According to his daughter Antonia Bogdanovich, Bogdanovich passed away Thursday morning at his Los Angeles home. He died from natural causes, she said.
Bogdanovich is considered part of the “New Hollywood” generation. His first film, “Targets”, was a chilling solo shooter film. He followed it up with “The Last Picture Show” in 1971. His melancholic and evocative portrayal of teenage angst in a small, dying community earned him eight Oscar nominations and two wins (for Ben Johnson & Cloris Leachman). He was 32 when he became a star. Following “The Last Picture Show,” he made the comedy “What’s Up Doc?” starring Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand, then he made the Depression-era film “Paper Moon”, which earned Tatum O’Neal (10) an Oscar.
His turbulent personal life was often the focus of attention. This included his affair with Cybill Shepherd, which began during the production of “The Last Picture Show,” while he was married and working closely with Polly Platt. He also murdered his Playmate, Dorothy Stratten, and then his marriage to Louise, his younger sister.
At the announcement of his death, there were swift reactions.
Streisand posted on Twitter, “Peter always made my laugh!” He’ll make them laugh as long as they live up there.
Francis Ford Coppola said in an email, “I’ll never forget attending a premiere of ‘The Last Picture Show. I can clearly recall the crowd jumping up and bursting into applause for about 15 minutes.” Although I will never forget, I feel that I never experienced such a reaction myself. It was a tribute to Peter and his film. He will be able to rest in peace for all eternity and enjoy the joy of our applause forever.
Tatum O’Neal shared a picture of herself and him on Instagram. She wrote, “Peter was the heaven and earth I adore.” A father figure. A friend. He made me feel secure, from ‘Paper Moon to ‘Nickelodeon. Peter, I love you.”
Martin Scorsese wrote in an email that Peter Bogdanovich was at the crossroads between the Old Hollywood and New Hollywood in the 1960s. His debut film, ‘Targets’, is still one of his best films. He made the movie ‘The Last Picture Show’, which seemed to both look backwards and forwards at the same moment. It was also a huge success. Peter suffered setbacks and tragedy over the years, but he kept going, reinventing himself every day.
Bogdanovich was born in Kingston, New York in 1939. He started his career as an actor and a film journalist. In the Museum of Modern Art, he worked as a programmer for film. Through a series of monographs and retrospectives, he gained respect from a number of older filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Orson Welles and John Ford. He shared his knowledge and took their lessons, and kept their conversations in the future books.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he stated that he had gotten very important clues in a single sentence. Howard Hawks said to him: “Always cut the movement and nobody will notice the cut.” It was a simple sentence, but it had a profound impact on everything I did.
Bogdanovich was a great idol to Welles. But Welles became a friend and sometimes a foe. Although they were a generation apart, they both shared the highs and the challenges of early success as well as the jealousies and complications that came with it. Based on conversations that he had with the older director dating back to 1969, the younger director published “This Is Orson Welles” in 1992. Bogdanovich also helped to finish and release Welles’ book “The Other Side of the Wind”, which was first published in 1970.
Scorsese wrote, “Right to the end he was fighting the art of cinematography and the people who made it,”
His Hollywood education began early. His father took him to see Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin movies at the Museum of Modern Art at age 5. Later, he would make his Keaton documentary, “The Great Buster,” that was released in 2018.
Bogdanovich and Platt married young and moved to Los Angeles in 1960s. They attended Hollywood parties and made friends with Frank Marshall (then an aspiring producer) who helped them get “Targets” off of the ground. The professional climb continued for the next films and many years. After “Paper Moon”, which Platt and Platt co-produced after their separation, he would not again win the praises of those five years in Hollywood.
Bogdanovich’s affair with Shepherd resulted in the end of his marriage with Platt. He shared with Platt daughters Antonia, Sashy, as well as a creative partnership. This scandal inspired the 1984 film “Irreconcilable Differents”. Later, he disputed the notion that Platt was an integral part to the early success of his films.
Shepherd would make two more films together, one based on Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” adaptation and one based on the musical “At Long Last Love,” which neither received a lot of praise from critics nor audiences.
He also missed out on important opportunities during his greatest successes. Vulture told him he rejected “Chinatown”, “The Godfather” and “The Exorcist”.
“Paramount called me and said that they had just purchased a Mario Puzo book called “The Godfather.” They wanted to know if I would consider directing it. He said this in an interview.
For things other than Bogdanovich’s movies, headlines would still be written about Bogdanovich. He had an affair with Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten in 1980 while directing “They All Laughed,” a romantic comedy starring Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara and Ben Gazzara. Paul Snider, her husband, killed her in August. Bogdanovich, in a 1984 novel titled “The Killing of the Unicorn”: Dorothy Stratten 1960-1980″, criticised Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire and its alleged involvement in events that he claimed ended in Stratten’s murder. Nine years later, he married Louise Stratten (her younger sister), who was only 20 at the time. Although they divorced in 2001, they continued to live together in Los Angeles with their mother.
Bogdanovich admitted to the AP that his relationships had a significant impact on his career in a 2020 interview.
Bogdanovich stated that “the whole thing about me personal life got in my way of people understanding the movies.” “This has been a problem that plagued me from the very first pictures.”
Despite some failures, Bogdanovich’s output was prolific in the 1980s & 1990s. These included a sequel to “The Last Picture Show,” “Texasville,” and “The Thing Called Love,” a country music romance drama about River Phoenix. In 2001, Bogdanovich released “The Cat’s Meow,” a film about a party on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht, starring Kirsten Dunst and Marion Davies. He co-wrote “She’s Funny that Way,” a comedy starring Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, and mixed reviews.
He wrote several books on movies over the years, including “Peter Bogdanovich’s Movie of the Week”, “Who the Devil Made It” and “Who the Hell’s In It: Conversations With Legendary Film Directors”.
Semi-frequently, he also acted, sometimes as himself in “Moonlighting” or “How I Met Your Mother”), and sometimes as other people like Dr. Elliot Kupferberg (The Sopranos). He also inspired a new generation, from Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach.
He told Vulture that he was called “Pop” by them and that he accepted it.
He was busy working on a TV show that was inspired by Dorothy Stratten at the time of the AP interview, which coincided with a podcast about Ben Mankiewicz’s career with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz. He wasn’t optimistic about cinema’s future.
“I just keep going,” he said. He laughed and said that television was not dead. “But movies might have a problem.”
Bogdanovich was still respectful of those who came before him, despite his Hollywood-sized ego.
He told The New York Times that he didn’t judge himself on the basis of his contemporaries in 1971. “I compare myself to the directors I admire — Hawks. Lubitsch. Buster Keaton. Welles. Ford. Renoir. Hitchcock. Although I don’t believe I’m as good as them, I do think I’m quite good.
