Bogdanovich, Peter

Screenwriters and Preston Sturges

In the greenhouse of film scholarship, the controversy goes on: is the writer or the director more the author of a film? The trouble with the discussion is that someone is always trying to make it a general rule, and, as in anything, there are no absolutes. It’s as absurd to conclude that a director is always the guy, as it is to parrot Shakespeare and insist that “the play’s the thing.” Paddy Chayefsky and Neil Simon, to take a couple of modern examples, are both fairly dominating writers, and I’d be the first to agree that from Marty through The Hospital, Chayefsky is as much the key figure as Simon is on pictures like The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite or Barefoot in the Park. The directors of these movies are basically in the service of the screenwriter, and their personalities, if they have any to express, are kept firmly in check.

Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich, in the wised-up but morally clueless view of the international showbiz media, is generally seen as a figure from the California branch of modern Greek tragedy, where early hubris is punished first by nemesis and then by oblivion, in the form of the lecture circuit and guest appearances on daytime talk shows. The facts would be to the contrary even if Bogdanovich, in later life, had not made several films which at least match the standard of those in his early winning streak from The Last Picture Show onwards.

Ernst Lubitsch

I was speaking with Jack Benny the other day and he toldme about working with Ernst Lubitsch. The director had called Benny in 1939 and asked if he'd be available to do a film. "I said, 'I'll do it!' And he said, 'But you haven't read the script?' And I said, 'I don't have to read the script. If you want me for a picture, I want to be in it!' I'd have been an idiot to say anything else. It was always impossible for comedians like me or Hope to get a good director for a movie – that's why we made lousy movies – and here was Ernst Lubitsch, for God's sake, calling to ask if I'd do a picture with him. Who cares what the script is!"

Cary Grant

Cary Grant was the first superstar I ever met. It was an odd experience, walking into an office at Universal – this was in 1961 – and confronting a man who didn’t know me but whom I’d known for as long as I could remember. He’d just come out of a long story conference, his hair was messy, he hadn’t shaved for a day or so, and his dark slacks and white shirt looked as though he’d slept in them. Clifford Odets was a mutual friend – he was still alive then – and he had asked Cary to see me, so we talked about Clifford for a while, and I don’t remember a word of what was said. My mind was flooded with images from all the Cary Grant movies I’d seen – and I had this uncanny desire to be terribly honest and open with the man, at the same time realizing this might easily put him off.