Mini biography

Peter Bogdanovich _{(July 30, 1939 - January 6, 2022)}

Peter Bogdanovich (born July 30, 1939, died January 6, 2022) was an American film director who made a number of major films from the 1960s onwards.

Bogdanovich was the son of immigrants fleeing Nazi Europe, and he began his career as an actor and film writer. He began directing films under the influence of the French New Wave. Roger Corman gave Bogdanovich his first job.

“It's a misconception about acting that it's a practice in pretending to be someone else. It's actually a practice in finding the character within yourself.”

In 1966, following the example of Cahiers du Cinéma critics François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer, who had created the Nouvelle Vague ("New Wave") by making their own films, Bogdanovich decided to become a director.

Encouraged by director Frank Tashlin, whom he would interview in his book Who the Devil Made It, Bogdanovich headed for Los Angeles with his wife Polly Platt and in so doing, left his rent unpaid.

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 director Roger Corman was sitting behind him. The two struck up a conversation when Corman mentioned he liked a cinema piece Bogdanovich wrote for Esquire. Corman offered him a directing job, which Bogdanovich accepted immediately.

He worked with Corman on Targets, which starred Boris Karloff, and Voyage 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."

Returning to journalism, Bogdanovich struck up a lifelong friendship with Orson Welles while interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichols's Catch-22 (1970). Bogdanovich played a major role in elucidating Welles and his career with his writings on the actor-director, most notably his book This is Orson Welles (1992). In the early 1970s, when Welles was having financial problems, Bogdanovich let him stay at his Bel Air mansion for a couple of years.

In 1970, Bogdanovich was commissioned by the American Film Institute to direct a documentary about John Ford for their tribute, Directed by John Ford (1971). The resulting film included candid interviews with John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, and was narrated by Orson Welles.

Out of circulation for years due to licensing issues, Bogdanovich and TCM released it in 2006, re-edited it to make it "faster and more incisive", with additional interviews with Clint Eastwood, Walter Hill, Harry Carey Jr., Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and others.

Especially his films from the 1970s, such as Last Performance (1971), You are the top, professor! (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), are popular. He continued to write about movies as well as starring in movies throughout his life.

In 2004, he directed an episode of The Sopranos.


Filmography

Selected films:

     Sniper (1968)
     The Last Picture Show (1971)
     What's Up, Doc? (1972)
     Paper Moon (1973)
     Masks (1985)
     Texasville (1990)
     Infamous (2006)

Director - Selected filmography

1. Paper Moon (1973)
   
2. What's Up, Doc? (1972)
   
3. The Last Picture Show (1971)