R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich

With the death of Peter Bogdanovich we have lost another link to the glorious distant past of American cinema. He did leave behind many treasurable interviews, essays and anecdotes regarding some of those he revered most - Cary Grant, James Stewart, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford among others as well as documentaries on Ford and Buster Keaton. The great director Bertrand Tavernier passed away in March last year and in some ways he was a similar figure in regard to French cinema and its history.

The first serious book on cinema that I acquired was 'This Is Orson Welles', a collection of interviews (edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum) that a young Peter Bogdanovich did with Welles from the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s. It was a present from my parents on a visit to a random bookshop in King's Lynn when I was a teenager. In the years since I've read it from cover to cover many times and my copy is thoroughly worn through and tattered but the personal significance and sentimental value of the thing is hard to overstate. For me, it makes a biography of Welles more or less redundant as it gives you a real sense of Welles's personality behind the maverick persona, his sense of humour, his views and passions and an insight in to the incredible life that he lived. Bogdanovich is often accused of being a sycophant when dealing with his heroes but he challenges Welles on certain topics and respectfully disagrees on key subjects. It comes across as an enlightening experience for both men. Alongside the likes of Oja Kodar, Gary Graver, Henry Jaglom, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum he was one of several loyal Welles associates and collaborators to whom we owe a great deal for the continuing interest in Welles's work and they were all important advocates of his later career, helping make much of it possible. 

In addition to the book on Welles I've greatly enjoyed 'Who the Devil Made It', a terrific collection of interviews that Bogdanovich did with top Hollywood directors like Don Siegel, Edgar G. Ulmer, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Allan Dwan, Leo McCarey, Howard Hawks and Robert Aldrich. 

There was a trend for film critics to try their hand at directing films in the 1960s, most notably the French New Wave crowd (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette & Chabrol) from the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento in Italy and Lindsay Anderson in the U.K. In the U.S. Bogdanovich's fellow Movie Brat Paul Schrader had also been a critic and published works on key figures in international cinema. Not long after the Welles book changed the way I thought about film I encountered Bogdanovich's astonishing 1968 debut feature Targets on a late night BBC 2 screening from the series Moviedrome, a showcase for cult movies with introductions by Alex Cox and subsequently, Mark Cousins. Some kind person shared a recording of the introduction on YouTube: 

In the pre-internet age, there was an incredible sense of discovery that came with seeing such films, either by chance, luck or through dedicated research and effort, trawling through TV schedules and old film guides. I had read about it being a tremendous late career highlight for its ageing star Boris Karloff, who had been one of my Horror idols ever since I first viewed Frankenstein. The film is something of an anomaly in Bogdanovich's output, and his later work would generally steer clear from violent themes. 

As a filmmaker he shared a cine-literate approach with some of his contemporaries such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme and like them and many other greats he served his apprenticeship under the legendary low budget director/producer/distributor Roger Corman, who produced Targets. It would be my introduction to the filmography of one of the most singular and erratic talents in modern American cinema. I'm greatly looking forward to the forthcoming BFI Blu-Ray disc of the film later in the year. 

Targets (1968)

Following his subsequent career has proved to be challenging at times (due to the unavailability of certain titles) but also hugely rewarding. In terms of critical and commercial success his career unquestionably peaked at an early stage. His sophomore film, The Last Picture Show, is still his best known and most celebrated. 

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Many have observed that his then-wife Polly Platt was a highly significant (and for a long time undervalued) creative collaborator in his early career, working in an official capacity as a production designer and co-writer but she played a crucial role in shaping those films in other respects such as casting, costumes and choice of material. Before their separation they worked together on two subsequent hits (What's Up Doc? and Paper Moon), both of which were tributes to films of yesteryear and that typified Bogdanovich's affinity with the past. 

His fortunes had shifted considerably by the mid-1970s after a trio of much derided flops (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon). These 3 titles are still on my "to watch" list as the received wisdom for decades afterwards was that they were all unmitigated disasters but in recent years there have been signs of a newfound appreciation for the first two of those mentioned. Proof perhaps that the internet is a great way for even the most despised films to have a second life. The divorce from Platt, relationships with the actress Cybill Shepherd and Playboy model Dorothy Stratten as well as the growing feeling that he had been a flash in the pan behind the camera attracted fierce criticism from both the press and fellow figures in the industry and seemed to be linked to his ever-growing misfortunes. Besides 1985's Mask he would never regain the prestige or success of his early work. His career has been all but written off by many at this stage, a casual dismissal that ignores or rejects numerous wonderful films. Perhaps being unburdened by the new whizzkid and "next Orson Welles" labels attached to him in his early efforts would allow Bogdanovich to produce some of his best work, often under troubled circumstances and rather sadly few seemed to notice.

Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1981), two of his finest films, fell completely under the radar due to legal troubles and botched distribution and were very difficult to see for long periods but are well worth seeking out. 

Saint Jack (1979)

They All Laughed (1981)

There's many other excellent films to his name that are overdue for a reappraisal including Noises Off... (1992 - for me the finest of his comedies), The Thing Called Love (1993) and The Cat's Meow (2001). All of these are testament to his great rapport and generosity with actors and it's worth remembering just how many performers did some of their best work under Bogdanovich's direction. Besides Academy Award winning performances by Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Tatum O'Neal in his films, the likes of John Ritter, Colleen Camp, Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott and Christopher Reeve all did tremendous character work and showcased their comic skills like never before when working with him.  

The Cat's Meow (2001)

In Texasville (1990) he returned to the setting and characters of The Last Picture Show with the sort of maturity and grace that seems to have gained currency in recent years in the films of such veterans as Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Nobuhiko Obayashi (Hanagatami), John Boorman (Queen and Country) and Clint Eastwood (The Mule, Cry Macho). Some saw it as symbolic of Bogdanovich's dwindling status but I find it to be an extremely sincere and moving followup. Of all the belated sequels to New Hollywood classics that appeared in 1990 (The Two Jakes, Rocky V, The Exorcist III, The Godfather Part III) it feels like the most erudite and poignant in relation to its predecessor. The film's reckoning with the past is filled with loss, regret and nostalgia but also an acceptance of the passage of time that harkens back to films like The Magnificent Ambersons, Lola Montes, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Robin and Marian. 

Texasville (1990)

New features became less frequent but each new addition to his filmography became a major event to fans like myself. The very existence of 2014's She's Funny That Way (much like James L. Brooks's How Do You Know (2010), Warren Beatty's The Rules Don't Apply (2016) and Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017)) feels like a miracle of sorts, a strange anachronism in the cinema of the 2010s, and there are now stories that Bogdanovich's preferred cut of the film (titled Squirrels to the Nuts) does in fact exist.* I've also heard about a longer cut of Texasville that was once available on Laserdisc. I'd love to see it get some sort of restoration. 

He was a tireless devotee of cinema even through personal tragedy, bankruptcy and scandal. His ongoing efforts to get Welles's final film The Other Side of the Wind put together and given a belated release (courtesy of Netflix) in 2018 in a strange way brought his career full circle. The same year he gave us his final work as a director, The Great Buster: A Celebration, an affectionate tribute to one of the icons of comedy and silent cinema. Bogdanovich's own life and career was a remarkable and at times troubling story in its own right, in which a film enthusiast turned critic would go on to become a notable film historian and director whose contribution to film culture is incalculable.

R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022)

Recommended links:

*James Kenney on the unreleased version of Bogdanovich's last film

2017 Q&A with Bogdanovich following a screening of They All Laughed (from metrograph.com)

Tribute by Joseph McBride (from WellesNet) 

Obituary by Glenn Kenny (from Decider.com)

Article by Kyle Smith (from National Review)

Tributes to Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

Peter Tonguette remembers Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

The Connection to Old Hollywood (from RogerEbert.com)

Peter Bogdanovich in memoriam (from The Pink Smoke podcast)

Peter Bogdanovich R.I.P. (from The Lamp magazine)

Peter Bogdanovich Recommends (YouTube Channel)

Peter Bogdanovich discusses David Fincher's film Mank (from Decider.com)

How Peter Bogdanovich shaped the backstory of modern cinema (from The New Yorker)

Bogdanovich responds to the 2012 Sight & Sound poll

Trivia:

Despite his doubts about the validity of conducting a survey of "the greatest films", Bogdanovich did contribute a ballot of his top ten films for the 1972 Sight & Sound poll. He mentioned that he had favourite directors rather than favourite films, as the list demonstrates:

• Young Mr. Lincoln (1939, John Ford)
• Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Howard Hawks)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
• Red River (1948, Howard Hawks)
• She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949, John Ford)
• The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
• Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
• Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
• Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)
• North by Northwest (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)

R.I.P. Stuart Gordon

I learned today about the death of director Stuart Gordon at the age of 72. A sadly undervalued filmmaker, his achievements were many and varied but he will be best remembered as a "Master of Horror" for his distinctive contributions to the genre. By striking contrast, his best known works are probably his gory 1985 feature debut Re-Animator and the 1989 Disney family comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids for which he co-wrote the story.

As a long time fan, it was bliss to experience the incredible run of films he made from 1998 to 2008, which remains one of the best streaks of any filmmaker I've encountered. I named him my #1 filmmaker of the 2000s for the extraordinary set of films he put out during that period. It was all the more frustrating then that there were no new films in the decade that followed or indeed for the rest of his career. There were rumoured projects but sadly nothing materialised and it would seem that funding for new works had become increasingly difficult to obtain. He would continue working however in theatre, where he had started his career as co-founder of the Organic Theatre in Chicago.

1968 was a landmark year for Stuart Gordon. It was the year he married his long term partner and collaborator, the actress Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (who would go on to make several unforgettable appearances in her husband's films), as well as making a controversial stage adaptation of 'Peter Pan', which got him arrested on obscenity charges. It was also the year of many groundbreaking films and he would later recall the seismic impact that that year's Rosemary's Baby and 2001: A Space Odyssey would have on him and how they made him aware of the possibilities of cinema.

As well as being an effective launchpad for his filmmaking career, Re-Animator would mark the first of five outstanding H.P. Lovecraft film adaptations that he made over a twenty year span. From Beyond (1986), Castle Freak (1995, based on the story 'The Outsider' but also containing aspects of 'The Rats in the Walls'), Dagon (2001, which, despite its title, mainly uses elements of 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth') and Dreams in the Witch House (2005) would follow. These films form a remarkable series and taken together as an achievement they represent a body of work in the field of Horror films worthy of comparison to Val Lewton's RKO cycle of the 1940s, the series of 'Frankenstein' films that Terence Fisher and Peter Cushing made for Hammer, Roger Corman's 1960s Poe adaptations, Roman Polanski's unofficial 'Apartment Trilogy' and George A. Romero's 'Living Dead' series. He had also planned to film versions of 'The Lurking Fear' and 'The Thing on the Doorstep' in the 1980s but sadly both will remain great unmade films. He was well aware of the unorthodox nature of his adaptations and the offence that it caused to purists but I feel that some of the more faithful Lovecraft adaptations that I've seen have only validated his approach. I will always owe Stuart Gordon a huge debt of gratitude for effectively being my introduction to Lovecraft's fiction.

Horror provided a fertile ground for his imagination. He embraced the Freudian aspects of the genre, fusing the "Body Horror" of David Cronenberg's early period and John Carpenter's The Thing with the cosmic dimension of Lovecraft's work. He also displayed a macabre wit, the only real precedent of which I can find is in James Whale's 1930s Universal Horror films and Gordon would cite 1935's Bride of Frankenstein as a personal favourite. His influence has become more apparent in recent times with films like Mandy and Richard Stanley's The Colour Out of Space displaying an evident affinity with Gordon's mid-1980s work, particularly the outrageous black humour and vibrant colour schemes of From Beyond.

While the "Master of Horror" label was well warranted it belies his versatility and he also produced notable work in other genres like science fiction, drama, thrillers, fantasy and comedy. One of his most interesting credits was for his work on the script of 1993's Body Snatchers, based on Jack Finney's novel and a Larry Cohen screenstory. He was originally set to direct the film but it was eventually made by Abel Ferrara. The film that resulted is excellent but I can't help wondering what Stuart Gordon's version would have been like. It was during a period where Gordon's career seemed to be moving towards the mainstream. At this point he was developing projects with Disney (eventually resulting in the sublime 1998 Ray Bradbury adaptation The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit) and would have a far larger budget than usual for the 1992 film Fortress, but he was clearly more comfortable working independently, with smaller crews and with lower budgets. In general his later films tended to get released directly to video/DVD or be made for television but this was in no way a reflection of their quality. He was very proud of his work on Dagon and once mentioned in an interview how frustrating it was that it never got a chance to find an audience in cinemas.

One of his great gifts was as an effective collaborator and his work showcased a remarkable range of talent with whom he worked on several occasions, including performers like Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Ezra Godden, screenwriter Dennis Paoli and cinematographer Mac Ahlberg. Producer Brian Yuzna would go on from their early works for Charles Band's Empire Pictures to launch his own career as a Horror director with 1989's Society. Gordon would also work alongside the novelist Charlie Higson (King of the Ants) and playwright David Mamet (Edmond) for adaptations of their work.

Another aspect of his talent was his ability to work miracles on shoestring budgets. The opportunity offered by the 2005 Showtime series 'Masters of Horror' to helm an episode allowed him to make two previously unrealised projects (Dreams in the Witch House and The Black Cat), effectively managing to whittle down planned feature films in to one hour TV movies. I consider his two contributions to the series to be perhaps the best of the lot and they made many of the other efforts look lazy and rushed by comparison. Taut and economical, his work demonstrated a lot of ingenuity that is sadly lacking in a lot of today's low budget genre fare. His last credited work as director, the 'Fear Itself' episode Eater (2008), was a terse and claustrophobic piece that displayed his mastery of tension, a relatively unheralded skill which was also very effectively demonstrated in 2007's Stuck. After this he tried for many years to get a film version of his stage play 'Nevermore' in to production but it was another frustratingly unrealised project.

In recent times we've lost several much revered genre filmmakers - George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and Larry Cohen have all passed away in the last 5 years. Stuart Gordon well and truly deserves a place alongside those greats. Long undervalued and generally regarded as a cult figure, I'd count him among the finest filmmakers in modern American cinema.

R.I.P. Stuart Gordon (1947-2020)


Recommended links:

Larry Fessenden Remembers Stuart Gordon
Talkhouse Film Contributors Remember Stuart Gordon
Stuart Gordon (1947-2020) on MediaBurn

Remembering Stuart Gordon

Gordon's Dozen

12 films that Stuart Gordon named as personal favourites:

Behind the Green Door (1972, Artie Mitchell)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)

Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)

8 1/2 (1963, Federico Fellini)

The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)

King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack) 

Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)

Rosemary's Baby (1968, Roman Polanski)

Satyricon (1969, Federico Fellini)

The Tingler (1959, William Castle)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)

sources: BFI, IndieWire

R.I.P. Tobe Hooper

Very sad to be posting again so soon on the death of another Horror icon. Tobe Hooper has died at the age of 74.

In the era following George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) several groundbreaking Horror films emerged from different regions across the USA and Canada including Last House on the Left (1972), Black Christmas (1974), It's Alive! (1974), Shivers (1975) and Halloween (1978). Key among these films was Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), the film with which he will be forever associated.

The standard narrative on Hooper's career is that after a strong beginning his career repeatedly stalled and eventually trailed off. This assessment has rarely been altered or challenged but it's a view that I've always rejected. Many have lazily written off Hooper's career, even suggesting that Chain Saw was a fluke. While it's true that few films have come close to matching Chain Saw's assault on the senses, its eccentricity and unorthodox brilliance were very much in evidence throughout his filmography. He rarely enjoyed the same level of freedom or control that he had on his seminal shocker.  While mainstream success often eluded him and he became a more marginal figure his career developed in interesting ways. It was often fraught with battles with producers, distributors, studios and censors.

A lifelong film buff, Hooper saw Texas Chain Saw as a calling card to a Hollywood career. It didn't quite transpire that way but in the decade that followed he delivered what now seems like an extraordinary run of films, starting with the deranged, EC comics-style chiller Eaten Alive (1976). The remarkable TV movie Salem's Lot (1979), about a quiet New England town overrun by vampires was one of his greatest achievements and remains one of the best Stephen King adaptations. The Funhouse (1981) was a sly take on the burgeoning slasher film of the early 1980s. Hooper seemed to achieve the mainstream breakthrough he craved with the 1982 blockbuster Poltergeist. However controversy surrounding the picture remains to this day over authorship of the picture, with some attributing the success of the film to producer and co-writer Steven Spielberg and there were even claims that Spielberg unofficially directed the film.

A 3 picture deal in the mid-1980s with the Cannon Film Group seemed like a promising development but the deal would soon turn sour. The first effort was the extraordinary sci-fi/Horror Lifeforce (1985). Like many Hooper films it would later find its audience on home video and become a cult classic. It was followed by a remake of the 1953 B-movie Invaders from Mars (1986) and the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), a sequel that confounded many with its overt black humour, satire and notably more graphic violence than its predecessor. Working with larger budgets and crews these three pictures showcased some of Hooper's most audacious and imaginative work but sadly the fallout from these pictures would effectively mark the end of his career as a mainstream filmmaker.

To my mind the combination of hostility and indifference that greeted his later films does reveal an underlying conservatism amidst Horror fans. He had an "anything goes" approach to Horror and redefined the genre by subverting its rules or ignoring them completely. The films hinted at brave new horizons for the genre that sadly few chose to pursue. His use of framing, lighting and decor were all part of his strong visual punch that transcended the sometimes schlocky concepts behind his work. For me the film that best exemplifies this is 1990's Spontaneous Combustion which strikes me as one of his finest works, although it was inevitably panned on release. I was pleased to hear it being championed by Japanese Horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who included it as one of his selections for lacinetek.

Television work provided a refuge at several times in Hooper's career. Notable credits include the TV movie I'm Dangerous Tonight, episodes of Tales from the Crypt, Amazing Stories, Night Visions, Freddy's Nightmares and a segment of the John Carpenter anthology film Body Bags (1993).

After the career low point of Crocodile (2000) the 21st century would see a resurgence for Hooper. He reteamed with Spielberg for the opening episode of the TV show Taken in 2002. The 2003 remake of Chain Saw by Marcus Nispel (a passable slasher film) arguably helped raised his profile after years of neglect (Salem's Lot would be remade in 2004 and Poltergeist in 2015). He was also championed by a younger generation of Horror directors, most prominently Rob Zombie and Eli Roth. Hooper bounced back in 2004 with a remake (in name only) of the 1970s exploitation flick Toolbox Murders, a slasher film with supernatural overtones that had the benefit of a terrific cast including Angela Bettis, Juliet Landau, Marco Rodriguez, Greg Travis & Rance Howard. The atmospheric zombie film Mortuary (2005) followed along with two episodes of 'Masters of Horror' Dance of the Dead and The Damned Thing. He showed himself to be open to new challenges in the later stages of his career, writing the novel Midnight Movie and his final film Djinn (2013) was made in the United Arab Emirates.

His career trajectory, going from a notorious breakthrough work to Hollywood exile, earned comparisons with Orson Welles and there are some striking parallels between the two. Like Welles there are neglected works that have been rediscovered (thanks to some terrific special edition DVDs/Blu-Rays from labels such as Arrow and Shout Factory) and previously unavailable offerings such as his early short film The Heisters (1963) and feature debut Eggshells (1969) have been restored and made available to new audiences.

Hooper's films have meant a great deal to me at different times of my life. As a young Horror fan I had a poster of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 on my bedroom wall. Having been a proud advocate of that film for many years it's been nice to see its reputation has steadily grown over time. I would frequently trawl through the video stalls at markets in the 1990s looking for VHS copies of Hooper's rarer work - an early 1980s precert copy of The Funhouse was a much cherished find, as well as ex-rental copies of two films he made with Robert Englund - Night Terrors and The Mangler. At the start of the 21st century when the DVD format revolutionised home entertainment one of the first discs I purchased was Lifeforce - the version featured was a longer cut than the one that had been previously available. In 2004 I made a special trip to London to see Toolbox Murders at the Prince Charles Cinema as part of Frightfest. As I've grown more accustomed to streaming films it was with great delight last year that I was at last able to see his final feature Djinn online more than three years after it was first screened.

Although he was often mentioned alongside fellow North American genre masters such as George A. Romero, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg and John Carpenter I feel he was in some ways closer to European directors such as Jacques Tourneur, Mario Bava, Roman Polanski and Dario Argento with his macabre humour, surreal flourishes and brilliant control of atmospherics. Hooper understood that Horror was as much about shadows, mist, broken mirrors and old dark houses as it was about monsters. He was a frequently maligned and misunderstood filmmaker whose reputation rested on a small quantity of his output but for me his entire oeuvre has been a source of endless fascination and rewards.

R.I.P. Tobe Hooper (1943-2017)

Recommended reading:

'Dear Tobe' by Patrick Bromley

R.I.P. George A. Romero

Heard the sad news this morning. The legendary director George A. Romero has died at the age of 77. One of the great icons of Horror and American Independent cinema, I've been a huge fan of his work since my teenage years. He made many great films starting with his extraordinary debut, the classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its various sequels.

Subsequent features include the suburban witchcraft tale Season of the Witch (1972), paranoia/contagion chiller The Crazies (1973), the remarkable modern vampire tale Martin (1978 - my own personal favourite), cult oddity Knightriders (1981) - which he regarded as his most personal film, the EC comic-style anthology Creepshow (1982) on which he collaborated with fellow Horror legend Stephen King, suspense tale Monkey Shines (1988) and the revenge thriller Bruiser (2000).

His career had many setbacks. There was a long period of inactivity during the 1990s where he spent most of the decade in development Hell and would only make one feature (1993's The Dark Half), which created a frustrating gap in his filmography. He had a fraught relationship with Hollywood studios over unrealised projects - including a Poe adaptation with Isabella Rossellini and rejected scripts for a Resident Evil film and a new version of The Mummy, both of which would be eventually made by other hands. Despite his fondness for the genre and his cult following he was never able to escape his being typecast as a 'Horror director', to his occasional frustration. His last 3 films (Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009)) were all returns to the zombie series that made his reputation. They allowed him the free-reign and creative control that he fought hard to maintain throughout his career.

I got a chance to see Romero in London at the UK premiere of Land of the Dead in 2005 and it was a huge thrill. I still feel that film has never got its due recognition and was ahead of its time with its focus on growing inequality and social divides in the 21st century. He brought humour, satire, thought provoking social commentary and a sharp and distinctive eye for human frailties to his films. Discovering his output in the early years of my cinephilia was a huge deal for me and more than any other filmmaker made me aware of the vast possibilities of Horror cinema. I really felt like I'd found a kindred spirit through his work.

A fearless maverick, an undisputed Horror icon and a true inspiration. Thank you George Romero for your incredible body of work and the indelible impression it has left on me and countless other filmgoers.

R.I.P. George A. Romero (1940-2017)