51 Facts About Peter Bogdanovich

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

Peter Bogdanovich started his career as a film critic for Film Culture and Esquire before becoming a film director in 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 received a Grammy Award for Best Music Film for directing the Tom Petty documentary Runnin' Down a Dream.

Peter Bogdanovich published over ten 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 a Serbian descent and his mother was of Austrian Jewish.

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, including his book This is Orson Welles.

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-starring 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 Gazzarra in the title role.

Peter Bogdanovich later blamed this for why he had to file for bankruptcy in 1985.

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

Teresa Carpenter's "Death of a Playmate" article about Dorothy Stratten's murder was published in The Village Voice and won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize, and while Peter Bogdanovich did not criticize Carpenter's article in his book, she had lambasted both Peter Bogdanovich and Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner, claiming that Stratten was a victim of them as much as of her husband, Paul Snider, who killed her and himself.

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.

Hefner retaliated by accusing Peter Bogdanovich of seducing Stratten's younger sister Louise, shortly after the murder, 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 returned to directing officially with Mask, released in 1985 to critical acclaim.

Peter Bogdanovich directed the comedy Illegally Yours in 1988, a film he later disowned.

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 of these films recaptured the success of his early career.

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 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:.

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

In 2020, a copy of Peter Bogdanovich's original cut of She's Funny That Way, originally titled Squirrels to the Nuts, was found on eBay.

Weeks before his death in January 2022, 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 died from complications of Parkinson's disease at his home in Los Angeles 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, Edgar Wright, M Night Shyamalan, David O Russell, James Mangold, Rian Johnson, and the Safdie brothers.