WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Peter Bogdanovich from 2015

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

From 2015, Marc talks with director Peter Bogdanovich about his life as a filmmaker, his days in the theater and his friendship with Orson Welles. Peter died on January 6, 2022 at age 82. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nice to see you, Mr. Bogdanovich. Nice to see you, Mark. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you, but sometimes it's tricky because you've been around a while. Yeah. You know? you've been around a while. Yeah. You know?

And I know you have this new film coming out, but I'm sort of hung up a little bit on the whole history of your work. What do you think is the primary difference in the way that people, you know, take in film now? Because I know you come from a time where film was really, a lot of time was spent understanding it,

reading into it, thinking about it. There was a whole culture around that that seems to have faded away. Yeah. Yes, it's disappeared. Yeah. Film culture in America is nonexistent right now. It was barely existent to begin with, wasn't it? Well, there was a period in the late 50s and 60s

when it was quite a bit of stuff going on because the French New Wave influence made its way across over here. Cahiers de Cinema, right? Cahiers de Cinema and all those guys that were on Cahiers, whether it was Truffaut or Eric Rohmer or Jean-Luc Godard, they all made films and were writing about films in the 50s

and then made films in the late 50s. And then Andrew Sarris picked it up here? In New York, there was Andy Sarris and me and a guy at the New York Times named Eugene Archer, who was sort of a secret auteurist. And then there was a magazine in England, too, a moviehuh which picked up the same kind of uh critical position well there was something exciting about movies and it seemed that uh you know some of the movies or a lot of the movies that were being made or being understood were either you know classic sort of hollywood films to sort of determine the language of cinema at that time right and then some of the movies that you guys made now determine you know what was great for this generation but it doesn't seem

like anybody's really taking on film that way no it do you're right I mean there are certain people Richard Brody in the New Yorker is very hip and Anthony Lane is funny in the New Yorker and sometimes pretty good. Yeah. The whole thing between Pauline Kael, for example, and Andy Sarris, that kind of stuff doesn't exist anymore.

No one cares and it's too big a field. I mean, there's hardly anything to write about, really. The movies aren't very good. Even the smaller movies? Well, some of the smaller movies,

yeah. But I guess, do you find that there is a tremendous difference? I mean, I know there's a lot of garbage, but I mean, there was also a lot of garbage when you smaller movies, yeah. But I guess, do you find that there is a tremendous difference? I mean, I know there's a lot of garbage, but I mean, there was also a lot of garbage when you were young, too. Yeah, oh, yeah. So, like, sorting out the- There's always a lot of garbage.

Right. But the proportion of quality has dropped. Right. Well, the proportion itself has grown so large that you don't even know where things are coming from. We're in a period of decadence in terms of movies. Is that the same as decay? Decadence. It's true.

Yeah. But when you started out as a film critic? No, no, no. I started out as an actor. Really? In 1955 when I was 15. In New york uh well i i got a job i was studying acting at the american uh american theater whatever it's called theater institute american academy of dramatic oh yeah yeah yeah they had a saturday class for teenagers and i

was studying there and the the lady that was the main teacher there said, would you like to be an apprentice this summer in Traverse City, Michigan? They're doing a season of 10 shows, 10 plays. And you would be an apprentice, and you could be acting in the children's theater and also for the main company if there was something for you. Well, I did that. And actually, by the seventh week, I was playing a lead in one of the plays.

Yeah. And that was my first. Then I did the next three summers, I also was doing summer theater. Children's theater. No, New York Shakespeare Festival. Oh, yeah? In Central Park.

Uh-huh. Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Connecticut. And a play a theater in Falmouth it was fascinating it was also that first summer yeah

we had some sort of secondary movie stars who came every week for them to make some money a different one every week like Zazu Pitts yeah Richard Arlen

Veronica Lake. Really? Oh, yeah. And they would act? Oh, yeah. They were traveling around the country doing this one play,

whatever the play was. So it was like Summerstock in a way. It was Summerstock. It was Star Summerstock. Right, right. And the resident company would rehearse the play

without Star for a week. And then she would come or he would come for a couple of days before we opened. We'd rehearse it once or twice and then open. With Veronica Lake. Veronica Lake. She was something, right? She was Sylvia Sidney. Veronica Lake was very short.

Really? Amazing. Was that the first time you realized like, oh, it's an illusion? It's an illusion. So my first, and then I studied acting with Stella Adler for four years. So I've been in the show business for 60 years. It's insane. It must be. How does that feel? Really weird.

I would imagine. But where did you grow up? In the city? Manhattan, yeah. Right? And what kind of family? What did your father do? My father was a painter.

Like a painter painter? Yeah, a painter, an artist. What type? What was his style? Well, sort of post-impressionist, but with an element of the Byzantine as well, because he had very bright colors. Successful? No, artists are very rarely successful while they're alive.

The people who make money are the art dealers after they're dead. Do you have some of your father's paintings? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. My sister takes care of that. And it's just you and your sister? Yeah, I have two daughters and three grandsons.

That's exciting. Yeah. How are you doing as a grandfather? Well, I don't let him call me grandpa, because then it would make me go into my Walter Brennan impression. Yeah, yeah, I want to hear that, Mr. Brennan. No grandpa, huh? No grandpa. What do they call you? Papa. Okay, that's decent. Papa. And what'd your mom do? My mother was working in a job she hated for some years, and then she

finally ended up teaching herself with some help how to make frames, and she became a very, very fine frame maker and framed my father's paintings. It worked out. They were a team. They were a team, yeah. So when did the interest in movies begin? Well, I loved movies from the time I was a kid. They took me to see movies all the time.

What's your earliest memory of a movie? Well, I don't remember it terribly well, but I'm told that I was taken to see Dumbo when I was three. And that I hated it. And had to be taken from the theater screaming. I'm wondering if there wasn't some precognition. To your future. Get me out of this. The first thing I remember really seeing when I was five,

my parents took me to the metropolitan opera wow uh which was on 34th street at that time and um i saw don giovanni mozart's don giovanni with ezio pinza and zinka milanoff and i remember being scared to death when the guy went to hell at the end. Yeah. The thing opened up and he went, ah. So the opera worked. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. But movies, I always liked movies. Went to my parents.

My father took me to the Museum of Modern Art to see silent films. My father was about 20 years older than my mother. And he basically grew up with silent films. Sound didn't come in until he was 30. Really? Yeah. So he had a respect for it. And he communicated that to me.

And he was also sophisticated in that because he was a painter, art was an important part of his life, so he probably went to the museum, the Met. Oh, yeah, sure. He took me all the time. To visit his favorites. Yes, and he took me to to galleries on 57th street which

used to be the the great place for galleries it's a gift that you you come from uh such an appreciation yes and they always did everything they could to encourage me artistic in my in my artistic endeavors supportive very very supportive in your Yeah. And then what happened was, there was, I had had a column in my high school newspaper for four years. About? Movies in theater. Really?

Yeah. Were you mimicking somebody? No, I don't know why I decided to do that, but I did. It was called As We See It. They said, who's the we? And I said, it's the royal we. Were you a popular kid in high school? Well, they called me Bugs because I did a very good impression of Bugs Bunny from the time I was in kindergarten.

Do you bring that back with your grandkids now? Sometimes. Oh, good. And yeah, they like the Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. But I also ended up being called Dean and Jerry and Marlon because I did all those impressions. Dean and Jerry, what, Jerry Lewis? Martin and Lewis. Oh, yeah?

Oh, sure. You did Dean? I did Dean, yeah. He was something, wasn't he? He was great. I Dean I did Dean yeah he was something wasn't he it was great I love you god he was so good I just quoted him this morning I burped and I said I got enough gas to get to Pittsburgh you do sound like him did you ever read that Nick Tasha's book oh yeah oh what a great book huh it was interesting yeah he's he's a hell of a writer that guy very good writer so okay so you're writing a column.

I was writing a column for four years. In high school? Like a dope. And it was a very good, very ritzy high school. It was a collegiate school. It was a school in the country. Really? 14-something.

Really? Yeah. Where the hell was that? It's still there? Yeah, they moved. But it used to be on 77th Street between Broadway and West End. So these were sophisticated kids? Pretty hip kids.

A lot of them wealthy. Right, right. Like a dope, I didn't realize when I was in high school that I could have gotten into movies free writing that column. Oh, right. Work the angle.

I could have, but I didn't realize that until I got out of high school. And then in order to get into movies and theater for free because I was broke, I said I continued writing for some cockamamie college magazine called Ivy Magazine, which was...

What college? I didn't go to college, but it went to all the Ivy League colleges. When I was 19, still studying with Stella, I had lied to Stella and said I was 18 when I was 16. Mm-hmm.

And that's how I got in because I was supposed to be 18. But I was tall and they bought it. And when I was about 18 or 19, end of 18 or 19,

I was sitting in a diner with five actors from Stellas, and I said, I'd like to direct you. I don't know why I said this. Who were these actors? Actors from... Anybody? Nobody famous.

Just a bunch of actors from the studio, from the Stellas. And I said, I'd like to direct you guys in a scene. Scene class was usually two actors doing a scene uh-huh or one actor doing a monologue right well i got the four or five actors together and we found a scene from a play by clifford odette's called the big knife which had a very good i love that that's a great play yeah well yeah that's a good movie thereby hangs the tale yeah so we did the scene which one uh toward the end something in the third act. And when it was over, Stella, the class applauded,

and Stella stood up and said, Very good, darlings, you're very good, but you've been directed. Who directed you? And they pointed at me. I was in the back of the studio, and they said, Peter. And Stella turned to me, and she says, Bravo, darling, brilliant. So I thought, shit of the studio, and they said, Peter. And Stella turned to me. She says, bravo, darling. Brilliant.

So I thought, shit, maybe I should just direct the whole play. Yeah. So I got the rights from Clifford Odets at the age of 19. You wrote to him? I wrote to him. I wrote him a long two-page typed letter. And two weeks later, he said he said okay i hadn't done a thing yeah and um he said i could do it and i i then it took me uh nine months to raise 15

grand to put it on off-broadway and we did and we got really better reviews than the original production which was strasburg and John Garfield. And it ran a respectable 63 performances. Jeez. And then I was out of work. Right. Who did that film? Because it's hard to find that film. Bob Aldrich. What a great, I love that movie, man. Well, the movie wasn't as good as

the play. Yeah? But it's a good movie. Steiger was a trip in that movie. Yeah, he was very funny. Yeah. But they cut some of his best lines, like, you have pissed away a kingdom today. I love that line. Gone. That's not in the movie.

Yeah, yeah. So you're out of work. So I'm out of work. So I started writing about movies and theater, and I got in free. And a guy named Dan Talbot who was an exhibitor and a writer opened the theater two blocks from where I was living with my parents yeah called the New Yorker theater he changed the name

of it yeah it became a very influential theater the idea of the theater was to run American classics as opposed to foreign films, which most of the art houses in New York were running foreign films. What year were we at? 60. Okay. 60, 61. So American classics at that point would have been some of the musicals, the westerns?

Well, things like The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, things like that. That was 60, 61. And then I was hired to direct, to be the artistic director of a season of summer theater in Phoenicia, New York. And we did 10 plays. I directed four of them. What were they? Well, the four I did was Tennessee Williams' Camino Real,

Kaufman and Hart's Once in a Lifetime, another play by Clifford called Rocket to the Moon, and a play by Agatha Christie called Ten Little Indians. And we had good success, particularly with all of them were successful. I supervised the other six shows. It was quite an interesting summer. So coming into theater, though, like in directing theater, did you study that or was it more intuitive for you? Well, I saw about 350 plays

in New York on Broadway. My mother insisted that I go to the theater. When you were a kid? When I was 13. And I raised a ruckus. I said, I don't want to go to the theater. I want to see Martin and Lewis in the movie that had just opened. She said, you're going to the theater. So you saw I don't want to go to the theater. I want to see Martin and Lewis in the movie that just opened.

She said, you're going to the theater. So you saw that. So you really went all the time. So you saw everything. Well, she sent me to this. She insisted that I go to this play. It was Henry Fonda in a play called Point of No Return. I remember sitting in the last row of the balcony, and I loved it.

I didn't think I would love it but I loved it. What was it about it? I don't know. It was great. But did you feel it? Because I went to see some theater recently and I tried to define,

like I talked about it just the other day, the importance of theater, what exactly it is. There's something that you can't get anywhere else. It's like it's a visceral

experience and it's moving. It's live. Yeah. And it's exciting. And then after that I went every weekend to the play. I must have seen 350 shows between 1952

and when I moved out of L.A., New York. Do you remember moments where you were like, holy shit? Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof directed by Kazan.

Oh, my God. I saw Ben Gazzara's first thing in End is a Man, which was brilliant. That's the first review I wrote. For Ben? Was Ben Gazzara in End is a Man which was written by Calder Willingham based on his book about

a southern military academy. He played kind of a sadistic guy. He was very good and very funny actually. And that was the beginning for him? That was. For Gazzara. It made him a star. Yeah. Overnight. So many people got launched at a theater back then. I mean,

it made a big difference. Oh, sure, sure. Doesn't happen at all anymore. It goes the other way now. Doesn't seem to happen at all. No, because like now you become a movie star or a TV star

then they drag you to Broadway to sell the play. Yeah, that's right. It's interesting. I didn't even realize that how much, how many people

came out of theater. John Garfield, you mentioned. I mean, he must have been. I'm sure he was with the group. Yeah, right. Well, that was Charles Berg's people was Strasburg the actors grow the group theater the group theater was Strasburg Harold Klerman and And Stella and then the American method came after that. Well, it was around that time Mm-hmm what happened was no know debts was involved too right who uh quivered odette he was the kind of the house playwright right right yeah group he wrote waiting for lefty which was a big success and golden what was the other one golden boy golden boy oh that's a revival of that not too long ago it was great yeah it's terrific so anyway with all

that experience in the theater i still broke broke and started writing for this magazine. And this fellow got the New Yorker two blocks from where I live. And I went to see him and I said, I live two blocks away and I'd like to get in free. And he said, did you write a program note for Intolerance a couple of months ago? I said, yeah, it wasn't very good. He said, you're right, it wasn't very good. And we became friends. And I helped him programming the theater a little bit.

And then he booked Orson Welles' Othello, a film. And I wrote a program note for it in which I called it the best shakespeare film ever made which was absolutely diametrically opposed to what everybody else was saying which was the laurence olivier's movies were the best shakespeare what was around then hamlet well he did hamlet and henry five right yeah and i i didn't like those i mean they were, but Orson's made a movie. So I wrote this not too long program note. About two months later, I get a call from Richard Griffith, who was the curator of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library. And he says, we're going to do a retrospective,

the first in the United States of Orson Welles' films. And we'd like you to curate it and write the accompanying monograph. How old were you uh 22 wow 21 that's mo mccullen mo mccullen yeah orson welles retrospective at that first in the united states how what how many was he still making features he was shooting the trial in europe okay so he was almost done in a way well no, no, he had still a few more pictures. So I said, why are you asking me? I said, you usually do this, Dick.

Why are you asking me? He says, well, I don't like Orson Welles, but a lot of our members do, and our associates in Europe think he's great and so on. And we read your program note, and you obviously are a partisan, so we'd like you to do it. You like the guy, and you're smart. Why don't you do it?

That's right. They paid me 50 bucks. To curate the thing? To curate the thing and to write the monograph, which was published by Doubleday and the museum. What was the process of curating? You just went film for film? I got the films for them. Okay. So all ofbleday and the museum. What was the process of curating? You just went film for film? Got the films for them.

Okay. So all of them. All the films. It was a three to six month retrospective and it was very popular. And you had seen all the films already? If I hadn't, I saw them. Yeah. I'd seen most of them.

Because you developed a relationship with Wells later. That was later. Right. Seven years later. But anyway, so that was the first thing I did for the museum. Yeah. And around the same time, I had gone to California on my own. I saved up enough money, and I went, I think it was in early 61 or 62.

I can't remember now. I went to convince Clifford Odets to let me do another play. Which one? Night Music, which he didn't let me do. Why? He didn't want to do it. He said he didn't want to do any more. One was enough.

He got the temperature of the New York theater, and it still wasn't on his side totally, so he backed off. But what was he doing? He was in Hollywood? Yeah, writing scripts. What were some of his movies? Well, the best one is Sweet Smell of Success. Okay.

And he was also directing. He directed a movie called The Story on Page One. So he didn't have any weird ethical problem with that? Because he was sort of like a proletariat guy. Well, he was. Well, that's a long story. I think he was one of the guys that was called up in front of the House on American Activities. And he gave some names, and I think that crushed him.

Yeah, I think it did. Didn't fare well for the rats. No. Personally. After all was said and done, not too many of them could live with it. No, he couldn't. Sterling Hayden either, really. Yeah.

So anyway, I went to California to talk to Clifford. But by this point, I was on the screening lists. I knew all the publicity people at various studios. Right. So I got in, and I had a friend of mine at Harper's Magazine, Bob Silvers, who eventually started the New York Review of Books. Yeah.

And he said, okay, he wrote me a letter saying, okay, he was at Harper's. He said, I will read anything you write about Hollywood. Right. So I said, I have an assignment from Harper's to do a piece about the state of the art. About Hollywood. About Hollywood, the state of the art in Hollywood. And I got to meet everybody. Yeah?

Who were those people? Well, I mean, I watched Bob Wise directing West Side Story, and I watched... Really? I met Hitchcock, and I met Cary Grant. Well, Cary Grant, actually, I met through Clifford, because they were very good friends. You met Hitchcock.

Was that a long meeting? Did you have a conversation? Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a conversation with him. He kicks off. I wrote an article eventually about this whole trip. Yeah. And Harper's passed on it.

And the New Yorker passed on it. What? Then I just accidentally was introduced to the managing editor of Esquire, Harold Hayes, the legendary Harold Hayes. And I told him about the piece. He read it. He loved it. And they used it as the lead piece in their August 1962 issue.

And that was the first thing I did for Esquire. And I did subsequent maybe 10 articles for Esquire. That's how I lived. Writing for? For Esquire. And the irony is, then I did paid. That's how I lived. Writing for? For Esquire. And the irony is, then I did another play. Directed a play.

Another play. Which one? Which we had done in summer theater called Once in a Lifetime, a comedy about Hollywood. We had 13 sold-out previews, played great,

but opening night was not a good night. And we got sort of mixed reviews, but we didn't have enough money to keep rolling, so we closed after one night. Very depressing. And it was because we were under finance. That's a whole long story. Anyway, a friend of ours who, I was married by this time, a friend of ours whom I'd met when I was doing a profile on Jerry Lewis for Esquire. Did you sit down with Jerry?

Oh, yeah. I was with a profile on Jerry Lewis for Esquire. Did you sit down with Jerry? Oh, yeah. I was with Jerry for three weeks. It's interesting to me that back in the day, people would spend a month with people doing interviews. Yeah. So you spent that long with not even a 50-year-old Jerry Lewis? Oh, he was 35. Unbelievable. And what was that experience like? Very, very interesting. Yeah? And I wrote a very long piece. It was called, they said it was the longest profile ever published by Escort. What did you find complex about him? Well, he was a pretty complicated guy.

In what way? Well, hard to say. I mean, he was funny, but he was also introspective, and he was all over the place. He was directing, producing, writing, starring. And what did you think of his reputation as being an auteur and respected in France? What did you think of his films as a critic? I liked some of them.

Yeah. And I met his favorite director, who was Frank Tashlin, who was also a comedy, a cartoon director. Anyway, Frank came to New York, came to see us. He said, what do you want to direct, theater or movies? I said, movies. He said, what are you doing in New York? We make them in LA. Within four months, Polly and I, my first wife, moved to Los Angeles. You had children already?

No, not yet. With the express purpose of getting into the movies. And a year after we arrived, by absolute coincidence, I was at the same showing of a movie. It wasn't a preview or anything. It was the same showing of a movie called Bay of Angels, a French film. And sitting behind me was Roger Corman. Right. Who was with somebody who knew somebody I was with.

And I was introduced to Roger Corman. And you knew him, obviously, at that time. Of him. Of him. Yeah. And he said, I've read your stuff in Esquire. Right. Would you like to write for movies?

I said, yes. That's what you thought, like, this is the best. Everything's working out. It's amazing. So within a year not only was I he offered me a job writing movies he asked me to work

with him on the film he was going to direct first he asked me to read the script and give me his opinion give him my opinion and I said

it's terrible he said yeah I know it's terrible he said I'd like you to do a rewrite he said I'll pay you $300 and no credit okay but at that time so you had obviously I'd like you to do a rewrite. He said, I'll pay you $300 and no credit.

Okay. But at that time, so you had obviously read a lot of plays, worked in a lot of plays, directed plays. You were taking apart movies. You were on sort of the cutting edge of film criticism. You were involved in that. You understood how it all worked. But had you written a screenplay at that time and before?

No. But you knew the form. Well, I knew it. I'd seen enough movies to get the idea, and I'd read a lot of screenplays. Uh-huh. But I forgot to mention that after the Wells retrospective at the museum, the same place I met Harold Hayes,

an Esquire guy, I saw a film by Howard Hawks called Hattari, which was his new film. And I called my friend at Paramount and I said, look, if I can get the Museum of Modern Art to do a Hawks retrospective with Paramount, pay for it. And they said, and they got back to me and said, yes. So I called

Richard Griffith and I said, if you'll put on a Hawks retrospective, Paramount, I mean, yeah, Paramount will pay for it. Great. So I was, I got paid by Paramount will pay for it. Great. So I got paid by Paramount for the first money I made from movies, $200 a week, to write the monograph, interview Hawks.

I went to California to interview Hawks and find all the films. How was that for you? Oh, he became a lifelong friend. As did Jerry. As did Jerry. As did Jerry Lewis? Yeah. To this day? To this day, yeah.

I called him the other day. Really? Oh, sure. The other day I called him about a year ago. I called him, Jerry, it's been 50 years we've known each other. You realize we're having our 50th anniversary? Yeah. Hey, Sam, Peter says it's been 50 years since we know each other.

That's what you got. He was very happy about that. Anyway, so I did the retrospective of Howard Hawks, which was the first in the United States also. And the following year, I said to the museum, how about Hitchcock? Let's do retrospective. And they said, fine.

And we got Universal to pay for that. So this is the mid-60s. This was, Orson was 61, Hawke 62, Hitchcock 62. So all these guys were still making movies. Oh, yeah. And like some of it. Hitchcock's retrospective was coordinated with the opening of The Birds. Oh, my God.

And I met Hitchcock again. I'd already met him. And did the monograph for that. Universal paid for that and then I left after that I left New York and went to California so you so okay so Corman offers you this writing job now I got to assume you know given what you've taken in in your life up to that point and given that you were intellectually assessing the styles of all these guys that once you started to get these opportunities, that there must have

been a tremendous amount of pressure by your own brain around how you were going to take this stuff on. Not really. No? The first thing I did was, Roger asked me to do a rewrite on that Wild Angel script. It was a terrible script. Right. And I rewrote about 80% of it.

Right. And he loved it. Yeah. Shot it. Yeah. And he kept running out of time, and he wasn't going to go over three weeks, so he kept saying, he said,

I can't do this, we'll do it in the second unit. Yeah. I said, who's going to direct the second unit? He said, I don't know, anybody can direct the second unit. My secretary can direct it. You can direct it. I said, well, I'd like to direct it. Well, all right, we'll see.

So I did direct the second unit. So you're coming into it with no film directing experience, and you've got a camera guy, and you've got some lighting guys, and you've got your sound guys. I had the whole crew. Right, but you had been watching how Corman was doing. Oh, yeah, and I'd watched John Ford directing for three weeks since Monument Valley.

When you interviewed? When I did a piece on him for Esquire. So what was Ford directing at that time? Cheyenne Autumn. Huh. And I watched Hawks directing Rio Bravo. Really? El Dorado.

Was that Dean? No, Dean is in Rio Bravo, but this was Bob Mitchum and John Wayne. Bob Mitchum. Yeah. John Wayne. Yeah. So you're hanging out with these guys.

Yeah, for a week and a half. And you're like this little kid almost. Well, I was a kid. I was very young. Now, what was your demeanor around these guys? Were you gracious or annoying? No, they liked me. They liked you?

Yeah. Ford liked me. He picked on me all the time, but he liked me. Jesus Christ, Bogdanov bug damage is that all you can do is ask questions have you never even heard of the declarative sentence and what was mitchum like edgy yeah edgy and kind of outrageous you know he kind of shocked me and my wife ex-wife and what's your wife do at that time was she in the business she was i hired her for that season of summer theater that i was the artistic director oh in new york i hired her because she's a costume she started as a costume okay okay and i tried to push

her into designing sets she was scared to but then she did when we finally when i started making movies she did oh really she did the production design Now, and John Wayne you spent a lot of time with, right? Later, I spent more time with him, but quite a bit on that one week or week and a half we were there, I talked to him quite a bit. And when I think about just a couple of guys you mentioned, outside of the director, someone like Jerry Lewis and like John Wayne were challenging kind of characters in a way. Well they were but they seemed to like me. Yeah did you find that the creativity like with someone like Jerry Lewis who's become sort of this weird caricature of himself did you find an intelligence there that was surprising? He was very smart.

Yeah? Yeah very bright. And John? Very sensitive and Duke was extremely interesting and like a kid. He was like a huge 10-year-old. He loved making movies. He never went to his trailer. Yeah.

He would sit around on the set playing with his six-shooter or playing with the rifle and smoking and talking to the crew and talk to me a lot. Like to be out in it. Yeah, he never went to his trailer. Mitchum was always in his trailer. Uh-huh. So, okay, so you spent all this time and now you're out and you wrote the movie. Okay, second unit.

So there's your big break. That was a big break, yes. Right. And I did the second unit. And actually, I worked with the first unit because there were some scenes that he had dropped with Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra that I had to get and some scenes with Bruce Dern. So the Corman crew at that time, the people, the actors that were around, because I don't think any, I don't have a sense. So why don't you give me a sense of that operation over there? Well, Roger was down and dirty. It was do it fast.

Right. But he was his own thing, right? Yeah, he were. This picture was made for American International Studios. But I got the feeling that it was some sort of weird, almost like shadow studio system over there. That he had a crew of actors and a crew of shooters that he used always. Because he was making how many movies a year? Well, he made quite a few. Right. He produced quite a few and directed.

Uh-huh. So it must have been sort of a lively place was very lively yeah and uh i went i shot the stuff and he called me in his office when he says the editor was monty hellman and he became a director roger calls me into his office says monty says your stuff doesn't cut i said what do you mean it doesn't cut yeah he said it doesn't cut i said we probably cut it wrong we said we'll go down and look at't cut? He said, it doesn't cut. I said, well, we probably cut it wrong. He said, well, go down and look at it. So I looked at it.

I said, it's cut wrong. So I said to Roger, it's cut wrong. He said, well, cut it yourself then. I said, well, I don't know how to cut. He said, don't you know how to use a machine? I said, no. He said, well, go downstairs. Dennis will show you.

The editing machine, the editing thing. Yeah, that was how I learned to edit. Just start doing it. That was Roger. He'd throw you in the ocean and say, swim. If you just didn't swim, you'd drown. That was it. How long did you spend over there? machine the editing yeah that was how i learned to edit just start doing it that was roger he'd throw you in the ocean say swim if you just didn't swim you drown that was it how long did you spend over there did you spend a lot of time at corman's operation oh i worked on this this movie for 22 weeks so was did everything that you could possibly do look for locations rewrote the script directed the so it's sort of your movie well i had I had a lot to do with it, and it was the most successful movie in Roger's career.

Really? Huge hit. What was the title of it? The Wild Angels. Uh-huh. And it actually was the first successful off-Hollywood movie before Bonnie and Clyde. Right.

It was sort of the beginning of the new Hollywood in a way because it was a very counterculture movie. Mm-hmm. It wasn't a great movie. Right. It was a of the beginning of the new Hollywood in a way because it was a very counterculture movie. It wasn't a great movie. Right. It was a very counterculture and it was very successful. Who else did you meet when you were there during that 22 weeks? Who was coming through? Was Nicholson around?

Was De Niro around? I met Jack, but not then. I met him later. Yeah. He worked with Roger. Anyway, the picture was quite a big success. Uh-huh. And then he felt that I had had something to do with Roger. Anyway, the picture was quite a big success. Uh-huh. And then he felt that I had had something to do with that,

so he offered me a movie to direct myself. With your name on it. Yeah, with my name on it. And that was Targets? Targets. Uh-huh. That began with him saying, Boris Karloff owes me two days' work.

I said, okay. And this is like Boris Karloff at 70, right? 79. He owes him two days work. And he says, now here's what I want you to do. I want you to shoot 20 minutes with Karloff in two days. You can do that. I've shot whole pictures in two days.

Right. He says, and then I want you to get a bunch of other actors off in two days you can do that yeah i've shot whole pictures in two days right he says then i want you to get a bunch of other actors and shoot uh 20 minutes with them so now i've got 40 minutes and and the movie was about a a a psychopathic sniper right well that wasn't any it wasn't anything all it was was where was the script there There was no script. What does that mean? He basically was telling me how he wanted me to make a movie. Okay. Shoot Roger...

Karloff. Karloff for two days, get 20 minutes. Right. Shoot, use 20 minutes of footage from another picture that he'd made called The Terror with Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson, as a matter of fact. Use 20 minutes of footage from that. Yeah. And now I've got 40 minutes of Karloff and Jack Nicholson, as a matter of fact. Used 20 minutes of footage from that. Yeah. And now I've got 40 minutes of Karloff.

And now- Doing what? Exactly. I don't know. And then you shoot with some other actors for 10 days and 40 minutes. And now I have a new 80 minute Karloff picture. Will you do it? I said, sure.

So we spent, Polly and I spent some time trying to figure out what the fuck to do with Boris Karloff in two days. What was he like? I hadn't met him yet. He was in London. Right. He was in England. Well, when I was in New York, just recently before that,

Harold Hayes, the editor of Esquire, had said to me, you know you ought to make a movie buddy about that guy in Texas who shot all those people Charles Whitman at the college he went up to the University of Texas Tower

and shot about 30 people it was one of the first of those kind of incidents which had proliferated since then and I said I'm not going to make a movie about that

and then we were working with Carl, we're trying to figure out what the hell to do with Karloff. We couldn't imagine him being a heavy. He was too old. And that kind of Victorian horror didn't seem to me very horrible anymore. And we ran the terror, a terrible movie. And I was shaving one morning, trying to figure out what the hell to do with this thing. And I was shaving, and I thought to myself, I know what I'll do. We'll begin the picture with the end of the terror, and the lights will come up in a projection room. Yeah.

And Boris will be sitting there next to Roger, and he'll turn to Roger and say, that is unquestionably one of the worst films ever made. That's a scene you were going to shoot with Boris. I made a joke for myself. Right. And I said, wait a second. That's not a bad idea. If he's an actor

yeah in a movie yeah we don't have to use we can we don't have to we don't have to justify that material so right okay so it was your way of getting around getting around yeah he's an actor yeah and then we thought if he's an actor and he wants to quit acting because his kind of horror isn't horrible anymore right what is horrible is this guy this guy in Texas who shot 30 people. That's modern, modern horror. Right. So we said, that's the script.

Right. So we wrote a script cross-cutting between these two. One wants to retire, the other one is on a rampage. Uh-huh. Roger Redd said,

this is a brilliant script, best script 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 rewrite it. I said, Roger, you just said it was the best script.

Anyway, finally we got Karloff for five days. Oh, he liked it? Paid the extra five. He liked it. Boris loved the script. Yeah. And Roger liked it and paid the extra few bucks. Okay.

For three more days. We still had to shoot Boris in five days, half the script in five days. And he was 79. 79, and he was great. He liked liked me he didn't like Roger at all but he liked me and we got along very well and he liked the script uh-huh and we shot the whole picture in 23 days and that was your first that was my first film and how'd that do not well what happened was i didn't want american international to release it so i had a friend of mine of actually jerry lewis's secretary carol saraceno had she had been jerry's secretary right she was now working for bob evans who was the head of the studio

right already yeah in the late 60s this is 67 67 68 so you just gotten a job in recently i said to carol can you get evans to see my picture and she said i don't know i'll try i get a phone call a couple of weeks later from bob evans he says you know you ruined my evening last night i said what what do you mean he said i wanted to sell carol's been bugging me to look at your movie i thought i'd look at a reel and go to dinner. I couldn't turn the fucking thing off. We want to buy it. Yeah.

And that's what happened. And that was the beginning of your relationship with Bob Evans. With Bob Evans. Signed a seven-picture deal. Seven-picture deal. Yeah. And they didn't use me on any of them. And you weren't 30 yet?

How old was I? No, I wasn't 30 yet. In 1968, I was 28. Well, can we speak to that for a minute about what you said, is that the first Corman film that you were involved with was really the turning of the tide in terms of the studio system, their inability to see what the new market was. And I don't know that Corman was necessarily on the pulse of that,

but certainly he was. Yeah, he did the trip market was. And I don't know that Corman was necessarily on the pulse of that, but certainly he was. Yeah, he did the trip after that. Okay. So that was the beginning of their slipping and you guys finding your way in. It was the new Hollywood beginning. But it happened sort of in a weird way that they had lost traction, right? Was it a natural evolution? No, it was all kind of coincidental.

Oh, it was. I think. Yeah, that Bob Evans got that job? Yeah, Bob was very bright and sort of an old-fashioned kind of studio head, actually. And

things were interesting at that period. And when did you start finding or meeting these other guys that were involved in that? Around that time. Who were your contemporaries that you were close with? None of them. I didn't get along with any of them.

Why? I liked older people. I liked Cary Grant. I didn't want to spend time with Jack. Because you had a respect for their work. I like what they did, yeah. I wasn't friendly with any of those directors, actually. But you sort of lumped in

with them i met them yeah and a guy you know i didn't didn't get along with were they friends were you an outsider kind of uh-huh i didn't hang around with those guys um why because they were living it up or you just no i just it wasn't my thing i don't know i don't know it's weird yeah it's weird you didn't like the party no i wasn't a party in fact what happened was then uh targets was my opened the door to a lot of things got pretty good reviews yeah times reviewed it twice in new york times and and we showed it to a producer named Bert Schneider, who was the head of a company called BBS, which was Bob Rafelson was the director,

who had made Five Easy Pieces. Yeah, yeah, it was great. And Steve Blauner and Bert Schneider. Did you get along with Rafelson? Yeah, I did very much. Is he still around? Yeah, he lives in Aspen now. So we showed Bert Schneider at Scene Targets,

and he says to me, if you ever have a picture you want to make, bring it to us. We'd like to work with you. Okay. So I, through a series of odd coincidences, I read a book called The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry.

Yeah. And I said, I'd like to make this. And I sent it, and I called Bert Schneider. Yeah. I said, I'd like to make The Last Picture Show. Yeah. And here's the book. I mean, he said, well, send me the book.

I said, why don't you buy it? Right. Yeah. And he bought it and read it and said, we'd like to make it. Right. And so I did. And now, okay, so let's talk.

And that's history. That's history. That made me a star. It did make you a star. And, you know, at that time, it was a provocative decision to shoot in black and white. Very, yeah. And I imagine you had a fight for that. Well, that's a funny story.

You want to hear it? Yeah, sure. That's why you're here. I was talking to Orson Welles, whom I'd gotten to know. After seven years, he called me suddenly. After the retrospective? Yes, seven years after the retrospective. By now, I had made targets, and I was married, and I had a daughter.

We had another one after that. And Orson calls me and says, Peter McDonough said yes he's this is Orson Wells I can't tell you how long I wanted to meet you I said that's my line he said I said why would you want to meet me because you have written the truest words ever published about me pause in English and and I said really easy what are you doing tomorrow when you want to meet me at the Polo Lounge and I said, really? He says, what are you doing tomorrow? You want to meet me at the Polo Lounge? And I said, sure, and that's how we met.

So I got to know him. Where was he at then? I mean, what was his... He was doing Dean Martin's show and tonight's show. So he'd become sort of a clown. Well, you know, he's kidding around a lot, and it kept him going. And he had made The Trial and had made Chimes at Midnight,

the Falstaff movie, just before I met him, which I loved. But when you say it was keeping him going, I mean, this guy was a genius. Had Hollywood abandoned him? Oh, sure. Yeah, he couldn't get a job. For what reason? He never had a hit picture. Hmm.

That's basically what it was all about. Anyway, so I'm sitting with Orson at breakfast, and I said, in this film I'm making, I'd like to get that depth of feel that you got with... Tolan? With Citizen Kane and A Touch of Evil. Who was that you got with Tolan with Citizen Kane and the touch of evil who was that was that Tolan was a great to great Tolan yeah and he said you'll never get it in color I said well I think the film has gotten faster now maybe we you'll never get it in color so what do I do then you shoot it in black and white so what I'd love to shoot in

black and white but I don't think they'll let me. Have you asked? No, I haven't. Well, why don't you ask? You know what I say about black and white, don't you? Know what? It's the actor's friend. Why do you say that, Orson?

Because every performance looks better in black and white. Name me a great performance in color. Yeah. I wasn't going to argue with him. So I went to Bert Schneider, and I said, I'd like to shoot it in black and white. He says, why? I said, well.

Orson told me. I almost said that. I said, I think we can get the period flavor quicker, and I think the performances will look better. And he got back to me a week later and said, okay, go ahead. A couple of years later I asked him, how come you let me do it so easily? He said, I thought it would be a novelty. He was right.

Was it cheaper? Marginally. Right. It didn't make much difference. It was a novelty. It demanded attention. Yeah. So that was a big hit and then and that was the first

movie for what Jeff Bridges maybe the first time he got nominated for an Oscar and and what Timothy Bottoms was it yeah Tim Bottoms and Civil Shepard of course he's first Weichman and what and and us won the Oscar Ben Johnson Ben Johnson we got eight nominations you were nominated for director and script and you're not even 30 uh was i 30 that was 1971 i was yeah i was 31 32 so this is this is mind-blowing this is like this is a huge deal huge deal i mean unbelievable did you also got great reviews i mean we got a great movie i mean you know that newsweek said it was the best film by a young American director since Citizen Kane. Oh, my God. Did Orson call you?

Yeah, he sent me a telegram. He said, reading your notices is like opening presents for Christmas. Oh, shit. That's nice. Sweet, isn't it? Yeah. Did he see it? Yeah, he saw it.

He said, that's not the script I read. He didn't like the script. He said, that's not the script I read. I said, yes, it is. He said, no, it isn't. You saw it. He said, that's not the script I read. He didn't like the script. He said, that's not the script I read. I said, yes, it is. He said, no, it isn't. You transformed it. Did you ever think about using him as an actor? Oh, yeah.

We almost did Nickelodeon together. He didn't? What happened? I don't know. Yeah? It just didn't work out. The studio didn't want to pay him his money, and he got pissed off and didn't work out.

So after Last Picture i mean what was the pressure on you now that you were the the the new kid in town and what happened was uh mark was it wasn't like that what happened was i was at uh did it make money oh yeah okay yeah uh a lot of money picture only cost a million three uh-huh and it made i think 303 million. Uh-huh. And it made, I think, $30 million or something. Uh-huh. It did very well. The picture was barely, not even finished, not quite completely finished. Yeah. And I get a call from my agent,

and he says, Steve McQueen's looking for a director to do this new movie, The Getaway. And we'd like Steve to see The Last Picture Show. So Steve comes in, runs The Last Picture Show, comes out of it, and he comes over to me and says, you're a filmmaker, man. I'm just an actor. You're a filmmaker.

I want to work with you. And they hired me. Good guy? He was very nice to me. We started to work on The Getaway with Walter Hill was going to write it. At that point, I started working on the script with Walter and I get another call from an agent,

my agent, she says, Barbara Streisand wants to see the picture. She heard McQueen is hiring her. Last picture show. Wants to see last picture show. She's supposed to do a picture at Warner's and they'd like you to direct it, but she wants to see the picture first.

So she sees the picture, she loves it. And she says, I want to do a picture with you. And I said, well, I don't like that script that they've sent me. Which one was it? It was called A Glimpse of Tiger. It never was made. And I said, I just don't like it much. And she said, well, I want to do a drama with you.

I said, well, I just did a drama. I want to do a comedy. She said, I just did a comedy. I said, well. The Getaway wasn't a comedy. No, but she wasn't going to be in that. No, right. It's a separate movie.

Right. But I was just working on the script of The Getaway. Okay. I never did make that film, by the way. Who shot it? Was it Peckinpah? Peckinpah. Okay.

The reason, well, that's another long story. Anyway, so I go to John. John Calley was the head of Warner Brothers. Yeah. Very nice guy. I had met him before. And he calls me into his office and he says, Peter. Yeah. Barbara really wants to make a picture Warner Brothers. Yeah. Very nice guy. I had met him before. And he calls me into his office and he says,

Peter, Barbara really wants to make a picture with you. Right. I said, but John, I don't like that script. He says, well, let me put it this way.

If you had to do a picture with Barbara Streisand, what would you do? Yeah. I said, well, I'd do kind of a screwball comedy, you know,

a daffy dame, square professor, you know, like bringing up baby. Yeah. Do it. Really? He said, yeah. Who would you get to write it?

I said, well, I worked at Esquire with Benton and Newman, and he said, fine, use them. They just did something for us. Can I produce it? Yeah. So I walked out of the office with this idea, producing and directing

Barbra Streisand's next picture. We were in the middle of shooting when Picture Show opened. They wanted to open the New York Film Festival with the last Picture Show. And I couldn't get there for the Friday night.

So they moved it to the second night because I was shooting. They moved it to the second night. Shooting what? What's Up Duck. So that's the one you did with Streisand. That's right. shooting they moved it to the second shooting what what's up doc so that's the way you do with streisand that's right and oh so they moved the premiere they moved the screening of at the uh the um new york film festival but now there's an interesting decision right so you're like you know the last picture show had was something that you sort of honored

hadn't even opened right when i was in the midst of directing What's Up Doc. In fact, when What's Up Doc opened in March of 72, Last Picture Show was still playing in first run. So I had two pictures in the top 10 variety for about six months. It's interesting, though, to me that What's Up Doc is almost a throwback. Well, it's a screwball

comedy right yeah so like because like you know when i think about the last picture show it's almost an art film well it was kind of an art film but you just wanted to do a screwball comedy you just saw her i thought i've done that right might as well do something different and it's killed it was great right made a lot of money for both of them made him a star right well ryan was a star he already was a bigger star from what was he a star love story no yeah oh it was love story yeah all right so then all right well it became barbara streisand's most successful film in her career except for stars born oh yeah more successful than funny girl and now how's your personal life at this point? Is that starting to come unglued?

Oh, well, that came unglued during the last picture show because I fell in love with Sybil. Yeah. And she fell in love with me. Oh, boy. And I was married, and I had two kids. She was something, huh? She was something.

Are you guys friends? Yeah. Really? Yeah, we talk all the time. That's an amazing feat. Well, yeah, but she's a good girl. I love her. And then what happens, man?

What did you do? Well, then I was going to, what I was going to do was a Western with Larry McMurtry. I said to Larry, let's do a Western. He said,

who's going to be in it? I said, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Sybil Shepard, the Clancy brothers, remember them? Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn Fonda. All the guys. Sybil Shepard, the Clancy brothers. Remember them? Mm-hmm.

Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Mercy. He said, Jesus Christ. He said, what kind of Western do you want to write? I said, a Trek. They start somewhere, they go somewhere. Mm-hmm. Larry, I knew, had Western stuff in him. He hadn't written a Western yet.

Mm-hmm. And he wrote a 350 page 350 pages of screenplay. And I rewrote them and cut it down to about 150 pages. And we offered it. We gave it to the actors. Fonda said okay. He'll do it in a second. Jimmy said

yeah well I'll do it but why do I let the horses go? I said well we're going to shore that up, make that clearer, Jimmy. All right. And then Duke turned it down. Duke said, well, Pete,

it's kind of an end of the West Western and I'm not ready to hang up the spurs yet. But you don't die in the picture, Duke. He said, no, but everybody else does. So he turned it down. So I said, I'm not going to make this without John Wayne. So I said to Larry'm not going to make this without John Wayne. So I said to Larry, why don't you write it as a novel? 13 years later, he wrote Lonesome

Dove and won the Pulitzer Prize. It's based on my script. He also bought the script from Warner Brothers for $85,000. What was it called? The script? Streets of Laredo, which was the sequel that he wrote to Lonesome Dove. He called it Streets of Laredo. Anyway. Great story. Yeah.

So you didn't do that. So you did Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc, and the third movie. Well, what happened was I turned, Paramount came to me and said, would you do this book called Addie Prey? Yeah. And I read the screenplay that Alvin Sargent wrote.

And I said, it's good, but I'm doing a Western. Then when the Western fell apart, they still were there wanting me to do this Addie Prey, which was about a con man and his little girl. But Westerns were dying at that point, weren't they? They weren't doing too well. They were kind of on the way out. But Wayne was still doing Westerns that were successful.

Rooster Cogburn? Yeah, he offered me that. So I read Addie Pray, and I said, okay, I'll do it, but it needs a rewrite. Yeah. And I worked with Alvin Sargent. We did a rewrite, and I was looking through songs of the period, because it was 1935. I always look at what were the hit songs of that period. And I come across a song called It's Only

a Paper Moon. And I thought, Paper Moon, that's a good title. So I take it to Paramount and I said, I'd like to call it Paper Moon. They said, what the hell are you talking about? I said, well, I don't like Addie Prey. It sounds like a snake. I said, I'd like to call it Paper Moon. They said, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah. I said, well, I don't like Addie Prey. It sounds like a snake. They said, well,

it was a best-selling book. Yeah. I said, well, how many copies is it sold in hardcover? They said, 100,000. Right.

I said, well, geez, if we get 100,000 people to see the movie, we're really going to have a big hit. All right, Peter, look,

we don't want to have an argument with you. We're not going to change the title right now. Yeah. Make the picture. Yeah. So I called Orson he was in Rome cutting a picture and I called him up and I said

Orson can you talk a minute he says no I'm busy what do you want I said just tell me what you think of this title Paper Moon it was a short pause and he says that title is so good you don't even need to make the picture just release the title here the ear the selling in your voice he liked it was a good so good time yeah I called it turned out to be a good time yeah I called it a call about when sergeant the

writer and I said I remember those We've got a carousel. We've got a carnival scene in the picture already. Remember those cardboard moons that people used to sit in and take pictures? Yeah. I said, let's put a scene like that in the picture. Tatum wants to go sit in the moon, and he doesn't want to go or whatever. He said, why are we doing this? He said, so we can call the fucking thing Paper Moon and nobody will say why.

And that was that. That was a big hit too. Oscar winner. She won the Oscar at the age of 10. I remember seeing that movie when I was a kid and I was like,

Jesus Christ, this is the greatest movie. She was amazing. She was amazing, yeah. You still friends with her? Yeah. Really? She's in my new picture.

And the one that's coming out now, she's funny that way. She plays a bit. Oh, yeah? She just does a bit, just a cameo, just for the fun of it. That's nice. It's a nice sort of loyalty thing. Yeah, when Sybil did that, too. She was in it, too?

She was in it, too, briefly. And Richard Lewis and Michael Shannon, they all did bits. So you did, okay, so then you did those three movies, which were huge. Yeah. And then the tides turned a little? Well, then I made three that weren't successful. Happens. For various reasons.

I made Daisy Miller with Sybil, which the New Yorker just wrote a piece about it recently in which they said it's very rare for a great book to be made into a great movie, but Bogdanovich did it with Daisy Miller, which was very nice of the New Yorker to say that. It got good reviews, but it was way ahead of the curve on those kind of films.

Merchant Ivory hadn't done any yet. So does it fare well? No. I mean, no. No, it got mixed reviews. But I mean, in retrospect. Well, we won the best, I won best director at Brussels. I'm not sure I should have made it. It's a good, I like the picture. It's a good picture. Sybil is

very good and it's very faithful to the book. So as a director, there seems to be some level of, like it's a unique position to be a director. And do you think that your experience in spending time with Orson Welles and in watching Howard hawks and in watching john ford and and in having these experiences with odette's and everything that gave you a certain amount of confidence oh yeah because like you the fact that you were detached from the rest of the crew from coppola and those guys who were your contemporaries and obviously we were all competing on some level. On some level. So, but it seems to me that you sort of take it, the way you talk about a picture failing or not failing, is that something you had calm about in the moment,

or is this something that you're able to do now? Able to do now. Okay. We made a musical that was completely screwed up, called At Long Last Love, a whole point of musical which was screwed up. Why it long last love a whole poor musical which was screwed up and um why would you choose to do that in 1975 i felt like doing a musical set in the 30s and i thought be fun uh-huh and um it was pretty good but it wasn't good enough

and we had a couple of bad previews and then I recut the picture and then didn't open didn't preview it and we were being rushed to open at the music at the Radio City Music Hall and the worst possible cut opened we got very terrible reviews and picture died and I recut it and thought it was somewhat better but but I just said forget this. Do you ever think in retrospect that your nostalgia might have fucked you a little? Maybe.

I don't know. I think it was just I didn't get it right. You know, musicals are hard to make. Well, yeah, but by that point they were done. Well, yeah. But I didn't notice. Because I like musicals. you wanted to do it I wanted to do it and we did it live too like they didn't lay miserably uh-huh anyway there's a funny story to that which is years later and 30 years later

yeah 25 years later not about three four years ago somebody calls me and says you know at long last love is streaming on netflix i said really so i go to netflix i look at it i'm watching it i'm saying wait a second this is not my cut really that scene i cut that scene why is it here but actually it's good why did i cut? And then another scene comes up and I said, wait a second, I cut, I cut that scene too. And they put it back.

Who the fuck made this cut? Yeah. Found out that the head of Fox editorial, a guy named Jim Blakely, who had died two years before this event. Yeah. Had recut the picture himself. Uh huh.

And it was quite close to my original preview cut, but it was, it was different. Uh my original preview cut, but it was different. He kept scenes that I'd cut. He cut scenes that I'd... And he did a brilliant job. And it was so good that we showed it down in Temecula when they gave me an award. People loved it. And Fox had a screening and now they put it out on Blu-ray. That was so... That was that cut. That was that cut that Jim Blakely did jim blakely did i owe him a great favor he got it right uh-huh then i did nickelodeon which i had a lot of problems with

the studio because i wanted to do it in black and white and they wouldn't let me do it in black and white even though i'd had two hits in black and white um the head of the studio you would think a movie with that title that makes the most sense to do in Blackwell. I know. So I didn't, the picture did all right, but I wasn't happy about it. Then I took three years off and went around the world twice with Sybil. And finally we made it. Had a good time?

We had a good time. We had a great time. And decided to do something different. And I did a movie called St. Jack, which won the Critics' Prize at Venice. And Ben Gazzara won Best Actor and so on. And it was a modest success. I particularly made it for Roger Corman because I wanted to use Ben Gazzara, and the studio said, no, we'll do it with you, but we want Paul Newman or Warren Beatty or something. I said, no, I want to do it with Ben Gazzara.

So I made it for Roger for a million dollars. So he produced it? He put his name on it. He put up the money. And I like that picture. It's sort of a cult picture. And then I made They All Laughed, which was a very personal film to me, with Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazzara.

And I fell in love with Dorothy Stratton and she was murdered. And that fucked me up for quite a few years. Yeah, I can't even imagine. How many years? Like decades? I didn't make a movie for, I didn't have a movie released for five years.

I was writing, I wrote a book about her called The Killing of the Unicorn by Dorothy Stratton, 1960, 1980. How long were you in love with her before that happened? How long did the relationship go on for? We actually knew each other for about a year, but we had a thing going sort of for about 10 months. And then it happened.

So you knew the guy? No, I never met him. No? No. The murder wasn't mainly because he was estranged from her because of me. It was much more complicated than that. It had a lot to do with Playboy. And I don't want to go into it now,

but it was not a cut-and-dry thing where he's jealous because it wasn't that at all. It wasn't that at all. So how did you feel about the film Star 80? Oh, it was a piece of shit. It was completely inaccurate on every level. And Bob Fosse, I had helped Bob Fosse when he made Lenny because I helped him with the black

and white and um he bought the rights to a to a three-part uh three-part article about the the murder which was published in the village voice I think and it won the Pulitzer prize or something how was that article? Not right. Nobody knew what Dorothy was like. They all wrote about her like she was some blonde bimbo. They had no idea what she was like. She was extremely smart and very, very sensitive and brilliant.

Fossey bought the rights, and I called him, and I said, Bob, why are you making the picture? And he said, well, we think it's a good story. I said, well, you don't know the story. I don't know the story, so how the fuck could you know the story? Well, we think we do know the story. I said, well, Bob, whatever you want to do

is up to you, of course, but all I can say is if it happened to you, I wouldn't make a picture about it. He made the picture. It was a complete flop and it was uh his last picture killed him uh it wasn't good picture it wasn't anything like what she was like i never knew him did that phone call end with fuck you no just goodbye i never spoke to him again i had to see star 80 because the family was thinking of suing him, suing the studio, and we did.

We sued, and they paid off $100,000, and they cut some scenes out. No shit. That were just bullshit. And then you got involved with her sister. Yeah, some years later. Because Dorothy introduced me to her when she was a kid, 11 1⁄2 or 12 or something. years later, but because Dorothy introduced me to her when she was a kid, 11 and a half

or 12 or something. And then of course the murder brought our families very close. And then I, Louise and I got to be lovers when she was about 18 or something. And this movie that you have out now, you wrote with her? Yeah. That's something. We were married for 15 years and then she wanted to get divorced. She wanted to do some stuff. Yeah.

And I loved her, so I did whatever she wanted. And we're very close. Still, obviously, you wrote the film together. Very close. We wrote the film together. And we wrote the film together back in around 2000. I was wondering about that. But we're very close.

We see each other all the time. In fact, when I was living out here recently, I stayed at her apartment. I can't even imagine how devastating that all must have been, how chaotic. I can't even imagine it. It was a terrible mark. And how the hell could you work, right?

Well, I didn't want to work. I thought I would never make another picture, really. Too heartbroken? Yeah, it was just like, who gives a shit about pictures? And then that whole thing with just the nature of that side of Hollywood. When you talk about going back to the big knife and then you're sort of living, because that seems to me that that story was an intimate story to you, but for the vultures, it was a big story.

It was sort of like a show business tabloid horror show. Oh, yeah. And you're the guy who has no voice in it. Not really. That's fucking devastating. Yeah, it was pretty bad. It was the worst part of my life. And what did you come back with?

When did you finally start working again? Well, I was broke because I bought back the rights to They All Laugh, the picture that Dorothy and I and Audrey Hepburn did. It was a big cast, right? It was Audrey Hepburn, John Ritter, Ben Gazzara, Dorothy. And that was a screwball comedy? It was a kind of a bittersweet romantic comedy. Okay.

It was funny and also sort of bittersweet. I thought it was the best film I'd made up to that point. I still think it's my best film. Really? It's my favorite film anyway. I don't know. I've got to go back and watch it again. I remember seeing it, but I think I was young.

What was that, like 81, 82? 81, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just graduated, maybe high school. Oh, it's a good picture. Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach and Quentin Tarantino loved that movie. Oh, yeah? Quentin put it on his 10 best list of all time,

which I thought was pushing it, but it was very nice. And you work with him he he used you for voiceovers right he did on uh on uh the kill bill but specifically because he knew that you did that that i did i was always the disc jockey in my own pictures he knew that so he asked me to come in and do the thing what happened was universal offered me a picture after i'd finished writing the book about Dorothy, which took me about three years. They offered me a picture called mask. And, uh, it was a, about a hundred page screenplay and it covered the last 10 years of this boy's life.

And I agreed to do it because I needed the money but there was another reason also which I'll tell you okay that when we were living in New York with making they all laughed and I was basically living with Dorothy she was staying at my suite at the Plaza although she had a suite elsewhere another hotel but she stayed with me so you the time. So you were living the life. We were living together. Right, but having a suite at the Plaza, you were living a Hollywood life.

Well, yeah, I had a mansion in Bel Air. We used to go to Doubleday's Bookshop, which used to close at midnight on Fifth Avenue. It's gone now. They're all gone. But we used to go down there around 10.30 or something, 11 o'clock at night and get some books. And the only play, the first play that Dorothy had ever seen on Broadway,

and the only one she ever did see, was The Elephant Man. With Bowie? It was before Bowie did it. And I saw it with Bowie, but that was later. And she loved it and was very interested in it and I didn't I didn't see it

but we went to Doubledays and there was a book about the real elephant man yeah whose name I can't remember John Merrick Merrick yeah I think you're right

and she had this book that she was looking through about John Merrick and I looked over her shoulder and there were some photographs and I couldn't look at them Jesus Christ and she was this book that she was looking through about John Merrick, and I looked over her shoulder, and there were some photographs, and I couldn't look at them. Jesus Christ. She was riveted. Yeah.

Interesting. And she wanted to buy the book. I said, you sure you want to buy that? And she says, yes. Very definite. Yeah. And so we bought the book, and she read it, cover to cover. I never figured out what that was about.

And then after she was killed, I went to see the Elephant Man in New York with Bowie, as a matter of fact. And then it sort of started to make sense. The thing was, Dorothy and I would be walking down the street in New York, and everybody would stop and look at her. Dogs stopped. I'm not even exaggerating. Dogs stopped. She was stunning, and she'd also done the Playboy stuff. Yeah, but it wasn't the Playboy thing. It The dog was stopped. She was stunning and she'd also done the Playboy stuff. Yeah, but it wasn't

the Playboy thing. It was just because she... She was stunning. Right. And she was tall and just a knockout. Movies never captured how she really looked.

Yeah. She was better looking than that. And I said, everybody's looking at you, D.R. What is going on here? She said, no, they're looking at you. I said, they're not looking at me. The only reason they're looking at me is to looking at you, D.R. What is going on here? She said, no, they're looking at you.

I said, they're not looking at me. The only reason they're looking at me is to see who you're with. And I said, would it bother you? She said, yeah. I said, why? Well, I don't know. I feel weird. It's like I've got ice cream on my shirt or something.

So it didn't matter why they were looking at her. They were just looking at her. And it was freakish. It was freakish to her. Yeah. And it was freakish. Freakish to her. Yeah. And so I realized that if you're an outsider, whether you're beautiful or ugly, whatever sets you apart

from everybody else still makes you feel like an outsider in some way. Right, yeah. And so I understood mask and I said, okay, I'll do this

for Dorothy. And we made it. It's a good movie. It was a good movie. It was a better movie when I finished with it than what they released. I had a big fight with them. I sued Universal. Over what?

Never was more hated in Hollywood. Really? Yeah, because what happened happened was you'll appreciate this Bruce Springsteen had never let anybody use any of his music in a movie uh-huh but I knew him a little bit and he liked he and Rocky the boy in mass yeah the real kid yeah had loved the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen right so I said can we use some of your music in the picture? This was at the time when Born in the USA

was the most popular album in history. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to use anything I wanted of Bruce's in the movie except Born to Run.

And I had Promise Land, Badlands, Thunder Road, and they were all in the picture. I went to Europe and they took them out of the picture and replaced them with Bob Seger

because they said they couldn't make a deal. They could make a deal, but they didn't want to make a deal. It's a long story. There was a guy at Universal who had it in for me. Anyway. Yeah? Yeah, he didn't want the picture to be a hit. Where's that guy now?

Well, he's not in pictures anymore but he's still alive unfortunately anyway uh why do you have it in for you well for two reasons yeah one he didn't uh green light the picture he came into the studio after it was already greenlit so it wasn't his picture picture. Right. So he's like, fuck that. Let's take that off the docket. Yeah, and what he wanted was the picture he brought to the studio called Out of Africa to be considered the great film, which it won Best Picture. Sure.

It wasn't that good a picture, by the way. So he diminished my picture as much as he could. And I was pissed off, and I sued the studio, which was about as dumb a thing as you can do. As a director. You don't sue the studio, but I sued the studio. Over Bruce Springsteen. Over Springsteen and the cutting,

because there were two big sequences that weren't in the picture that I thought should have been. Anyway, it was a disaster, and I didn't win, of course. Again, 20 years later, I got Springsteen to let, I said to Bruce, can't we get your music in the picture somehow? He said, Peter, look, if it has to be for nothing, you can have it for nothing. So there was a new guy at Universal, Ron Meyer,

and I said, I can get Springsteen in the movie for nothing. He said, write me a letter. And we got it in the picture, and I recutut the picture put in the two sequences that were missing and they call it the director's cut and it's it's my movie it's the movie I made which wasn't released but is available now so that's out there people should know oh it's there it's there directors you feel better about it yeah because it's the picture I made it's very good picture I'm very proud of it yeah I wasn't proud of the fucked up version. Right.

But it was a very awkward moment for me, Mark. You can imagine everybody saying, oh, I love this picture mask. And I'm saying it, but it's not my picture, not the picture I made. Look at this egotistical bastard. He says he's got a better picture than this. This is great.

Yeah. No, it ain't. What I made was pretty damn good. Right. This is not as good did that fuck you that bite you in the ass oh yeah of course everything but you survived peter i i'm here you survived and you work i'm still working what what compelled you i know you did other movies obviously and and and and some television what compels you to the tom petty documentary

because people love that thing yeah Yeah, I loved it too. I loved doing it. Yeah? Well, what happened was this. A guy named George Draculius, who's a record producer, and a friend of mine whom I got friendly with through Wes Anderson, who became friendly with me too.

Do you love his movies? Yeah, I like his movies a lot. You like Noah's movies? Yeah, very much. And you like Quentin's movies? They're friends of mine. These are your guys, the young guys? Yeah, the young guys yeah the young guys who else call me pop who else and i call them my sons oh there are other ones no those are the two quentin doesn't call me pop

right but those three you like their movies because we started by talking about movies and independent movies and you like those guys yeah i do anybody else oh there's people around yeah sure i don't know you like david o russell uh yeah he makes good movies good i like him personally too yeah that's good so tom petty george draculius calls me and he says would tom petty is wants to do a documentary about the 30 years anniversary which is coming up of the heartbreakers uh he wants to do a documentary about the 30 years anniversary, which is coming up of the Heartbreakers. He wants to know if you'd like to do it. Great American band. Yeah, exactly.

He said, I'd like to know if you'd like to direct it. Really, Tom looked at it. And I said, why me? And George said, well, I mentioned, he said he wanted a major director. I mentioned you. And he said, can we get him? And I'm asking you if you'd do it.

So I said, yeah, I'm interested. Let me think about it. I hung up the phone. I called Louise Stratton, my ex-wife at the time. She's already been an ex, but I called her up. I said, tell me about Tom Petty. Is he a folk singer? She says, no, he's not a folk singer.

He's one of the premier rock and roll artists in the country. Great. One of the best. And I said, oh really? Well, George just called me

and blah, blah, blah. She says, do it, do it, do it, do it. So I went to California, sat down with Tom for four hours and I said, tell me the story

of the heartbreaker. He told me the whole thing and I said, okay, I'll do it. And how are you going to do it? I said, I'm going story of the heartbreaker. He told me the whole thing, and I said, okay, I'll do it. And how are you going to do it? I said, I'm going to have you tell it. And it took us two years. We won a Grammy.

You know what's exciting about that to me? Is that you coming into that had to sit and listen to those first five or six records for the first time. Yeah. Those are great, great. I listened to all of them. They were great. He's great. He's definitely appreciated. I love him. He's great. He's definitely appreciated.

I love him. He's great. Yeah? He's not appreciated enough. I think that's true. Because you talk about Springsteen, but fucking Petty's right up there, man. Oh, yeah. He is.

He is. He's very unusual. And his song, his music is unusual. And he's a very, very smart guy. I love him. And now you act. Because in The Sopran smart guy I love him and now you act because like in The Sopranos I was surprised

to see you because I only knew you as this intelligent filmmaker and I'm watching The Sopranos I'm like holy shit that's Peter Bogdanovich

I didn't know he fucking acted but now I know you acted a lot originally now do you carry but do you carry anything over from your experience with Stella Adler

into when you do oh sure what was her pitch like what was her angle experience with Stella Adler into when you do that? Oh, sure. Oh, sure. What was her pitch? What was her angle? Basically, with Stella, I learned the technique of acting. I had instincts as an actor, and I had a talent as an actor. But when you're not inspired, you need to have a technique to fall back on. And that's what I learned.

And what are the tenets of it? The technique of acting, I mean, it's complicated. complicated i know and no one can ever explain it to me no because everyone's got their own thing you have to learn how to imagine things you start out by pretending to unscrew a jar and see something really see it of things. That's the beginning. And then you work up to scene classes and so on and so forth. But The Sopranos was great fun. Wow. I miss it.

Me too. I miss it too. Just working on it? Oh, yeah. It was great to do. I directed one episode. Which one? It was in the fifth season.

It was the one where that teacher has a thing with Carmilla. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he kind of blows her off. Right. And it's the same episode where Steve Buscemi beats the shit out of that Korean guy who was trying to help him. Right. That was that episode. Wow.

It was a good episode. It was a great fucking show. It was a great show, and you know how I got that? Uh-uh. Well, in 1993... Yeah. I get a call out of the blue

from a guy named David Chase. Yeah. And he says... Genius. Genius. And he says he was at that time supervising a show called Northern Exposure. And he said, look, Orson Welles, who had died about seven years before,

but my book of interviews with Orson had come out the year before. And he said, look, we're going to do an episode about Orson Welles, kind of a tribute to Orson Welles, and we'd like to know if you'd come up here to Seattle and play yourself and talk about Orson. We'll write a scene, we'll write a script with you in mind playing yourself. Northern Exposure. Northern Exposure. And I said, sure, I'd be like to do that. So they wrote a script. I thought it was very good. I went up and did it. It took me a week.

That was it. Seven years later, I get a call from David Chase again. He says, I'm doing a second season of a series called The Sopranos. I said, yeah, I heard about it. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's great. He said, well, he said, the psychiatrist in the show, played by Lorraine Bracco, is having such difficulty with her client, her patient, Tony Soprano, that she needs to go to a shrink. Would you be interested in playing the shrink that she goes to? I said, yeah. Well, come down and meet with the writers.

So I met with the writers. We talked for about an hour. I went home and they called me and said, you got the part. And I forgot to say, the second day of shooting Northern Exposure, David calls me up. He says, have you acted before? Yeah. And I said, yeah, I started as an actor when I was 15. He says, well, I said, why? Am I terrible?

He said, no, no, you're good. He says, you got a lot of presence. You should act more. Yeah. And then he calls me seven years later and gives me this great part. It's great. It's a great part and i love doing and everybody suddenly said oh he's an actor right let's use peter

bogdanovich yeah i got a lot of parts after that so out of those guys that you you know get uh you know sort of associated with in the 70s the guys that you weren't necessarily friends with and that were you were all sort of you know chomping at the bit and Hollywood at the same time and making great movies. Like Friedkin, Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Ashby. Do you like their movies? I mean, that's a big question with a lot of guys, but out of any of them, do you respect their work? Some of it, yeah.

But you like Friedkin? French Connection? French Connection won over The last picture show, Best Picture. Okay. And he won Best Director. Okay. And after the Oscars, he came over to me at the ball, and he had the Oscar in his hand, and he said,

Peter, you're going to win 100 of these. And he put his arms around me and hit me in the head with the Oscar. I thought, okay, Billy, fine. That's great. Don't hit me in the head with the Oscar. I thought, okay, Billy, fine. That's great. Don't hit me again. But as a film critic, do you like Coppola's work, the early stuff? Oh, he's done some good pictures, too. And Scorsese?

Yeah, they've all done good pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, I tend to like the older films. I go back to those more than I do to them. But, you know, Friedkin and Coppola and I had a company together for about 30 seconds. Oh, yeah? Called the Director's Company. And I put Paper Moon into that deal.

Through Paramount? Through Paramount to jumpstart the company. It was Paramount's idea to have the company. It happened at all. And we did it because we were promised that we would go public and make a lot of money. It never happened at all. And we did it because we were promised that we would go public. Right. And make a lot of money.

It never happened. Okay. But at least you got along with those two. I got along with them, yeah. Yeah. But like you go back to The Searchers. Yeah. And watch that sometimes.

Oh, yeah. I find that like that out of a lot of the movies and I don't come to it in the same way you do, but like that movie I go back to a lot. Oh, it's a great film. And Rio Bravo I go back to a lot. You do. Yeah a great film. And Rio Bravo I go back to a lot. You do? Yeah. Yeah?

And which one of Wells do you go back to? Well, I like Chimes at Midnight, and I like Touch of Evil. I like all his pictures, but I remember I said to him when I first met him, I said, you know, there's only one picture of yours

I don't really like. Which one? Yeah. The Trial. I don't either. And I thought, wow, we't really like. Which one? Yeah. The trial. I don't either. And I thought, wow, we're really close. Six months later, I made some kind of disparaging remark about the trial. He said, we should stop saying that.

I said, I thought you didn't like it. No, I just said that to please you. I have great respect for your opinion. But when you denigrate that, you diminish my small treasure. Oh, shit, Orson. I'm sorry. That's all right. We can...

And from then on, he always referred to the trot as that picture you hate. I don't hate it, Orson. That's so funny that he, like, as he got older, he was this strangely needy man. Well, he was. Like, he really... It seems like it sounds like he really needed a friend. Well, he was. Like he really, it seems like it sounds like he really needed a friend. Well, we were there.

I was there for him for a while. That's sweet. So the new picture, it's been a while, huh? Since you... Well, I had a... People say to me, you haven't made a picture

for what are you doing? I said... You've been working. I had a very long 12 years. I did six years of The Sopranos, published a 600-page book on actors called Who the Hell's In It, did two specials for television, one about Natalie Wood, one about Pete Rose, directed a four-hour documentary on Tom Petty, which won a Grammy,

and a two-hour documentary on Tom Petty, which won a Grammy, and a two-hour documentary on John Ford that I redid. So I've been very busy. It wasn't like I was trying to make pictures and couldn't succeed. No, but like to write and direct and cast and to really get in a chair again, it's been a while, right?

Yeah, well, an original screenplay particularly. And how was the experience? It was great. Yeah? Yeah. You like the movie? Yeah. I think it's a funny picture.

What is it? Pitch it to me. It's a screwball comedy. Okay. Back to the screwball comedy. Basically. Yeah. It's a little darker than What's Up, Doc?

Uh-huh. It's quite a bit dark. Uh-huh. Because it's about a, the basic idea was, what would happen if a guy gave an escort, whom he had a night with, gave her a lot of money to stop being an escort? Yeah. Which I've done.

How'd that work out? I did that in Singapore when I was making a picture about pimps and hookers and so on. You got involved with one and you decided to? I got involved with a and you decided to... I got involved with a couple and they were cast in the picture. And they wanted to go home. They had terrible backstory, what had happened to them. A girl had been fooled by a guy and put her on the street and so on and so forth.

And I said, look, I'll give you some extra money. They worked on the picture. I said, well, I'll give you some extra money if you promise you'll quit this racket and go home. And they both did. Mary Lim, she went back to Malaysia, and the other girl, whose name I have difficulty remembering now, went back to Bangkok.

They did? Yeah. And they stayed out of the racket? Yeah. That's a good story. Yeah. So that informed this. So that was the idea sort of behind this picture.

Yeah. And Owen Wilson plays a theater director, New York theater, Broadway director. Uh-huh. That's interesting. So you have no knowledge of that, right? Well, no, he doesn't. No, no, you. You.

That's what I'm saying. You kind of, it's a surrogate. Yeah. Uh-huh. You, you, that's what I'm saying. You're kind of, it's a surrogate. Yeah. And he's married and he's about to direct a play on Broadway with his wife.

Yeah. Who's a star and so on. And the night before they arrive, he gets to New York first and he has an escort. And he gives her $30,000 if she promises to stop being an escort. She's young. Played by Imogen Poots, who's an absolutely brilliant actress. Great. And then he has auditions for this play that he's doing, and she comes in to audition,

not knowing that he's the director because he gave a fake name. Yeah. And that's the beginning of All Hell Breaks Loose. Wow. And it's a big cast? Well, we've got the six principals. Who are they? Owen Wilson plays the director.

His wife is played by Catherine Hahn. Oh, she's great. She's just great. Love her, man. She's great. And the escort is played by Imogen Poots, who's brilliant. And the movie star who is in the play, played by Rhys Ephans. I don't know if you know him.

I don't know. He's a Welsh actor. He's brilliant. Oh, wait, I think I do know him. I've seen him, yeah. Yeah, by Reese Ephons. I don't know if you know him. I don't know. He's a Welsh actor. He's brilliant. Oh, I think I do know him. I've seen him, yeah. Yeah, you've seen him. Yeah. And then the therapist, the therapist of the escort.

Yeah. He's played by Jennifer Aniston. Oh, great. And it's a pisser because Jennifer's never played anything like this. Oh. She plays the therapist from hell. And she wanted to play it. And I asked her to play the wife. She said, no, I want to play the therapist from hell and she wanted to play it i asked her to play the wife she said no i want to play the therapist oh that's great and she did a great job

and will forte's in it oh he's great good cast he's i love that guy he's a great guy he really is he plays the playwright oh that's great oh well that's exciting man yeah it's it's it's it's fun and and how are your expectations? Well, you never know. But you're excited, right? Let me put it this way. The first screening of the picture ever, in fact, the first time I saw it all the way through put together, was in Venice at the Film Festival last year.

Not this year, last year. And we had a 10-minute standing ovation. Oh, tremendous. They just loved it. I'm so happy to hear that. And then we showed. Oh, tremendous. They just loved it. I'm so happy to hear that. And then we showed it at Palm Springs Festival. They loved it. Every audience we've seen it with laughs about the same.

Oh, that must be so fucking exciting for you. Yeah, it's nice. Really. It's fun to make people laugh. You play a pretty cool character here as a person, but I've got to assume that reentering that particular world of writing and directing and having that experience with these great young actors and having that response must have been fucking phenomenal yes it's been great yeah and your your relationship

with your kids is good yeah oh yeah my daughter my older daughter just last year directed her first movie really yeah she did quite well with it is the other one in show business too no she's in Brooklyn with two kids and that's a plenty uh-huh but she she's gonna do some writing I know what she can go in there kids get a little older uh-huh one is ten and one is four and they take up pretty much all her time uh-huh and where you live in a good girl I'm living in girl. I'm living in L.A. Okay. I'm staying with a friend of mine right now. I have an apartment in New York, but it's sublet, so I can't use it right now. But I'm staying with a friend of mine.

Well, great. I tell you, Peter, it's been great talking to you. Well, it's been great talking to you, Mark. You're a good talker. You? Good interviewer. Well, thank you very much. Really, it was an honor, and I'm glad we covered so much ground.

We covered a lot of ground. We did great, and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Really, it was an honor, and I'm glad we covered so much ground. We covered a lot of ground. We did great, and I appreciate it. Thank you, Mark.