Peter Bogdanovich, who is celebrating his 82nd birthday today, Orson Welles, Tom Petty, Buster Keaton are all favorites here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Here's Peter, interviewed at the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival by Ben Mankiewicz.
Bogdanovich was a close friend of Orson, wrote a book about him, and became quite the expert on Welles' movies.
The prolific director, producer, writer, actor, author and film historian has moved skillfully into the world of podcasts. Here's Peter Bogdanovich on WTF with Marc Maron.
Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast did a fantastic interview with Peter a few years ago. IMHO, it's still one of this podcast's all-time best episodes.
Also terrific: Peter's appearance on Ileana Douglas' podcast.
Eventually, Peter did his own podcast, The Plot Thickens, for Turner Classic Movies. Here's episode one.
And then there's The Other Side Of The Wind, the last movie Orson Welles made, completed and painstakingly reconstructed, much due to the efforts of Peter Bogdanovich, Frank Marshall, Netflix, intrepid production crews and archivist "film detectives."
It is a very psychedelic era influenced piece, in which Orson absorbed the latest ideas from independent filmmakers and the French New Wave, many of which he inspired in the first place. Fellow director John Huston stars.
On Trailers From Hell, which is definitely on the short list of our favorite YouTube channels, director Joe Dante offers his reaction to seeing The Other Side Of The Wind.
While Bogdanovich is known in particular for the many feature films he directed from the late 1960's through the 1990's, he has made some terrific documentaries, notably Runnin' Down A Dream, spotlighting Tom Petty, his life and music (with Mudcrutch and The Heartbreakers) and The Great Buster: A Celebration.
Devoted a blog post to The Great Buster's 2018 release.
As many of us need laughs big time, it's fabulous that loving tributes to 20th century comedy heroes (Love, Gilda and Stan & Ollie among them) have been produced and are now opening in festivals and movie theaters. Doubly pleased to hear that Peter Bogdanovich, one of our favorite film historian authors and movie directors, has made a documentary, The Great Buster: A Celebration, about the one, the only Buster Keaton.
Does this pique the interest of those at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog (even if we're not quite as deadpan as Buster)?
YES! Seeing Buster's 1922 film Cops on television's "Silents Please" was the experience that instantaneously made this writer an avid film buff and a Buster Keaton fan for life. The official press release elaborates:
The Great Buster celebrates the life and career of one of America’s most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians, Buster Keaton, whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.
Filled with stunningly restored archival Keaton films from the Cohen Film Classics library, The Great Buster is directed by Peter Bogdanovich, a filmmaker and cinema historian whose landmark writings and films on such renowned directors as John Ford and Orson Welles have become the standard by which all other studies are measured.
Keaton’s beginnings on the vaudeville circuit are chronicled in The Great Buster, as is the development of his trademark physical comedy and deadpan expression that earned him the lifelong moniker of “The Great Stone Face”, all of which led to his career-high years as the director, writer, producer and star of his own short films and features.
Interspersed throughout are interviews with nearly two-dozen collaborators, filmmakers, performers and friends, including Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, Dick van Dyke and Johnny Knoxville, who discuss Keaton’s influence on modern comedy and, indeed, cinema itself.
The loss of artistic independence and career decline that marked his later years are also covered by Bogdanovich, before he casts a close eye on Keaton’s extraordinary output from 1923 to 1929, which yielded 10 remarkable feature films (including 1926’s The General and 1928’s Steamboat Bill, Jr.) that immortalized him as one of the greatest actor-filmmakers in the history of cinema.
The Great Buster: A Celebration was an Official Selection for the 2018 Venice, Telluride, Mill Valley and L.A. Film Festivals.
This is not the first comprehensive documentary about the legendary and innovative movie career of The Great Stone Face. Atop the list of documentaries we'd love to see on DVD or Blu-ray would be the sensational Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow, created by Kevin Brownlow and the late David Gill for Photoplay Productions.
Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow is one of the great documentaries about movies. Was floored upon first viewing it on PBS on its original airing, and hope that other Brownlow & Gill films (Hollywood, Unknown Chaplin, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius and Cinema Europe) will eventually see a DVD or Blu-ray release. It's too bad Mr. Brownlow, an expert among experts in the field, is not among those involved in the new documentary. Have watched all the Brownlow and Gill documentaries. This one on Buster is one of those documentaries that demands repeated viewings.
Positives? #1 - The Great Buster: A Celebration will not be strictly a straight-to-DVD proposition. It is now hitting the festival circuit and will open in select theatres. #2 - Any attention to the filmmaking genius of Buster Keaton, over 50 years after his death, is to be commended. Negatives? The emphasis on celebrities and big names over experts on silent movies and Buster Keaton's films, no doubt with high hopes to attract young viewers and inspire people who are not classic movie buffs to learn more: all understandable, albeit annoying to silent movie aficionados and film geeks such as this correspondent.
