58 Facts About Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian.

Peter Bogdanovich started out his career as a young actor studying under Stella Adler before working as a film critic for Film Culture and Esquire and finally becoming a prominent filmmaker of the New Hollywood movement.

Peter Bogdanovich received accolades including a BAFTA Award and Grammy Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.

Peter Bogdanovich directed documentaries such as Directed by John Ford and The Great Buster: A Celebration.

Peter Bogdanovich received a Grammy Award for Best Music Film for directing Runnin' Down a Dream, a documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Peter Bogdanovich published numerous books, some of which include in-depth interviews with friends Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles.

Peter Bogdanovich's works have been cited as important influences by many major filmmakers.

Peter Bogdanovich was born in Kingston, New York, the son of Herma and Borislav Bogdanovich, a pianist and painter.

Peter Bogdanovich's father was of Serbian descent and his mother was of Austrian Jewish descent.

Peter Bogdanovich was fluent in Serbian, having learned it before English.

In 1952, when he was twelve, Peter Bogdanovich began keeping a record of every film he saw on index cards, complete with reviews; he continued to do so until 1970.

Peter Bogdanovich saw up to four hundred films a year.

Peter Bogdanovich graduated from New York City's Collegiate School in 1957 and studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory.

Peter Bogdanovich brought attention to Allan Dwan, a pioneer of American film who had fallen into obscurity by then, in a 1971 retrospective Dwan attended.

In 1966, following the example of Cahiers du Cinema critics Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer, who had created the Nouvelle Vague by making their own films, Peter Bogdanovich decided to become a director.

Intent on breaking into the industry, Peter Bogdanovich would ask publicists for movie premiere and industry party invitations.

At one screening, Peter Bogdanovich was viewing a film and director Roger Corman was sitting behind him.

Peter Bogdanovich worked with Corman on Targets, which starred Boris Karloff, and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, under the pseudonym Derek Thomas.

Peter 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.

In 1970, Peter Bogdanovich was commissioned by the American Film Institute to direct a documentary about John Ford for their tribute, Directed by John Ford.

The 32-year-old Peter Bogdanovich was hailed by critics as a "Wellesian" wunderkind when his best-received film, The Last Picture Show, was released in 1971.

Peter Bogdanovich co-wrote the screenplay with Larry McMurtry, and it won the 1971 BAFTA award for Best Screenplay.

Peter Bogdanovich cast the 21-year-old model Cybill Shepherd in a major role in the film and fell in love with her, an affair leading to his divorce from Polly Platt, his longtime artistic collaborator and the mother of his two daughters.

Peter Bogdanovich then formed The Directors Company with Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin and co-owned by Paramount Pictures.

The Directors Company subsequently produced only two more pictures, Coppola's The Conversation, and Peter Bogdanovich's Cybill Shepherd vehicle, Daisy Miller, which had a lackluster critical reception and was a disappointment at the box office.

Peter Bogdanovich's next effort, At Long Last Love, was a musical starring Shepherd and Burt Reynolds.

Peter Bogdanovich then took a few years off, then returned to directing with a lower-budgeted film, Saint Jack, which was filmed in Singapore and starred Ben Gazzara in the title role.

Peter Bogdanovich took over distribution of They All Laughed himself.

Peter Bogdanovich later blamed this for his filing for bankruptcy in 1985.

Peter Bogdanovich declared he had a monthly income of $75,000 and monthly expenses of $200,000.

Peter Bogdanovich opposed the production and refused to allow the film to use his name.

Peter Bogdanovich was portrayed as the fictional "Aram Nicholas", and he threatened litigation if he found the character objectionable.

Shortly after, Hefner accused Peter Bogdanovich of seducing Stratten's younger sister Louise when she was 13.

On December 30,1988, the 49-year-old Peter Bogdanovich married 20-year-old Louise, sparking a tabloid frenzy.

Peter Bogdanovich had wanted to make I'll Remember April with Cassavetes and The Lady in the Moon written with Larry McMurtry, but returned to directing officially with Mask, which was released in 1985 to critical acclaim and strong box office returns.

Peter Bogdanovich later disowned the film, saying he had "high hopes for it", but that it had been completely re-cut by Dino De Laurentiis, the film's distributor.

In 1990, Peter Bogdanovich adapted Larry McMurtry's novel Texasville, a sequel to The Last Picture Show, into a film.

Peter Bogdanovich often complained that the version of Texasville that was released was not the film he had intended.

Peter Bogdanovich's cut of Texasville was later released on LaserDisc, and the theatrical cut was released on DVD by MGM in 2005.

In 1991, Peter Bogdanovich developed an alternative calendar, titled A Year and a Day: Goddess Engagement Calendar.

Peter Bogdanovich attributed his inspiration for the calendar to the works of Robert Graves.

Peter Bogdanovich directed two more theatrical films in 1992 and 1993, but neither film recaptured the success of his early career.

In 2001, Peter Bogdanovich resurfaced with The Cat's Meow, his return to a reworking of the past, this time the alleged killing of director Thomas Ince by William Randolph Hearst.

Peter Bogdanovich said that he was told the story of the alleged Ince murder by Welles, who in turn said he heard it from writer Charles Lederer.

Peter Bogdanovich had a voice role, as Bart Simpson's therapist's analyst in an episode of The Simpsons, and appeared as himself in the "Robots Versus Wrestlers" episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Peter Bogdanovich hosted introductions to movies on Criterion Collection DVDs, and had a supporting role in the critically praised mini-series Out of Order.

In 2010, Peter Bogdanovich joined the directing faculty at the School of Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

In 2012, Peter Bogdanovich made news with an essay in The Hollywood Reporter, published in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, in which he argued against excessive violence in the movies:.

In 2018, Orson Welles' long-delayed film The Other Side of the Wind, which was filmed in the 1970s and featured a prominent supporting role by Peter Bogdanovich, who had long hoped to complete it, was released by Netflix to critical acclaim.

One of his final hopes was to direct a personal passion project he had worked on since the 1980s titled Wait for Me which Peter Bogdanovich had described as a "ghost picture", the likes of The Ghost Goes West, that was directly inspired by his relationship with Dorothy Stratten.

Peter Bogdanovich collaborated with Turner Classic Movies, and host Ben Mankiewicz, to create a documentary podcast about his life, which premiered in 2020.

Weeks before his death, Peter Bogdanovich collaborated with Kim Basinger to create LIT Project 2: Flux, a first of its kind short film made available on the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible token.

Peter Bogdanovich wrote an as-yet unreleased book called Five American Icons featuring long interviews with Arthur Miller, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood, and was working on developing a new screenplay, with the help of author Sam Kashner, titled Our Love Is Here to Stay about composers George and Ira Gershwin.

Stratten noted that, prior to his death, Peter Bogdanovich had completed his memoirs, which he wanted to call All I Wanna Do is Direct.

Peter Bogdanovich died from complications of Parkinson's disease at his home in Toluca Lake, on January 6,2022, at the age of 82.

Peter Bogdanovich's work has been cited as an influence by such filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Richard Linklater, Edgar Wright, Brett Ratner, M Night Shyamalan, David O Russell, James Mangold, Jon Watts, Rian Johnson, and the Safdie brothers.

Editors who have collaborated with Bogdanovich include Verna Fields, William C Carruth and Richard Fields.

Peter Bogdanovich appeared in dozens of film documentaries and featurettes, and recorded many home video audio commentaries for his own films and others.