bonaventurer:

Directed by John Ford (1971)

(via bbook)

oldfilmsflicker:

Directed By John Ford, 2006 (dir. Peter Bogdanovich)

(via moviemeatloaf)

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bbook:

At Long Last Love — Peter Bogdanovich’s homage to 1930s Hollywood musicals, starring Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd — was famously savaged by critics when released in March of 1975, to the point where it was very quickly pulled from theatres to minimise damage. A response soon materialised from Bogdanovich in the form of the following open letter, printed as a half-page ad in newspapers across the land.

1928: The Last and Greatest Year of the Original Motion Picture Art, B.S. (Before Sound) ›

The Art of Buster Keaton by Peter Bogdanovich ›

In June, 1960, when Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (available on DVD) first opened in New York, neither the public nor the press had any idea what it was about. Contrary to all accepted policy, there were no advance screenings, and no synopsis or story outline was supplied to critics or reporters. The very first time the media saw the movie was the same morning the public did—-the 10:00 a.m. running at the (now long gone) DeMille Theater at 47th Street and Broadway. One thousand eager paying customers filled the downstairs, and five hundred members of the press were in the balcony—-myself included. It was the single most memorable performance of a film I’ve ever attended. Not the most pleasant one.

It is difficult—-now that Psycho has been studied, endlessly imitated, sequelled four times, remade “officially” in 1998, been available for home viewing over three decades, and talked about incessantly for fifty years—-to imagine the impact the picture had in its first few months of life. This inexpensive (less than a million) black-and-white little film not only changed the way people went to see movies—-no one was allowed in after the feature had begun, an unheard of idea then—-but permanently altered the experience itself. Psycho was the first time movie-going stopped being safe. Psycho was a physical assault.

Blogdanovich ›

I remember introducing Gable to William Faulkner. We were going hunting. They didn’t know each other, and I didn’t tell either one of them who the other was. So we were talking and somehow the conversation got around to writers, and Gable said, ‘Well, who do you think are the best writers in the world?’ and Faulkner said, ‘Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann—and myself.’ And Gable said, ‘Oh, do you write, Mr. Faulkner?’ And Bill said, ‘Yes. And what do you do, Mr. Gable?’

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“If you don’t think that was a hard one to make! Oh, that goddamn leopard—and then the dog, running around with the bone. Katie and Cary had a scene in which he said, ‘What happened to the bone?’ And she said, ‘It’s in the box,’ or something like that. Well, they started to laugh—it was ten o’clock in the morning—and at four o’clock in the afternoon we were still trying to make this scene and I didn’t think we were ever going to get it. I tried changing the line. It didn’t do any good—they’d still laugh at the thing. They were just putting dirty connotations on it and then they’d go off into peals of laughter.”

—Howard Hawks on shooting Bringing Up Baby (1938), as quoted by Peter Bogdanovich in Who the Devil Made It

• Peter Bogdanovich: "Were you influenced by Keaton? Your picture's don't look like his, but I've always thought the two of you had a similar sense of style and pace and humor."
• Howard Hawks: "Oh, I enjoyed Keaton. We were friends. He'd so strange thing and I learned a lot from watching his pictures. I had a new dog--a great big police dog--and Keaton was holding on to the dog and the dog wanted to go away and Keaton kept holding on to him, so the dog finally looked at his leg and urinated all over it. Keaton just stared at the dog, went upstairs and got an umbrella, put the umbrella up and said, 'Okay, dog, come on over here.' Without ever changing the expression on his face at all."

She was such a character, just marvelous. She came to me one day and said, ‘What’ll I do?—[studio head Harry] Cohn’s making passes at me.’ I said, ‘Do you want to really fix it?’ She said, ‘Yes,’ so we planned out something: I was in Cohn’s office talking with him, having a very serious discussion, and she just busted through the door and said, ‘I’ve decided to say “Yes,”’ and she began as though she were going to remove her clothes. And he said, ‘Now, wait a minute!’ She said, ‘I thought you—’ and I said, ‘I better get out of here if this is the kind of studio you run.’ And he said, ‘Now, wait a minute, don’t go!’ She said, ‘Well, make up your mind,’ and he said, ‘Just get out of here!’ And she said, ‘All right,’ and never had any more trouble with him after that.

In America sex is preached; in France it is done.

The Elevator Story

"Well, it was a quite shocking, I must say -- there was blood
everywhere!" Alfred Hitchcock began suddenly from the rear of the
elevator.  We were in the New York St. Regis Hotel, heading down to the
lobby. There was as light flush to his cheeks from the several frozen
dauquiris he had just drunk in his suite. The elevator had just stopped
and 3 people dressed for the evening had joined us, and immediately Mr.
Hitchcock had started to speak, sounding as though he were in
midsentence and projecting in that careful and familiar TV tone of his.

He went on, "There was as stream of blood coming from his ear
and another from his mouth.

The people had recognized him immediately, but now they seemed
purposely to avoid looking at him. He went right on, gazing beatifically
ahead of him as the elevator stopped again and another well-dressed
couple came aboard: "Of course, there was a huge pool of blood on the
floor and his clothes were spattered with it -- Oh, it was a horrible 
mess."

No one on the elevator, it seemed, was breathing. "Blood all
around! Well, I looked at the poor man and and I said, 'Good God, What
happened to you?'" At that point the elevator doors opened onto the
lobby, and Hitchcock said, "Do you know what he told me?" and then
paused. After a moment, and quite reluctantly, the other passengers 
moved out of the elevator and then looked back at the director as we 
walked away.

After several foggy moments, I asked, "Well, what DID he say?"
and Hitchcock smiled benevolently, taking my arm, and said, "Oh,
nothing -- that's just my elevator story."

--as quoted in Who The Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich

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I’m reading Bogdanovich’s book Who The Devil Made It right now and that elevator story is the preface to the Hitchcock section. I’d post it if it wasn’t so lengthy. Amazing story. Classic Hitch.