was delayed. I did more and more rewriting. In all, I suppose, I wrote the book five times." The book was eventually published in 1984.[36]
Stratten's murder was highly publicized, withTeresa Carpenter's "Death of a Playmate" article even claiming that she was as much a victim of Bogdanovich andPlayboy mogulHugh Hefner as she was Snider.[8] Carpenter's article then served as the basis forBob Fosse's filmStar 80. Bogdanovich opposed the production and refused to allow the film to use his name. He was portrayed as the fictional "Aram Nicholas", and he threatened litigation if he found the character objectionable.[37] Shortly after, Hefner accused Bogdanovich of seducing Stratten's younger sister Louise when she was 13. On December 30, 1988, the 49-year-old Bogdanovich married 20-year-old Louise, sparking a tabloid frenzy.[8][38]
After Stratten's murder, Bogdanovich said he "didn't go out much", but one day got a call from his friendJohn Cassavetes who asked him to directDiahnne Abbott in a scene from his filmLove Streams to help get him out of the house.[39] Despite Bogdanovich's contribution to the film, which even he himself admitted was minor, Cassavetes tried to get theDirectors Guild to give him a shared credit.
Bogdanovich had wanted to makeI'll Remember April with Cassavetes andThe Lady in the Moon written withLarry McMurtry,[40] but returned to directing officially withMask, which was released in 1985 to critical acclaim and strong box office returns. The film was released with a song score byBob Seger against Bogdanovich's wishes (he favoredBruce Springsteen). A director's cut of the film, slightly longer and with Springsteen's songs, was belatedly released on DVD in 2004.[41][42]
Bogdanovich directed the comedyIllegally Yours in 1988, starringRob Lowe. Bogdanovich later disowned the film, saying he had "high hopes for it", but that it had been completely re-cut byDino De Laurentiis, the film's distributor.
In 1990, Bogdanovich adaptedLarry McMurtry's novelTexasville, a sequel toThe Last Picture Show, into afilm. It is set 32 years after the events ofThe Last Picture Show, andJeff Bridges andCybill Shepherd both reprised their roles as Duane and Jacy. It was a critical andbox office disappointment relative to the first film.[25] Bogdanovich often complained that the version ofTexasville that was released was not the film he had intended. His cut ofTexasville was later released onLaserDisc, and the theatrical cut was released on DVD byMGM in 2005.[43] After the release ofTexasville, Bogdanovich revisitedThe Last Picture Show and produced a modified director's cut forThe Criterion Collection which includes seven minutes of previously unseen footage and re-edited scenes.[44]
In 1991, Bogdanovich developed an alternativecalendar, titledA Year and a Day: Goddess Engagement Calendar. The calendar consisted of 13 months of 28 days and a bonus day to equal 365 days. Each month was named after a different species of tree.[45] Bogdanovich attributed his inspiration for the calendar to the works ofRobert Graves.[46]
Bogdanovich directed two more theatrical films in 1992 and 1993, but neither film recaptured the success of his early career. One,Noises Off, was based ona stage play byMichael Frayn,[25] while another,The Thing Called Love, is better known as one ofRiver Phoenix's last roles before his death. In the mid-90s, Bogdanovich began to work in television, directing films such asTo Sir, with Love II.[47] In 1997, he declared bankruptcy again.[48] Drawing from his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, he wrote several critically lauded books, includingWho the Devil Made It, featuring archival interviews that Bogdanovich had held with famous Hollywood directors, andPeter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week, which offered the lifelong cinephile's commentary on 52 of his favorite films.[8]
In 2001, Bogdanovich resurfaced withThe Cat's Meow, his return once again to a reworking of the past, this time the alleged killing of directorThomas Ince byWilliam Randolph Hearst. The film was a modest critical success but made little money at the box-office. Bogdanovich said that he was told the story of the alleged Ince murder by Welles, who in turn said he heard it from writerCharles Lederer.[49]
In addition to directing some television work, Bogdanovich returned to acting with a recurring guest role on the cable television seriesThe Sopranos, playingDr. Melfi's psychotherapist,[8] also later directing a fifth-season episode. He had a voice role, asBart Simpson's therapist's analyst inan episode ofThe Simpsons,[50] and appeared as himself in the "Robots Versus Wrestlers" episode ofHow I Met Your Mother.[51]Quentin Tarantino cast Bogdanovich as a disc jockey inKill Bill: Volume 1 andKill Bill: Volume 2. "Quentin knows, because he's such a movie buff, that when you hear a disc jockey's voice in my pictures, it's always me, sometimes doing different voices", said Bogdanovich. "So he called me and he said, 'I stole your voice fromThe Last Picture Show for the rough cut, but I need you to come down and do that voice again for my picture ... '"[52] He hostedThe Essentials onTurner Classic Movies, but was replaced in May 2006 by TCM hostRobert Osborne and film criticMolly Haskell. Bogdanovich hosted introductions to movies onCriterion Collection DVDs, and had a supporting role in the critically praised mini-seriesOut of Order.[53]
In 2006, Bogdanovich joined forces with ClickStar, where he hosted a classic film channel, Peter Bogdanovich's Golden Age of Movies. Bogdanovich also wrote a blog for the site.[54] In 2003, he appeared in the BBC documentaryEasy Riders, Raging Bulls, and in 2006 he appeared in the documentaryWanderlust. The following year, Bogdanovich was presented with an award for outstanding contribution to film preservation by theInternational Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) at theToronto International Film Festival.[55]
In 2010, Bogdanovich joined the directing faculty at the School of Filmmaking at theUniversity of North Carolina School of the Arts. On April 17, 2010, he was awarded the Master of Cinema Award at the 12th AnnualRiverRun International Film Festival. In 2011, he was given the Auteur Award by theInternational Press Academy, which is awarded to filmmakers whose singular vision and unique artistic control over the elements of production give a personal and signature style to their films.[56]
In 2012, Bogdanovich made news with an essay inThe Hollywood Reporter, published in the aftermath of theAurora, Colorado theater shooting, in which he argued against excessive violence in the movies:
Today, there's a general numbing of the audience. There's too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it's not so terrible. Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, 'We're brutalizing the audience. We're going to end up like theRoman circus, live at theColiseum.' The respect for human life seems to be eroding.[57]
In 2014, Bogdanovich's last narrative film,She's Funny That Way, was released in theaters and on-demand, followed by the documentary,The Great Buster: A Celebration in 2018.[58] In 2018,Orson Welles' long-delayed filmThe Other Side of the Wind, which was filmed in the 1970s and featured a prominent supporting role by Bogdanovich, who had long hoped to complete it, was released byNetflix to critical acclaim.[59]
One of his final hopes was to direct a personal passion project he had worked on since the 1980s titledWait for Me which Bogdanovich had described as a "ghost picture", the likes ofThe Ghost Goes West, that was directly inspired by his relationship withDorothy Stratten.[60][61] In a July 2015 interview forEntertainment Weekly, Bogdanovich revealed thatBrett Ratner was going to produce the film, and that they were currently in the process of attaching actors. The plot, as described by Bogdanovich, would have followed a washed-up Hollywood director/star (someone likeOrson Welles orCharlie Chaplin), who is visited by the ghost of his last wife, who was killed six years earlier in a plane crash.[62][63]
Bogdanovich collaborated withTurner Classic Movies, and hostBen Mankiewicz, to create a documentary podcast about his life, which premiered in 2020.[64][65] That same year, a copy of his original cut ofShe's Funny That Way, originally titledSquirrels to the Nuts, was found on eBay.[66] In the wake of the director's death, the cut was shown at New York'sMuseum of Modern Art beginning on March 28, 2022.[67]
Weeks before his death, Bogdanovich collaborated withKim Basinger to createLIT Project 2: Flux, a first of its kind short film made available on theEthereumblockchain as anon-fungible token. The project was scheduled to be released on January 25, 2022.[68] He also wrote an as-yet unreleased book calledFive American Icons featuring long interviews withArthur Miller,Lauren Bacall,Kirk Douglas,Jack Nicholson andClint Eastwood,[69][24] and was working on developing a new screenplay, with the help of author Sam Kashner, titledOur Love Is Here to Stay about composersGeorge andIra Gershwin.[70] According to Louise Stratten, after they had finished the script,Guillermo del Toro was involved to produce the film atNetflix.[71] Stratten also noted that, prior to his death, Bogdanovich had completed his memoirs, which he wanted to callAll I Wanna Do is Direct.[71]
Bogdanovich died from complications ofParkinson's disease at his home inToluca Lake, on January 6, 2022, at the age of 82.[12][72] Since his death, many directors, actors, and other public figures have paid tribute to him, includingMartin Scorsese,Francis Ford Coppola,Jennifer Aniston,[73]Barbra Streisand,Cher,William Friedkin,Guillermo del Toro,James Gunn,Ellen Burstyn,Laura Dern,Joe Dante,Bryan Adams,Ben Stiller,Jeff Bridges,Michael Imperioli,[74]Paul Feig andViola Davis.[75][76]Peter Bradshaw ofThe Guardian described him as "a loving cineaste and fearless genius of cinema."[77]The New York Times described Bogdanovich as "[a genius] of the Hollywood system who, with great success and frustration, worked to transform it in the same era."[78]
His work has been cited as an influence by such filmmakers asQuentin Tarantino,[79]David Fincher,[80]Sofia Coppola,[81]Wes Anderson,Noah Baumbach,[82]Richard Linklater,[83][84]Edgar Wright,[85]Brett Ratner,[86]M. Night Shyamalan,[87]David O. Russell,[88]James Mangold,[89]Jon Watts,[90]Rian Johnson,[91][92] and theSafdie brothers.[93]
On September 29, 2022, Louise Stratten announced that she was seeking a publisher for Bogdanovich's memoirs,[71] as well as working on putting out episodes of apodcast series Bogdanovich had started calledOne Handshake Away, where contemporary filmmakers were invited to discuss and listen to archival recordings of classic Hollywood directors whom Bogdanovich had interviewed. Guests include Guillermo del Toro (ep. "Alfred Hitchcock"), Rian Johnson (ep. "Orson Welles"), Quentin Tarantino (ep. "Don Siegel"), andKen Burns (ep. "John Ford").[70] The episodes eventually aired in February 2024, two years after Bogdanovich's death, throughAudacy. Del Toro contributed three additional interviews withGreta Gerwig (ep. "Howard Hawks"),Julie Delpy (ep. "Fritz Lang") andAllison Anders (ep. "Raoul Walsh").[94]
Work Actor | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1979 | 1981 | 1985 | 1988 | 1990 | 1992 | 1993 | 2001 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timothy Bottoms |  N | N | |||||||||||||
| Eileen Brennan | N | N | N | N | |||||||||||
| Jeff Bridges | N | N | |||||||||||||
| Colleen Camp | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Harry Carey Jr. | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Denholm Elliott | N | N | |||||||||||||
| Ben Gazzara | N | N | |||||||||||||
| Burton Gilliam | N | N | |||||||||||||
| James Harrell | N | N | |||||||||||||
| John Hillerman | N | N | N | N | |||||||||||
| Madeline Kahn | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Cloris Leachman | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Joanna Lumley | N | N | |||||||||||||
| Micole Mercurio | N | N | |||||||||||||
| George Morfogen | N | N | N | N | |||||||||||
| Ryan O'Neal | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Tatum O'Neal | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Austin Pendleton | N | N | |||||||||||||
| Burt Reynolds | N | N | |||||||||||||
| John Ritter | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Cybill Shepherd | N | N | N | N | N | ||||||||||
| Randy Quaid | N | N | N | N | |||||||||||
| M. Emmet Walsh | N | N | N | ||||||||||||
| Noble Willingham | N | N |
CinematographerLászló Kovács worked with Bogdanovich on several of his films, those of which areTargets, the documentaryDirected by John Ford,What's Up, Doc?,Paper Moon,At Long Last Love,Nickelodeon andMask.Robby Müller however, shot only two films for Bogdanovich,Saint Jack andThey All Laughed back-to-back. Editors who have collaborated with Bogdanovich includeVerna Fields (What's Up, Doc?,Paper Moon andDaisy Miller), William C. Carruth (Nickelodeon,Saint Jack andThey All Laughed) and Richard Fields (Illegally Yours andTexasville).Polly Platt, Bogdanovich's former wife, served as production designer onThe Last Picture Show,What's Up, Doc? andPaper Moon.
| Year | Title | Distributor |
|---|---|---|
| 1968 | Targets | Paramount Pictures |
| 1971 | The Last Picture Show | Columbia Pictures |
| 1972 | What's Up, Doc? | Warner Bros. |
| 1973 | Paper Moon | Paramount Pictures |
| 1974 | Daisy Miller | |
| 1975 | At Long Last Love | 20th Century Fox |
| 1976 | Nickelodeon | Columbia Pictures /EMI Films |
| 1979 | Saint Jack | New World Pictures |
| 1981 | They All Laughed | Moon Pictures /PSO |
| 1985 | Mask | Universal Pictures |
| 1988 | Illegally Yours | United Artists /De Laurentiis Entertainment Group |
| 1990 | Texasville | Columbia Pictures |
| 1992 | Noises Off | Buena Vista Pictures Distribution |
| 1993 | The Thing Called Love | Paramount Pictures |
| 2001 | The Cat's Meow | Swipe Films /Lions Gate Films |
| 2014 | She's Funny That Way | Lionsgate Premiere /Wild Bunch |
Bogdanovich appeared in dozens of film documentaries and featurettes, and recorded many home videoaudio commentaries for his own films and others.
| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Academy Awards | Best Director | The Last Picture Show | Nominated |
| Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium | Nominated | |||
| 1973 | BAFTA Film Awards | Best Direction | Nominated | |
| Best Screenplay | Won[a] | |||
| 1972 | Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures | Nominated | |
| 1972 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Director – Motion Picture | Nominated | |
| 1974 | Paper Moon | Nominated |
| Year | Feature | Academy Awards | BAFTAs | Golden Globes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominations | Wins | Nominations | Wins | Nominations | Wins | ||
| 1971 | The Last Picture Show | 8 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 1 |
| 1972 | What's Up, Doc? | 1 | |||||
| 1973 | Paper Moon | 4 | 1 | 6 | 1 | ||
| 1974 | Daisy Miller | 1 | |||||
| 1979 | Saint Jack | 1 | |||||
| 1985 | Mask | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Total | 13 | 4 | 8 | 3 | 15 | 2 | |
And a ghost picture calledWait For Me that he says he's been working on "literally for 20 years", which takes us back to the immediate aftermath ofDorothy Stratten's death. "I like the story. It's got a lot more difficult since I first thought of it, though. It used to be about a guy who married three times and had three daughters. Now he marries six times and has six daughters."
I'm going to do another film first called "Wait for Me." It's a comedy-drama-fantasy, because there are ghosts in it. It's something I've been working on for more than 30 years. I think I've finally got it right. It's gone through many versions and drafts. But it was the first idea that sprang to mind after a little tragedy we had here in the family. In November of '80 I thought it might be an interesting idea. I don't think I wrote a script until the end of the '80s. Originally it was forJohn Cassavetes to play the lead. But John was very ill. He died in '89. But I sent him the script, which was an early draft, and he gave me some notes. And for the rest of the time before he died, he'd say, "Are you going to make that picture?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "You better make that picture." And then when he was very close to dying, one of the last things he said to me was, "Listen, kid, you better make that picture, because you know what? I'll be there."
It's about a movie director slash star — somebody likeWoody Allen orJohn Cassavetes orOrson Welles orCharlie Chaplin — and he's basically known for comedy. And he's been married six times and he's got six daughters, and his last wife, the one he seems to have been most keen on, was killed in a plane crash, six years before the movie begins. And the guy's life in those six years, since it happened, has turned to s**t. He's in bad shape. He can't be hired by Hollywood because he chopped up a projection room and beat up a producer. So he'spersona non grata in Hollywood. Before the picture begins, he spends quite a bit of time in Italy, conning the Italians that he's got a story, that he's got to check locations. So he's been traveling all around Italy. I don't want to get into the whole plot, but the point is the ghost of his last wife shows up eventually. And there's a rock star that gets into trouble. He's a friend of his, and he's in love with one of his daughters. It's a complicated comedy-drama-fantasy, and I'm very keen on it. And Brett likes it and we're going to do it.
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