Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 107. Peter Bogdanovich

Episode Date: June 13, 2016

Legendary director, critic and film historian Peter Bogdanovich joins Gilbert and Frank for a fascinating, in-depth conversation about "Citizen Kane," John Ford, the influence of Howard Hawks, the B-movies of Roger Corman and the decline of the Hollywood studio system. Also, Peter befriends Cary Grant, Gilbert meets Richard Pryor, Jimmy Stewart recites a poem and Alfred Hitchcock orders a steak. PLUS: Samuel Fuller! Kenneth Mars! Orson Welles' lost film! Peter remembers John Ritter! And the strange death of Thomas Ince! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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19 plus. Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connexontario.ca. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney+. In Season 3, Carmi and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star. With Golden Globe and Emmy wins, the show starring Jeremy Allen White,

Io Debrey, and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording at Nutmeg Post with our engineer, Frank Verderosa. Our guest this week is an actor, writer, producer, film historian, and one of the most recognizable and respected film directors of the last five decades. As an actor, he's appeared in the films Opening Night, 54, and Infamous. TV shows include Law & Order, The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother, and The Sopranos

in the reoccurring role of therapist Elliot Gufraberg. Close enough. He's also an accomplished author of dozens of articles and several books on film criticism and history, including Pieces of Time, Who the Devil Made It, Who the Hell's In It, Fritz Lang in America, and Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week. He also enjoyed personal relationships with many of the screen legends he wrote about, including Cary Grant, Howard Hawks, Jimmy Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles. He's also been known for directing the acclaimed films like Paper Moon, What's Up Doc, Mask, Targets, directed by John Ford. They all laughed, St. Jack and The Last Picture Show.

And if that's not enough, he also happens to do a terrific impression of Walter Brennan. Please welcome to the show one of our favorite filmmakers and raconteurs, Peter Bogdanovich. Thank you for that lovely introduction, Gottfried. I should do Walter Brennan now, but I don't know if I can. I just ate. Save it for later in the show, Peter. Okay. A few years ago, I was offered a part in a movie that was going to be the next Gene Wyler, Richard Pryor

comedy. And they had made a series of successful films. And it was going to be directed by Peter Bogdanovich. And I thought, you know, Wyler, Pryor, Bogdanovich, what could go wrong? And tell us how the movie came together and what happened to it. Well, it really, my agent sent me a script and he was representing Gene Wilder. And he asked me to read it and see if I thought it'd be good for Gene. And I read it and I thought, well, I don't know if they'll make it with Gene, but if we added Richard Pryor to the package, maybe they'd be interested. Anyway, I spoke to the head of the TriStar, I think it was,

and he said, I'm not going to make a picture with Gene Wilder. I said, what if I add Richard Pryor? He said, well, then we'll do it. So we got Richard and the picture went forward. And the script needed a lot of work. It needed more work than I thought it did when we started shooting, but we were pressed to keep get going. And then Gene Wilder and I didn't get along, mainly because I devoted most of my energy to Richard Pryor because Richard had MS and needed careful attention. But Gene got a little jealous, I think. a little jealous, I think. And eventually, I think he pretty much campaigned to have me fired and succeeded. That was a film called Another You, right?

Yes, yeah. And they brought in another director. Unfortunately, luckily, they didn't use any of my footage. I say luckily because the picture turned out to be so bad that I didn't want to have anything to do with it. And they didn't use a foot of a film that I had made. And the picture was a bomb, and Gene and Richard never worked together again.

In fact, Gene hasn't worked since. Well, that's right. And now you said there's some kind since. Well, that's right. And now you said there's some kind of law with the Directors Guild or it's just a practice that if a director replaces another director, he calls him. That's leaving. And so this fellow called me and we talked and I said, you know, the first director that was replaced in the history of movies was Eric von Stroheim on a picture called Merry-Go-Round at Universal. And he was replaced by a director named Rupert Julian. Have you heard of him?

And this director said, no, I haven't. I said, exactly. Perfect. Gilbert, you didn't end up in the finished product either. No, no. that was a terrible movie okay so you have that in common i heard in la there was one theater that it was doing so badly he was playing it once a day yeah but prior was extra nice to me. Richard was a dreamboat. I loved him. He was wonderful.

Mr. Director, he called me. I loved Richard. I called him Ricardo. Yeah, he used to treat, he used to, Pryor would come up to me and act like he was a kid off the bus meeting his first big celebrity. That's nice. He was, he couldn't have been nicer. He was very talented. Now, Peter, before you were a filmmaker, you actually started out as an actor studying under

Stella Adler, which I don't think a lot of people know. I mean, you've had a lot of acting roles. Yeah, I started. The only thing I ever studied formally in show business was acting with Stella Adler, who was a great woman and became my sort of second mother because my mother died quite young. And Stella was just great. And she taught acting in such an inclusive way that she almost was teaching directing as well. Did acting make you want to direct or did you kind of have a, I mean, you were a film buff from an early age. Yeah, I think what made me want to direct was I didn't like auditioning. Gilbert doesn't like auditioning either.

Conditioning reading the lines for somebody, I found that it isn't really a very good barometer of the actor's ability. So I rarely read actors. I generally just talk to them for a while. And I've introduced a few people to the screen, and I never read any of them. Sybil Shepard, Tatum O'Neill, Madeline Kahn, Sandra Bullock, John Ritter. I just talk to them. I heard some actors are good at auditions, and they'll get the part, but they never improve beyond their audition.

Yes, that's right. All you get is the audition, and that's one of the reasons I don't think it's a very good process. So I didn't want to keep doing that. And I thought if I could direct, I can play all the parts in a way. So that's what happened. And you started directing theater first. Yeah, I wanted to direct movies, but I was living in New York. And I thought if I directed a couple of plays, somebody would see them and say,

oh, this guy should direct movies. Nobody did that, though. Right. So eventually I was writing for Esquire and doing pieces about Hollywood people. And a friend of mine, a director, Jerry Lewis's friend, Frank Tashlin, came through New York and he said, do you want to direct theater or do you want to direct movies? And I said, movies. He said, well, what are you doing living in New York?

We make them in L.A. So within three, four months of that meeting, we moved to California with the express purpose of getting into the movies. And exactly a year and two days after we got there, I met Roger Corman, who of getting into the movies. And exactly a year and two days after we got there, I met Roger Corman, who got me into the movies. You met him at a screening, didn't you? It wasn't a screening. It was actually a performance of a movie, and you pay to get in. It wasn't a screening. I see. I see. And it's coincidental that we both ended up going to the same performance of this French movie called Bas des Anges, Bay of Angels, directed by Louis, I think it was directed by, I can't remember who it was directed by, oh, Jacques Demy. So Roger was sitting behind me and with him was somebody who knew somebody that I was with. And with him was somebody who knew somebody that I was with.

And so we all got introduced. And Roger says, I've seen your stuff in Esquire. You write for Esquire, don't you? And I said, yeah. He said, would you like to write for the movies? I said, yeah. And so that was the beginning of the relationship. Now, we had Roger Corman on the podcast. And do you remember some stories about his money-saving tricks?

We had Roger and we had Joe Dante here, Peter. Well, I'm sure they both could tell you that Roger was tight, if not the word. He was always right. Didn't want to spend money. I said, what's the budget? He said, there's no budget. Just spend as little as possible. what's the budget? He said, don't, there's no budget. Just spend as little as possible.

Was Wild Angels the first project you worked on for Roger? Yes. And you did everything on that film, as I understand. Well, I did a lot, yeah, because I rewrote the script, first of all. He didn't like the, Roger didn't like the script, so he asked me if I would do a rewrite. He said, I'll pay you $300 and no credit. So I did it, of course. And that's the script we shot.

I rewrote about 85% of it. And I helped him with the casting because George Shakiras was going to do it. And he dropped out toward the end and said he thought it was immoral. The script was immoral. So Roger said, what are we going to do now? I said, well, we've got Peter Fonda in a smaller role. Why don't we maybe move Peter up? He said, well, let's have him come in. So Peter comes in, and he's wearing aviator glasses.

And he sits down, and we're talking, talking, talking. And about half an hour into the meeting, he takes off his glasses and cleans them and then puts them back on again. And then he leaves. And Roger turns to me after he leaves and said, what do you think? I said, I think if he keeps his glasses on, he can do it,

but don't let him take his glasses off. Because he doesn't look the part with the glasses on. Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra. Yeah. Right. And I actually directed. Roger kept saying, we can't do this. I can't shoot this.

The second unit will shoot this. And I said, who's going to direct the second unit? I don't care who directs the second unit. Anybody can direct the second unit. My secretary can direct the second unit. You can direct the second unit. I said, I'd like to direct the second unit. I said I'd like to direct the second unit. All right.

So I actually directed more than the second unit because Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra were in a couple of scenes I did. And Bruce Dern, I shot a whole chase sequence with Bruce Dern. And anyway, I did quite a bit of work on the picture. And anyway, I did quite a bit of work on the picture. In interviews with you, it said you've done everything. You did everything on that picture from directing second unit to ordering lunch. Exactly. I did just about it and making sure the laundry was done.

Now, I heard a story. I hope this is true. So I'll find out right now that you were once in a movie being directed by Orson Welles. That's correct. Oh, is that the other side of the wind? Right. Yes. And I heard you had a scene where you had to run across the bridge to him.

It was a rooftop. Okay. And he said, Peter, we're losing the light. Run over here and go right by camera. I said, okay, I will. But why am I running? Why am I doing that? I'll tell you when you get here.

I love that. That's the director's, actor's motivation. I'll tell you when you get here. Speaking of Corman, we just have to go back a minute. I just want to talk a little bit about a movie that Gilbert and I are very fond of, and that's Targets. And which I guess Roger said you can direct if you keep it under budget and you use Karloff. And was the other third condition that you had to use the footage from the terror? Well, there were a lot of conditions.

First of all, he said, Boris Karloff owes me two days work. Now, I want you to shoot 20 minutes with Karloff in two days. You can shoot 20 minutes in two days. I've shot whole pictures in two days. I love that, too. Which he has. So shoot 20 minutes with Karloff in two days and then take 20 minutes of Karloff footage from a picture we made called The Terror. It's not a very good picture, but you can find 20 minutes to take a Karloff out of that. Now I've got 40 minutes of Karloff. You with me? I said, yeah. Now then shoot with some other actors for about 10 days. Shoot another 40 minutes with other actors. And now I'll have an 80-minute Karloff film. You willing to do that? I said, yeah, sure.

So that was the beginning of Targets. And then we wrote a script, or we started to write a script that basically we decided, we couldn't decide what the hell to do because the terror, which we ran was just awful. One of the worst movies ever made. Oh yeah. Is that the one without the, without the plot, the one where Dick Miller just suddenly exposes the suddenly reveals the entire plot at the end of the film? I think so. Believe me, I don't remember. Yeah. We had Dick Miller here too. And it makes less sense after he explains it. Yes. Well, it was horrible. Anyway, so we looked at it and we couldn't figure out where we could even get five minutes, maybe five minutes, but we certainly couldn't do 20 minutes. And besides, we didn't know what the hell to do with Boris.

I mean, is he a heavy? What's he going to play? So... He's in his 70s at that point, right? He was 79. 79, yeah. So what happened was we had been in New York prior to that for just a weekend or something. We spent some time with Harold Hayes, who was my editor at Esquire. He was the famous Harold Hayes.

He was kind of the best editor Esquire ever had. This is when Esquire was the magazine. editor Esquire ever had. This is when Esquire was the magazine. And Harold said, you know, what might make an interesting movie is this guy in Texas, Charles Whitman, who shot his mother and his wife and then went on to the University of Texas Tower and shot about 30 people. and shot about 30 people. It was the first mass killing in modern times. And I said, I don't want to make a movie about that. God, that's depressing.

Went to California, trying to figure out what the hell to do with Karloff. And then I realized one of the problems was that we couldn't really make Boris a heavy. He was a nice old man. And we couldn't figure out how to make him a heavy, you know? So I was shaving one morning. And I was thinking, this goddamn picture is driving me crazy. You know what? I think I have a good idea for an opening. The picture opens in

a projection and the lights come up. The picture ends, the lights come up in the projection room and sitting next to Boris Karloff is Roger Corman. He turns to Roger and he says, that is the worst movie ever made. Monty Landis playing Roger Corman. Yeah. And then I thought to myself, wait a second, that's not a bad idea, because if Karloff is an actor, and he's quitting the business, because his kind of horror isn't horrible anymore, his kind of Victorian horror, that's an interesting plot point. And then we bring this other kid, this kid who just killed everybody, that's modern horror, really. So maybe we contrast the two and tell the two stories separately and they meet up at the end, something like that. And so we wrote a draft like that.

And then I had a meeting with Sam Fuller, who was a friend of mine, Sammy Fuller, the director, who came up with some brilliant ideas and we incorporated those into the picture and showed the script to Roger. who came up with some brilliant ideas, and we incorporated those into the picture, and showed the script to Roger, and Roger said, well, it's one of the best scripts I've ever had to produce, but you can't possibly shoot all that stuff with Karloff in two days. So you'll have to cut a lot of it out.

I said, Roger, you just said it was one of the best scripts you ever produced. If I cut things out, it's not going to be the best script anymore. Well, back and forth we went. Finally, Roger gave in and hired Karloff for another three days, paid him an extra three days. That must have hurt him. It was painful. So we had Boris for five days, and we basically shot virtually half the picture in five days.

And then we had an additional five. We had about 20 more days, 19 more days to shoot other people. It's a very smart film. And as you're watching, and I just rewatched it this weekend, as you're watching it and you're seeing these two parallel stories between the sniper and Karloff story, you're wondering how these stories are going to merge in the end. You're wondering how is this going to come together and add up, and it's done very well. Well, thank you.

It was a hard job to figure out how to do it. We shot it in 23 days. I was in it because the fellow that I wrote the script for to play my part was going through psychological problems and he didn't want to leave New York. So I said, oh, shit, I'll just play it myself, I guess. Well, your character is lovingly named after Sam Fuller, the character Sammy. Exactly, Sammy Michaels, yeah.

And what was Boris Karloff like to work with? Wonderful. He was very, a real pro, you know. And he had difficulty walking because he had braces on both his legs. He had emphysema so it was difficult for him to walk and talk at the same time but he never complained and he was wonderful just wonderful to work with i remember one funny instance we had a scene on a bed where where uh uh we both get drunk and we pass out and we end up on his bed in a hotel room on,

you know, on the top of the bed. And the script said, which I wrote, Sammy wakes up, sees Karloff lying there and gets scared and then starts, gets jumps, you know, from seeing Karloff and then starts to laugh. Well, it's very difficult to laugh on cue. So I did the thing a couple of times. We did a couple of takes and the laugh was shitty. I said, this is a shitty laugh.

I'm sorry. And Boris turns to me and says, just because you wrote it that you laugh doesn't mean that you have to laugh. You could change it. And I said, yeah, maybe I should change it. Well, I wish you would. So I changed it and didn't laugh, just sort of shook my head and whatever. I did something different. and it worked fine.

So Boris was directing me at that moment, and he was right. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. Your drunk scene is fun in the picture. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. It was okay. I never was that happy with it, but it works all right.

And since Gilbert brought up Orson, we just have to ask you before we jump around, like I said before we started, and we do a lot of jumping around, but you had a long friendship with the great Orson Welles. And interestingly, this is what, the 75th anniversary of Citizen Kane? This month. Wow. That's amazing. You're right. It's been 30 years since Orson died. Yeah. Yeah. It was his 101st birthday two days ago. That's right. That's right. And how did you guys first meet? You wrote something about him that flattered him, but he didn't get in touch with you for years. Yeah, what happened was I had written, I had done some program notes for various theaters in New York, particularly the New Yorker Theater on 88th Street, which is gone now.

And it was a revival house. And I wrote a program note on Orson's movie of Othello. And I said that it was the best Shakespeare film ever made, which was absolutely counter to the common wisdom at that time. Everybody thought Larry Olivier made the best Shakespeare films. I thought they were sort of film theater, whereas Orson's were movies. Anyway, I wrote this very forthcoming, very complimentary piece as a program note. And I get a call about a couple of weeks later from Richard Griffith, who was the curator of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library. And he calls me up and he says, we're doing a tribute,

we're doing a retrospective of Orson Welles, the first retrospective in the United States, and we'd like to know if you would like to curate the exhibition and write the accompanying monograph. I said, why me, Dick? You usually do that kind of thing yourself. He says, well, I don't particularly like Orson Welles, he says, but we have a lot of members and cohorts in Europe who think very highly of him.

And we think our members would want to see a debt retrospective. So we want to do it, but we want somebody to write it who's partial to Welles, who's on Welles' side. And you obviously are from your program, No Don Othello. So I did the job. I got 50 bucks for the whole job. And we showed all his films. And the monograph, which I wrote, which became my first publication,

I sent a few copies of it to Europe where Orson was shooting the trial in a number of places in Europe. Didn't hear anything for seven years. Not a word. Seven years. And by now, by the time I heard from him, I was living in Los Angeles and had made targets. And I get a call in the middle of the afternoon. Hello, is Peter Bogdanovich there I said who's calling

this is Orson Welles I said wow hi how are you he said you have written the truest words ever published about me in English and I said really he said yes

what are you doing tomorrow you want to come over to the polo lounge have a drink I said, really? He said, yes. What are you doing tomorrow? You want to come over to the Polo Lounge, have a drink? I said, sure. So I went over, and he was there, and John Ford was Orson's favorite American filmmaker, and I had just published a book of interviews with Ford, and I brought Orson a copy, which I gave him. And we had a wonderful time.

He was the most disarming person I've ever met. He just felt after about 20 minutes, you felt like you could tell him anything. In fact, I was so disarmed by him that I had the temerity to say you know there's only one film of yours I don't really like which one is that he said

The Trial and he says I don't either and I said really wow I thought we're really cooking with Crisco here and a few months anyway as we're leaving the restaurant, he's got the John Ford book in his hand, and he flips through it,

and he says, isn't it too bad you're such a big director now you can't do a little book like this about me? I said, I'd love to do a little book like this interview book with you. He said, fine, let's do it. And that was the beginning of the relationship and also the book, which took forever to do and wasn't published until seven years after he died. But that was the beginning of the relationship.

And he was a case of he created like the greatest movie ever made in his 20s. And he never seemed to be able to follow it. So was he bitter or depressed or anything like that? No, he was always working hard, you know. I'll tell you a funny thing, though. About six months after the meeting I just told you about, we were doing the taping of the book, and I said something slightly disparaging about the trial. And he says, I wish you'd stop saying that. I said, I thought you didn't like the picture. No, I just said that to please you. I like it very much. It's one of my favorite films. But I respect your opinion. And when you denigrate it, you diminish my

small treasure. Oh, shit, Orson. I'm sorry. No, no, it's fine. And from then on, he referred to it as that picture you hate. I love that. And we actually saw it. He said, the reason you didn't like it is perhaps you didn't realize the humor with which it was intended. And so they had a screening of the trial at the Left Bank in Paris. And he invited me to go to it. And he said, why are you going to it? What is happening?

He says, well, I'm getting an award and a check. I said, what's the check for? For accepting the award. I said, you're getting paid to accept the award? He says, yes, you don't think I'd take an award without getting paid for it, do you? So we went, and Jean Moreau presented him with an award. And we watched the movie together.

And, well, he was sitting right next to me, so he starts laughing, sort of chuckling. And then sitting next to him, I get the idea. I see he thinks this is funny. And it was funny when you sort of see it that way. And this French audience was on the right bank, actually. And they were a little annoyed that we were laughing. They turned around and said, shh.

I thought it was very funny, the French audience shushing Orson and me. Because we were laughing at Orson Welles' version of Kafka. It's not supposed to be funny. But anyway, that's the story. And I heard Orson Welles one time told you that he saw Martin and Lois in person. Yes, he did at the Copa, Copa Cabana. And he said people peed their pants they were so funny.

He said they were hilarious. He loved them. I love that Orson, this was something I found in my notes too, because Orson lived with you for a number of years, Peter. Off and on, come and go, but he stayed in my house. I love that he was a fan of Kojak and the original Dick Van Dyke show. Oh, he loved Kojak. He just loved it.

I love that. And he would go through my office heading to the TV room and he'd say, Mary Tyler Moore is on. I love that. Or Dick Van Dyke is on or something. Or Kojak. I don't want to miss Kojak. Bill Persky will be happy to hear that Orson was such a fan of Dick Van Dyke's.

Bill worked with him in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Talking about the 75th anniversary of Kane, and maybe this is a very naive question, but I want to ask the expert, I mean, in your opinion, what makes it so wonderful? Is it Toland's, in part, Toland's cinematography? Is it the fact that Orson was so young and was able to make a film like this? Is it Toland's, in part, Toland's cinematography? Is it the fact that Orson was so young and was able to make a film like this? Was it storytelling, a style of storytelling that

had never been seen before? I think it's all of the above. Everything you mentioned. It's a very, pardon me, it's a very unusual film. The way it's told, the flashback structure of how it's told and all that. There had been flashbacks before, but this was a very elaborate way of doing it. And it's a very sophisticated script.

The acting by a bunch of actors who'd never been in a movie, nobody'd been in a movie before. They were all brilliant. Joseph Cotton and Everett Sloan. Joe Cotton and Everett Sloan and Dorothy Commingore. Dorothy Commingore. George Koulouris and... Anyway, and then the fact that Orson's performance in the movie is extraordinary.

He goes from a young man to a 25-year-old man to 90. And he does it so convincingly. He's brilliant in the movie. All the performances are great. And it's the only film of Orson's, only early film of Orson's, that he really, it was done exactly the way he wanted it to be. Right. There weren't any compromises.

And he had actually asked Toland to try to make everything sharp, the depth of field. In fact, it was Toland that came and wanted to work with him because he said you only can learn, Toland said to Orson, you only learn about things from people who don't know anything about it. He said, I'd like to watch you directing since you're a brilliant director, but you've never done a movie. And for the first couple of weeks, Orson was doing the lighting.

Because in the theater, he does the lighting. So he thought that he'd do it in the movies too. And somebody finally told him, you know, that's really Greg Toland's job. And he was horrified. And Toland was furious at the guy for telling him because he said he was learning. And Toland was furious at the guy for telling him because he said he was learning. With Morrison's ideas, he was following in his footsteps and sort of cleaning it up a little bit, making it work. But he loved his ideas for the lighting.

The picture was a flop because of the blacklist. Some people told Hearst that it was about him, which it wasn't, by the way. It wasn't really about Hearst. It was about Hearst and about five or six other people, including a guy named McCormick, who is the one who built the Chicago Opera House for his girlfriend. That whole thing had nothing to do with Hearst. That was all McCormick. Nothing to do with Hearst and Marion Davies.

Nothing to do with Hearst. In the end. Interesting. Now, you made a movie about... Oh, yeah. Gilbert and I were just talking about it. The Cat's Meow. Yeah.

Wilder Randolph Hearst. And a story. A very... I had heard this story. A very chilling story. And you made it into a movie. First, tell us what the story was. Well, I first heard the story, and you made it into a movie. First, tell us what the story was. Well, I first heard the story, believe it or not, from Orson Welles,

who told me about it sometime in the 70s. He said that they were all on the yacht together, and Hearst was jealous, believing that Marion was having an affair with Chaplin, who was on the yacht. And so he tried to shoot Chaplin, kill Chaplin, but he managed to kill Thomas Ince instead. He missed, or he thought that he was shooting at Chaplin. It was dark and he was shooting somebody else. He shot Ince, who died subsequently. The story was shooting a chaplain. It was dark and he was shooting somebody else. And he shot Ince, who died subsequently. The story was hushed up. There was never an investigation. And interestingly enough, I said to Orison,

did you ever consider using this episode in Citizen Kane? He said, yes, I did. But I cut it out. Why? He said, well, I didn't think Charlie Kane was a killer. And he said, the irony is, Orson said, the irony is that if I'd kept it in, Hearst never would have said, that's me. He never would have sued or blacklisted the picture because he wouldn't have wanted anybody to think it was him having shot somebody, you see. Anyway, I don't think the Hearst Corporation was very happy with the cat's meow.

I never heard from them, but I don't think they were. I would imagine not. We were talking about how good Edward Herman was in the part. He was absolutely dead on. Yeah. It's a good film. We like it both. They bring out also

that other part of the story saying that the gossip queen, Luella Parsons, basically blackmailed him. Basically, yes. Because she observed the shooting. And so she had him over the barrel, you know, and got a very good contract out of it.

And speaking of Orson, Peter, what's the latest on, and a lot of people want to know about this, and it's been an ongoing saga, but what's the latest with the other side of the wind? That's the one I'm in. Yeah. With John Houston playing the lead. I tell you, fellas, I wish I knew exactly what to tell you here. We've been trying to get it together for 30 years because Orson one day at lunch turned to me absolutely out of the blue and said, if anything ever happens to me, I want you to promise me you'll finish the picture. I said, Orson, why would you say such a thing? Nothing's going to happen to you. I know,

I know nothing's going to happen to me, but if it does, I want you to promise me you'll finish the picture. Well, of course I will, but okay, now we can change the subject. So as I said, he died 30 years ago and I've been trying to get it done ever since. I brought Frank Marshall, the producer in who worked on the picture and we're still trying to get it done ever since. I brought Frank Marshall, the producer in, who worked on the picture. We're still trying to work out a deal with the couple of people who own the rights. And it's just been very difficult. But again, as I've said many times over the past 30 years, we're very close.

I'm hoping this time it'll turn out to be true. And what do you think? This is something that always drove me crazy, how the American Film Institute, after all these years of Citizen Kane being considered the greatest film ever made, all of a sudden they go, oh, no, we were wrong.

It's Vertigo. Well, that wasn't the AFI. That was a poll taken by the English magazine Sight and Sound. They do it every 10 years or something. And they poll a lot of critics around the world and so on. And this year, Vertigo displaced Kane, which had been on the top of the list for years. And I think that's not correct. I think I like Vertigo,

but I don't think it's Hitchcock's best film. I don't think it's even Hitchcock's best film. Which film do you think is his best film? You've got me curious now. Well, it's even Hitchcock's best film. Which film do you think is his best film? You've got me curious now. Well, it's hard to say because there's a number of them that are really all on the same level. Notorious. Yeah, it's great.

Rear Window, North by Northwest. Those are my favorites. Do you like Frenzy? Not as much. It's good. I like it, but it's not as much. And you knew him. You knew Hitchcock as much. It's good. I like it, but it's not as much. And you knew him. You knew Hitchcock as well.

You had a friendship with Hitchcock. Yes, I did. He was very nice to me. Hitch liked to talk about how he did things and how he would technically do a shot or whatever it was. He loved to talk about that. He was very professorial that way. And fun to be with. We had lunch numerous times at Universal. He always had the same lunch, New York steak and lettuce and tomato and black coffee. That was it. So I usually had the same thing. I said,

I'll have whatever Hitch is having. And we had some great talks. And I interviewed him, of course. I did a long, long interview with him, which is in the book, Who the Devil Is. Yeah, we have it here with us. Yeah. A wonderful book that I'll take a moment to plug. Conversations with Legendary Film Directors. And I heard stories that they're saying that Hitchcock's wife had a lot more to do. Alma Hitchcock.

Yeah, she had a lot to do with his movies because they married quite young, they met quite young, and she was his script girl and also co-writer on a lot of pictures. And he trusted her opinion very strongly. And she was very much involved with all the work that he did. And if I can get back to Cain one more time, how much do you think, what was, there was always an argument between who gets the credit of Wells or Mankiewicz.

Well, Pauline Kael wrote a very damaging piece in The New Yorker in which she said that Orson had stolen the credit that actually the entire script was written by Herman Mankiewicz, which is absolutely not true. She did no research, by the way. She talked to one person only, John Hausman, who hated Orson and wouldn't say anything positive about him. I decided to do an answer to this piece in Esquire, and I interviewed a bunch of people, including Charles Letterer, who's a good friend of Hearst's and a good friend of Orson's, and who'd read the original draft. He said Orson vivified the script. He changed it quite a bit. Then I interviewed Orson's secretary

on the picture, and she said, if Mr. Wells didn't write the script, I'd like to know what all that typing I was doing was for, because she retyped the script. You know, it's just, it's absurd. Orson rewrote Shakespeare. I mean, he didn't rewrite the dialogue, but he cut it a certain way. To think that he wouldn't touch Herman Mankiewicz's material is pretty ridiculous.

To think that he wouldn't touch Herman Mankiewicz's material is pretty ridiculous. He rewrote the script and used Mankiewicz's stuff when he thought it was right. And he told me that one of his favorite things in the movie is that description of Everett Sloan when he says he saw a woman across getting on a ferry, and he says, the day hasn't gone by that I didn't think of that woman. He never got her name or anything. And Orson looked at me, tears in his eyes, and said, and that was Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz wrote that, and it's my favorite thing in the picture. Wow.

So he was generous. He was quite generous. But this Pauline Kael, you see, wanted to prove that if Orson Welles was not really an auteur, she was against the auteur theory, so to speak. If he wasn't an auteur, maybe the whole thing is full of shit. Interesting. That was what she was trying to do. That was the point she was trying to do. That was the point she was trying to make. Now, years later, Woody Allen said,

we're talking about Pauline and so on, and this incident. And Woody says to me, well, you know, I was with her when she read that piece the first time, your piece in the, and I said, really, what happened? Well, she came out of the other room and she was white as a sheet. And she said, how am I going to answer this? And Woody said, he told her, don't answer it. Which, which she didn't. It was good advice on Woody's part for her. But she was devastated by the piece. She also never gave me a good review again. Interesting.

And someone was on the show telling us a story that Mankiewicz once was told to sign a loyalty oath to America. Who told us that? Was it Ed Asner? I think, unless that was Bob Wall, maybe. I know that story. Oh, yes. That's not Herman Mankiewicz. That's Joseph Mankiewicz.

Joseph Mankiewicz. What happened was that was during the blacklist period in Hollywood, in the end of the 40s, early 50s, where Joe Mankiewicz was the president of the Directors Guild, and Cecil B. DeMille and a number of other right-wing directors had been pushing for the Directors Guild to have all of its members sign a loyalty oath. And Joe Mankiewicz was very much opposed to that idea.

He didn't think that was the right thing to be doing. So things started appearing in the paper, you know, is Joe Mankiewicz a pinko, what's his problem? Why can't we have a loyalty oath? Hedda Hopper got into it and so on, Luella. Well, it became such an issue that they called a meeting of all the directors, a big meeting, and all the directors came.

And the most respected director there was John Ford, who sat in an aisle seat with his sneakers untied and stains on his jacket and chewing on a handkerchief and a cigar. And he didn't say a thing. And C.B. DeMille made a big speech, and another director made a speech making jokes about these anti, the people who were against the loyalty oath. And this went on for a couple hours. Now, the thing was, they had a court stenographer there, so that if you wanted to speak, you had to raise your hand,

say who you were, and then speak. And this was all being kept on a court stenographer, writing it all down. Well, this went on for a couple hours, and finally everybody was wondering what John Ford would say, but he didn't say anything. Finally he raised his hand, and they recognized him, and he said, my name is Jack Ford, I make Westerns.

And he says, nobody in this room knows better what the American public wants than the C.B. DeMille, and he knows how to give it to them. And he looked at DeMille across the hall from me and he said, but I don't like you, C.B., and I don't like what you've been saying here today. I move that we give Joe a vote of confidence. Let's all go home and get some sleep. And that's what they did. Now, that was told to me by Joe Mankiewicz himself, who said that he was on the verge of losing his position in Hollywood, and Jack saved him. And Sam Fuller was there, and he told me the exact same story. So I know it's true.

I love that my name is Jack Ford. I make Westerns. Yeah, that's the understatement of the year. Yeah. Don't forget to follow us on our Facebook page, Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast, on Twitter at RealGilbertACP, and on Instagram, Gilbert Podfreak. You see, it's kind of a pun on the last name.

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after this. That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken. Hot chicken in the window.

This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. And now back to the show. You had a friendship with Ford, too. I did, yeah. He liked me. You could tell he liked me

because he insulted me all the time. Yeah. I saw that in my notes. Tell us a little bit about it. Oh, he was funny. He gave you a hard time. Jesus Christ, Bogdanovich. Is that all you can do is ask questions?

Have you never even heard of the declarative sentence? We've talked about some of these films on this show, Peter. We've talked about My Darling Clementine. And what are some of the other films we've talked about, Ford films, on this show? Stagecoach. We've also talked about Paper Moon. Well, Ford didn't direct that one. No, no, no, but I'm going to segue, which I have to ask you about. And, of course, the story is that the novel was under a different title.

You wanted to change the title, and you called Orson Welles to ask his opinion. Well, what happened was the novel was called Addie Prey, which was the name of the little girl. And I didn't like the title. I thought it sounded like a snake, you know, an adder or something. So I said, I don't like the title. And whenever I do a period picture, I always go to a billboard or variety and look up what songs were popular in that period.

And because I didn't use a score, I used music from records. And one of the songs that was very popular in that period, early 30s, was a song called It's Only a Paper Moon. It's only a paper moon Flying over a cardboard sea But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believed in me That's not the tune, but it's the idea.

Close enough. And it was written by Dorothy Parker and Yip Harburg and a few other important names. And I just, the words Paper Moon jumped out at me. I said, that's a good title. Well, I went to Paramount. I said, I'd like to call the picture Paper Moon. Why?

Well, I just think it's a good title, and it uses the song in the picture and so on. Peter, the book was a bestseller. I said, really? How many copies did it sell? 100,000 copies in hardcover. I said, wow, if we get 100,000 people to see the picture, we'll have a real big hit. All right, all right, look, we don't want to argue with you. We're just going to keep it adi-pre for the time being. So I call Orson. I thought, I'm very frustrated.

I think it's a great title. I call Orson, and he's in Rome, cutting. And the connection was very bad, so I had to yell, Orson, can you hear me? Yes, barely. What do you want? I'm busy. Just a second. What do you think of this title?

Paper Moon. Pause. That title is so good, you don't even need to make the picture. Just release the title. That's a favorite story. It's a sweet film, Peter. I love that film. So I went to the writer, Alvin Sargent, and I said, Alvin, you remember those cardboard moons that they have in carnivals,

sequins, carnivals, and you sit in the moon and they take your picture. He says, yeah. I said, well, we've got a carnival in the picture anyway, so let's just add a scene where Tatum goes and sits in the moon. And she wants him to sit in the moon. He doesn't, whatever. We'll pay it off later in the picture. He says, why are we doing this?

I said, so we can call the fucking thing Paper Moon and the studio won't say why. That's why. And that's why we did it. Is it true Madeline Kahn had a line in the film that she was uncomfortable saying? Yeah. What happened was we were in the first reading of the script. We had a reading of the script. And there was a line that Madeline had, and she said it to Tatum's character.

The line was, so what do you say, honey, just for a little while, let Trixie sit up front with her big tits. Because they were arguing about who would sit in the front of the car. because they were arguing about who would sit in the front of the car. And when we were reading this in a table read, we got to that line and she said, I'm not going to say that. Okay, what do you want to say? Breasts or big ones or something? I said, okay.

Never mentioned it again. The day we were shooting, we shot Tatum first, I think. I can't remember now. The point is there were two angles on Madeline that we did. And we did the first one with that line that is not in that first angle. And then we set up for the second angle in which that line does appear. So we're all ready to shoot. And I went over to her just before we were going to make the first take. And I whispered in her ear, say tits once, just try it, say tits once. Just try it. And I walked away and I walked away and I didn't know what she was going to do. So we get to the line and she says it. And then if you see the picture again,

you'll see she does a kind of an embarrassed laugh afterward, almost like her face went red. And it is the moment, one of the great moments in the picture. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. She said it and then she got embarrassed. And it's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful moment. What ever happened to Ryan O'Neill,

who was one of the biggest stars back then? Mm-hmm. Well, I can't say exactly what happened to him, but he was his own worst enemy in many ways. I think Paper Moon's his best performance. It's a hell of a performance, and it's a good-looking film, too, Paper Moon. Laszlo Kovacs shot it in black and white. Yeah, it was very, very well done. Sure. Can I ask you also about Nickelodeon, which I just watched this weekend, and I was surprised to see you released a director's cut, a black

and white version. Did you see it in black and white? I did not. I didn't know. Unfortunately, I watched it in color, not realizing at the time there was a black and white version, which I realized when I got deeper into my notes. You should see it, yeah. I fought for 30 years to get that released in black and white.

We were supposed to shoot it in black and white because it's a black and white period. This is 1915. Color is just not right. And it just looks like a movie made in the 70s. I had to fight like the devil with the studio head and he wouldn't listen to me. Years later, I finally persuaded them to, you see, what happened was I was pissed off when we started shooting. And I said to Laszlo, look, light it for black and white, because one day we're going to print it in black and white. So he did. He lit it as though it was black and white. He didn't rely on the color to give the separations. He actually lit the separations, as you do with black and white. And so when it was printed in black and white, it looked great.

And I added a few things, too, also. That was a very compromised film. I wasn't happy with it. So the black and white helps a lot. It has a lot of great moments and great performances. Who is the Brian Keith character Cobb based on? Is he just kind of an amalgam?

Kind of an amalgam of a bunch of different studio people. It's a fun picture. And in the last picture show, I heard that you had a chance of getting Jimmy Stewart, but you didn't want him for that. Well, it's not that I had a chance. I never discussed it with Jimmy, but I was friendly with him because I had done a piece, a profile of him in Esquire, which he liked very much. He sent

me a lovely letter thanking me. And we were talking about casting it. This was the leading character, the character named Sam the Lion, who's kind of the moral focus of the picture or the town. And I never went to Jimmy because I thought, you know, we've got a small town in Texas. It looks very run down. And sitting in the saloon is Jimmy Stewart. I just thought it didn't work. The audience would say, what's a movie star doing down there? So we didn't do it.

I didn't even ask him. Instead, I had an idea that Ben Johnson would be great. Instead, I had an idea that Ben Johnson would be great. Because I had met Ben while Ford was shooting Cheyenne Autumn in the late 60s. No, in 63. And I met Ben on that picture. And it suddenly hit me, my God, he'd be great. And I got in touch with him and sent him the script and he turned it down. Oh, it's too many words, Pete. Too many words. I said, but it's a great part

for you, Ben. He said, no, no, Pete, it's too many words. Also, it's a dirty picture and I might want my mother to see it and I can't show it to my mother. No, I don't want to do it. It's too many words, Pete. Oh, shit. So I'd worked on him a little bit, but he wouldn't budge. So I called Ford and I said, listen, I got a really good part for old Ben, but he says there's too many words. Ford says, oh, he always says that. When we were shooting Yellow Ribbon, he'd come on the set and he'd say to the script girl, any words for me today? And if she said yes, he'd sulk. Strange.

And if she said no, you just have to ride the horse, he'd be happy. Where is old Ben? I said, well, he's in Tucson. Give me his number. I'll call him. Would you, Jack? Yeah, I'll call him. I'll call him.

him. Would you, Jack? Yeah, I'll call him. I'll call him. So 15 minutes go by, and Jack, Ford calls me. He says, he'll do it. I said to him, Jesus Christ, Ben, Peter's got a good part for you. What do you want to do, play Duke sidekick your whole life? Do the picture. He'll do it. I hang up the phone. I said, thank you so much. And I hang up the phone. About 10 minutes later, the phone rings. It's my secretary. It's Ben Johnson. I answer the phone. Oh, Ben? Long pause. You put the old man on me. He says, you put the old man on me. I said, well, Ben, I really want you to do this picture. Oh, Jesus, Pete. There's too many goddamn words in this man. He still wasn't doing the pictures.

Finally, he came to my office about a week later. I'll never forget. He had the script open in front of him. Finally, I worked on him, and I said, Ben, if you do this picture, you could win the Academy Award. He got so annoyed. He said, why do you say a thing like that? I said, I just feel that you in this part could win an Oscar.

Oh, Jesus. Finally, he slammed the script shut, and he said, all right, I'll do the goddamn thing. And that's how he got the picture, and that's how he got the Oscar, too. Yeah, it's a great story. The rest is history. Yeah. Cloris he got the Oscar, too. Yeah, that's a great story. The rest is history. Yeah. Cloris Leachman won, too.

Yeah. Yeah. And I heard John Ford and John Wayne never actually got along. No, they were friendly. They were? They were friendly. Duke was kind of like his son. He picked on him all the time, but he loved him.

If he picks on you, it means he likes you. The more he picks on you, the more he likes you. And your friends, you were friends with someone Frank and I have brought up a bunch of times in the show, and that's Sidney Lumet. I didn't know Sidney very well, but I knew him a little bit. I interviewed him for the book. And also I acted for him in a live TV show called 50 Grand

based on a Hemingway story. I just had a bit part. But that's where I met him. And then a small magazine called Film Quarterly asked me to do an interview with him for their magazine. And that was actually the first director interview I did in my career. Is that in the book? Is that in Who the Devil Made It? Yeah, it's the last interview in there. Yeah. Terrific book that I think people should know about. Thank you. It was a bestseller. And we organized it in such a way that the interviews,

we organized it in such a way that the interviews, the order of the interviews is the order in which the directors were born. And so generally speaking, it's pretty much when they entered the business also. Oh, interesting. If you read it from beginning to end, you're getting a really panoramic view of the early days of the making of movies. There's so much good stuff in there. I was telling Gilbert, I didn't realize that McCary did not enjoy working with the Marx Brothers on

Duck Soup. No, he didn't. He said they were a pain in the neck, he said. He said he never managed to get them together all at one time. Yeah, he said it was hard to get them all in the same room. McCary was funny. I didn't know that Capra was sort of a hero to McCary. Yeah, he loved him.

That's in the book. Yeah. Capra isn't interviewed in the book. No, no, I mean the little story about how well. Yeah, I know. Capra had done an autobiography that was quite popular called The Name Above the Title, and I didn't think I could get much more out of him. We saw you in a Cavett episode that's on YouTube, Peter, with, you know, the one I'm referring to, and it's fascinating because it's you, Robert Altman,

Mel Brooks, and Frank Capra. Yeah. You know, it's very funny because I ran into Dick Cavett somewhere at a party for the Sopranos or something. And he said that they had put a DVD, some of the interviews. And I thought to myself, well, mine's no good because I didn't speak at all. I just sat there and listened to everybody. I never spoke. I saw the goddamn thing. I spoke more than anybody.

You did. You sure did. To the point where I was even interviewing Frank Capra spoke more than anybody. You did. You sure did. To the point where I was even interviewing Frank Capra instead of letting Cabot do it, I was doing it. It's amazing how the mind plays tricks on you. I thought I hadn't spoken at all. And you worked with an actor who I worked with in the Problem Child movies, and that was John Ritter.

What was your experience like with him? John Ritter was one of the most talented and kindest people I've ever met. I loved him dearly. He was a good friend. He was an extraordinary friend to me, actually, a number of times when I really needed help, he was there. And I miss him every day. He was a great, great human being and a very, very big talent.

And to this day, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't cast him in the lead in The Last Picture Show because I had originally planned to cast him in the lead, and I got talked out of it by an agent and I used Tim Bottoms who's very good but he's very good in the picture but John would have had a better career if he'd done that he turns up in Nickelodeon and of course they all laughed yeah Ritter you used him a couple of times. I used them a few times. Nickelodeon was his first big picture. And while we were shooting, he said, I got to go to LA next week.

We were shooting in Modesto, California. He says, I'm doing an audition for a series called Three's Company. I said, oh, Jesus, don't do that. I won't be able to use you. He said, no, I'm never going to get it. Gilbert, you liked John Ritter, too, very much, didn't you? Oh, yeah. He was a really sweet guy to work

with. He was adorable, and he was also extraordinarily gifted comic actor in terms of how he moved. He moved beautifully. He moved beautifully. He really knew how to handle himself physically. I remember the last time running into John Ritter, and he was like three times my height.

And he saw me and had a big smile on his face, and he put his arms out, and he went, Hey, buddy, and gave me a big hug. I liked him in that Blake Edwards picture, Skin Deep. Wonderful. Blake used him because he'd seen him and they all laughed. Uh-huh. And we don't want to turn you into Rich Little right now, but we have to name some celebrities and you have to do your impressions.

Okay. Well, I'll tell you one story. I was talking to Jimmy Stewart one time, and how are you feeling, Jimmy? Well, Peter, I'll tell you. After 70, it's all patch, patch, patch. And what about the Walter Brennan that I heard you do? A wonderful Walter Brennan I heard you do in an interview. You was wrong, Mr. Dunson. You was wrong.

That's about it. I like it. And you do a Jerry Lewis? Oh, yeah, I can do Jerry. I got to be in a good mood, but I can do Jerry. Gilbert does a little Jerry himself. You and Jerry Lewis have been friends a long time, Peter. Over 50 years.

How about that? I met him in 61. He says to me one time, when I came to California, I was broke. And we had a really old car. I came out in 1960, permanently in 64. And we had a 1952, 1952 or 51 Ford convertible, spray painted black. It was yellow. And it was a mess.

Ford convertible, spray-painted black. It was yellow. And it was a mess. And we used to go visit Jerry on St. Cloud Road. And one day he says to me, he said, I don't want to see that goddamn piece of shit car of yours in my driveway anymore. That's a good impression. I said, thanks. What am I supposed to do?

He said, take one of my cars. You can borrow my Mustang. Jerry, I can't take your Mustang. Why not? I got Fordham. That's great. So he gave me the car for six or seven months. We drove the brand new Mustang. It was the first year

they came out. Jerry was, he could be, you know, he's very funny. Just turned 90. Yeah. I spoke to him the other day. Yeah. You did some of these impressions in a show, didn't you?

Sacred Monsters? Yeah, I've called it a number of things. Sacred Monsters, Who the Devil Made It. So it's a one-man show, and I have clips from seven clips, and I talk for about an hour. I looked like crazy to find some version. And I talk for about an hour. I looked like crazy to find some version of it online, which doesn't exist. I wanted to see you doing these impressions. It doesn't exist.

I did Hitchcock. And I remember in the 70s, I was living with Sybil Shepard and we got very bad press. There was a period where you couldn't open a magazine or a newspaper without seeing some nasty crack about Sybil and me. So Cary Grant, who was a friend for years, whom I'd met through Clifford Odets, calls me up. Peter, will you for Christ's sake stop telling people you're happy? And stop telling them you're in love. That's great. Why, Carrie? Because they're not happy and they're not in love.

Well, I thought all the world loves a lover. No, don't you believe it. Let me tell you something, Peter. People do not like beautiful people. That resonates. Wow. Yeah. And another terrific impression, I might say, Peter.

Oh, he was great. Cary was great. And what was your opinion on Jerry Lewis as a filmmaker? Well, he made some good pictures. I thought Nutty Professor was a very good picture. And The Bell Boy was good. And he did great stuff in The Iron Boy. And Jerry was a good director. and he did great stuff in The Iron Boy.

Jerry was a good director. He knew what he was doing. I liked him as a director. There's so much we could ask you, Peter. I wrote down a list of all the character actors, some of the great character actors you've worked with, like Emmett Walsh and Kenneth Mars and Austin Pendleton, who Gilbert and I love. Austin's great.

He's wonderful to work with. He's very funny. Kenny Mars was hysterical in What's Up, Doc? Was he loosely based on the, there's a rumor, the theater critic John Simon? Not so loosely. Okay, directly based. I said to him, I said, I want you to do John Simon. We called the character Hugh Simon.

And I said, I want you to, you can see John Simon on some talk show. He's on Cabot or somebody. I said, he's a real arrogant, pretentious guy. But I want you to do him. So he was doing John he was doing Johnson. And then John Simon collars me in New York after the picture comes out. He says, I hope next time you do somebody, you have an actor play me. You get a better actor.

He even does John Simon. Now, I remember being on the set of Another You and you were directing a scene, and this always stuck with me. And you had just directed it, and then I was just standing there watching, and you turned to me, and you said, you seem to love the creative process of film. I remember you had said that to me, and that always stuck with me. Huh. Well, probably because you looked interested. You didn't go to your trailer. He's a big film buff.

Yeah, I know. I know you are. Peter, we'll let you get on with things, but I did want to ask you, I was touched by something you said in an interview, a couple of things. You said there are no movie stars anymore, not like the old days. And why do you think that is? Well, there's no studio system to help stars become stars. There's no system. It's one movie at a time. You know, in those, in the early days, in the golden age of Hollywood, so to speak,

you had personalities. They looked for people, I said, somewhere, I said, they looked for people that were attractive and different. So who talks like Jimmy Stewart? Nobody. Going down, all that stuff he does. He was a movie star and he talked different. Cary Grant talks different.

Jimmy Cagney, all right, you guys. And Bogey. And Bogey, yeah, I can't do him as well. Of all the gin joints and all the towns and all. Anyway, you guys. And Bogey. And Bogey, yeah. I can't do him as well. Of all the gin joints and all the towns. Anyway, I can't do Bogey. But he, today, that's why Rich Little is out of work. Because who do you, do me Tom Hanks. Right, or George Clooney.

Or George Clooney or Tom Cruise. There's no voice there. Now, I heard that Rich Little was in an Orson Welles picture. Yes, that's the part I took. Orson fired him. Oh, in the other side of the wind. Wow. Interesting.

What's weird is here, Orson wrote the character in The Other Side of the Wind somewhat based on me because the guy had had three big hits in a row and he did impressions. And that's why he hired Rich Little to do the impressions. And a few months went by and I called Orson, he was in Arizona, and I said, how's it going? And he says, terrible. I said, what's the matter? He said, I just had to

let an actor go and it cost me 25 Gs, and I don't have that kind of bread. Well, who did you let go? Rich Little. Why? He can't act. Oh, Jesus, Orson. Did you shoot a lot of stuff?

I shot everything with him, and I can't use it. Oh, that's terrible. What are you going to do? I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm very upset. oh, that's terrible. What are you going to do? I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm very upset. I said, well, couldn't I play it? Long pause. Why? It never occurred to me.

I said, never occurred to you? The guy had three hits in a row. He does impressions. He's like me. It never occurred to you? He said, well, you have that other part. He'd three hits in a row. He does impressions. He's like me. It never occurred to you? He said, well, you have that other part. He'd cast me in a very small, another part, which was kind of a funny part. But it was not a big part. It was a journalist who was, he wanted me to talk like Jerry Lewis, but ask questions like,

do you believe that the cinema is a phallus? You know, I think like Jerry Lewis. So I said, that's just a small bit. You could cast somebody else in that. And he says, well, my God, you could do it. Would you do it? I said, sure. He said, well, when could you come here? I said, when do you want me? He says, as soon as possible. I said, I can come tomorrow, a day after tomorrow. He said, oh, that'd be fantastic. And that's how I got the part, cast myself.

I love it. And one story before you go, you said your mother had seen Rebel Without a Cause, and you asked her her opinion. Yeah, that was interesting. She saw Rebel Without a Cause before and you asked her her opinion. Yeah, that was interesting. She saw Rebel Without a Cause before I had seen it, and she said that she didn't like it. I said, what's the matter with it?

She said, I think it's a dangerous film. I said, why do you say that? She said, because it makes every single teenager, all the kids in the picture are poor, misunderstood kids, and there isn't one adult in the picture are poor, misunderstood kids. And there isn't one adult in the entire film that you can say that's an intelligent, serious, responsible adult. And all you've got is a bunch of kids who are feeling sorry for themselves and good actors.

But it's a dangerous film because it will encourage teenagers to ignore the parental figures. And there is no parental figure in the picture that is good, so to speak. Yeah. And it's a good point. It did encourage a slew of misunderstood juvenile delinquent pictures, a lot of them. And interestingly enough, the tragic aspect of that is that the three leading people in the picture, Natalie Wood, Jimmy Dean, and Salmini, all died young, violent deaths. Yeah, all tragically.

Yeah. I find it interesting, too, speaking of kids and young people and reading interviews with you, and there's another thing you lament is that this generation, and we don't want to sound like crusty old men, but we will, that this generation doesn't look back, that they won't watch a black and white picture, and that the movie experience itself has been cheapened. I mean, movie palaces are gone. Well, it's all true. It's all unfortunately true. Movie palaces, I loved those.

Way to see a movie was great. And kids don't want to see black and white movies. I think one of the reasons is that they only see them on television or, you know, a small screen. And one of the major things about movies is that they had to be bigger than life. They run a big screen. And so the minute it's reduced to a television viewing, they lose a lot of the magic.

Yeah. And the picture isn't as good because they're not seeing it the right way. We've lost theaters, I mean. And the Ziegfeld here in New York just closed, which was heartbreaking. Yeah, I don't know why that closed. After so many years. You know, I remember when What's Up Doc was booked into the Radio City Music Hall in 1972. I called Cary and I said, guess what, Cary? My new picture's opening at the Radio City Music Hall.

He said, oh, that's nice. I had 28 pictures play the hall. 28? 28 pictures. He said, yeah, all my pictures play the music hall. I'll tell you what you must do. When it opens, go down there, put on a raincoat and some sunglasses, and, well, you won't need that.

But just stand in the back. Stand in the back, and you listen, and you watch while 6,500 people laugh at something you did. It will do your heart good. And I did, and it was the most extraordinary experience to see that, which we broke the house record two weekends in a row, and the 30-year house record. When you stood out on the street, you could hear them laughing.

It was just amazing. And standing in the back, as Carrie said, watching people, watching that whole Y orchestra laughing, people don't just laugh. They move around. Their heads bounce around. They look like they're going to fall off their chair. It's amazing.

And it was the biggest kick of seeing one of my pictures. And an additional compliment is that one of your heroes, Howard Hawks, liked the picture too. Yeah. It was very funny because I told them, I said, we're going to steal some things from bringing up Baby. He said, that's fine. Because he's always talked about stealing things. He said, that's fine. Because he's always talked about

stealing things. He said, oh, we stole that from, they knew what they wanted. And he'd always say, we stole that, we stole that. So I said, I'm going to steal a few things for bringing up baby. So the script was written and I sent him the script. And we were on the soundstage at Warner's getting ready to do a table read and I get and the AD comes over and he says Howard Hawks is on the phone on it's at the stage I said really and the audio the cast goes oh Howard Hawks is on the phone so I went over and answered the phone. Hello, Howard? Peter?

Howard? Peter? Howard? Peter? Howard? Well, I read you this. That's what happened. I don't know why. He said, I read your script.

Well, what did you think? Well, you didn't steal the dinosaur, which is a big element in bringing up baby. I said, I couldn't steal the dinosaur, Howard. It's much too big element in bringing up babies. Right, sure. I couldn't steal the dinosaur, Howard. It's much too much identified with bringing up baby. Yeah, I guess not. Well, you couldn't steal the—you didn't steal the leopard. Well, I couldn't do that, Howard.

That's just—that's too much identified with bringing up baby. Yeah, well, who have you got in it? I said, Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neill. I know they're not Cary Grant and Catherine. You're damn right they're not. I said, he said, well, don't let them be cute. I said, okay, Howard. All right, boy.

And then when the picture came out, I told everybody it was stolen from Bringing Up Baby. And Howard got a lot of kick out of that and he went to south america and we went to rio and he took pictures of the marquee of what's up doc for me which was very sweet what a compliment yeah he was he was great howard was great he's very thrilled that the picture was a big hit what are you working on now, Peter? Doing some acting? I see on IMDb a project called Wait For Me. Wait For Me, yeah. I'm going to do that. Brett Ratner is going to produce it. And it's shot, it's a picture I've been working on for many years.

It's a script I've been working on for many years. And I finally got it right, I think. And it's the most ambitious picture I've ever made. It plays in five cities in four different countries in Europe and it's a huge cast. It's about picture people. It's about a director, actor, star, somebody like Orson or Woody Allen or Cassavetes,

somebody who does it all. And he's been married six times and he's had six daughters. And several months before the movie starts, no, I'm sorry, several years before the movie starts, his last wife, his sixth wife, was killed in a plane crash along with two of his best friends flying back from Grand Canyon. And there's a kind of mystery about what they were doing in Grand Canyon. Why did they go there in the first place?

Was she having an affair? And ever since that happened, our leading man, Charlie Benedict, has become persona non grata in Hollywood. He chopped up a projection room at Universal. He punched out two producers at Fox, and nobody will hire him. So he's been bullshitting the Italians. He's been traveling through Italy and Sicily for the last few months before the picture begins, looking for locations for a script he's supposedly writing, which he isn't writing. He has no script.

He has no idea. He's just bullshitting the Italians so they'll pay for his trip around where he's going. And he gets there, and one of his daughters is dating a rock star and she's disappeared. A lot of shit happens. And finally he's so depressed that he goes, he's in Vienna, and he goes down to the Danube and it looks like he's going to jump in

and kill himself. And he hears the voice of his sixth wife. She says, don't do that. Because if you do that, we won't see each other. And he turns and there's the ghost of his sixth wife. And that's the beginning of that part of it. And then ultimately there's six ghosts in the story, all friendly. It's a comedy drama fantasy.

There's some very sad things in it. A producer who read it recently, a European producer who's going to work with Brad and me on it, said it's an emotional rollercoaster, which is about it, I think. And you wrote the screenplay as well? Yeah, I wrote the script. Wait for me. We'll look for it. And let me plug the books again. Who the Devil Made It.

You can get these books on Amazon. It's a wonderful read. Also, Who the Hell's In It. Yeah, that has a lot. That's my actor's book. That's got long chapters on Jimmy and Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. Can't put either one of them down. And Peter, this is one of those interviews that we dream about because it's one of those where after it's over, we haven't even scraped the surface of all the things we want to talk about. We decided to do a show about nostalgia and about old Hollywood, which is why we've had Bruce Dern and Roger Corman and Ed Asner and all of these people on the show. would. It's just why we've had Bruce Stern and Roger Corman and Ed Asner and all of these people on the show. And we, very early on in the process, we looked at each other and said, well, Peter Bogdanovich, that's a no-brainer. So we didn't think we'd get you and here you are. So we're very grateful. Very grateful. Should I tell you one more story? Please. Tell you a Jimmy Stewart story. Okay.

Okay. I'll tell you a Jimmy Stewart story. Okay. Okay. Because Jimmy and I were talking about, I was interviewing him for that Esquire piece, and we were talking about movies. And we said, we were saying, what is it about the movies that makes them so goddamn special? And Jimmy said, well, I'll tell you, I was shooting a picture, a Western in Colorado, and there were some people watching a shooting, and this older fellow comes up to me,

and he says, are you Stuart? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, you said a poem once in a picture. That was good. I said, thank you. And that's all he said, and he walked away. And I knew just what he was talking about. There was a scene in a bar, and I said a poem. It must have been 15, 20 years ago. It was just a short scene, and he'd remembered it all these years.

And I thought, now that's the wonderful thing about the movies. Because if you're lucky, and you're lucky enough to have a personality that comes across, and you're lucky enough to have a personality that comes across, and God helps you, and you work hard, what you're doing then is you're giving people little tiny pieces of time that they never forget. Isn't that great? That's wonderful. And is that why you called your book Pieces of Time? Yeah. Yeah't that a great? That's wonderful. And that's, is that why you called your book

pieces of time? Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, I thought, I thought it was a great, uh, story, you know, I mean, I've got a great, a great analysis of movies. It is. Thanks for sharing that one with us. And you're such an accomplished mimic by the way. Thank you. Who knew? You know, it's very funny. I went on Johnny Carson a few times, but one time I did a story about Jimmy and I told the story and I did the impression. So the next day I've got chutzpah, you know, I called Jimmy and I said, did you see me on Carson last night? And Jimmy goes, pretty good, Peter. Pretty good. That was it. Pretty good, Peter. So I should start wrapping up. I'm Gilbert Gottfried. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre.

We've once again recorded at Nutmeg Post with our engineer, Frank Verderosa. And we have been listening for the past, I don't know how long, with the great Peter Bogdanovich. The ultimate movie lover. That's me. This was a treat for us, Peter. We can't thank you enough. You've made a great contribution to the show. Well, I'm glad.

Thanks a lot for having me on. Thank you. And we'll see you again. Good questions. You guys did some homework. We try. Thank you again. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.