A Child of the Dream Factory
SRAGOW, MICHAEL
A Child of the Dream Factory Pieces of Time: Peter Bogdanovich on the Movies By Peter Bogdanovich Arbor House. 269 pp. $7.95. Reviewed by Michael Sragow Associate editor, "Critic" A man who...
...By his own count, this movie maniac has lapped up 5,000 films, dashing between musty second-run movie houses and museum auditoriums, relaxing in the darkened company of mesmerized film buffs like himself...
...But as he stood there talking to one of the most distrusted and disliked leaders in our history, this scion of American pop culture felt only "the odd sensation of discussing with the President of the United States . . . two of what I considered John Ford's best films...
...Bogdanovich, the neighborhood film addict who "made good," doesn't know or care about anything of genuine importance...
...Humphrey Bogart and his third wife (Mayo Methotlauren Bacall was his fourth) used to slap each other around...
...A garden-variety specimen of America's latest breed of cultural barbarians, he rose straight from reviewing movies for a prep-school newspaper to writing monographs on cult directors for art theaters and the Museum of Modern Art to directing Targets, The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc...
...The classier Hollywood hacks of an older day had at least some outside interests or experiences...
...But if Bogdanovich hadn't become a director, it is certain that he would never have been anything other than a film buff...
...Reviewed by Michael Sragow Associate editor, "Critic" A man who creates Hollywood schlock doesn't need intelligence, sensitivity or breeding...
...I was born," Bogdanovich once told an interviewer, "and then I liked movies...
...One does not need much imagination to see Peter Bogdanovich leaving a future San Clemente cocktail party, contract in pocket, planning the shots for the film biography of the 37th President...
...Through this collection of old Esquire articles, the author-director emerges as the most with-it defender of Hollywoodof its glamour and luxury...
...they didn't grow up with films, and most of them held real-life jobs before they hit the Dream Factory...
...Animated, girlish, candid, funny, sexy, baby-talk 'r' and everything...
...Currently one of America's hottest young directors, he is a child of the movies, and of simple-minded Hollywood movies at that...
...To him, Abraham Lincoln is Henry Fonda, and Henry James wrote Daisy Miller as a vehicle for Cybill Shepherd (according to the gossip columns, Bogdanovich's Beverly Hills roommate...
...In Pieces of Time he does mention meeting Richard Nixon at a San Clemente campaign bash for Hollywood folk...
...Jerry Lewis has a best friend whose entire conversation consists of "Deedle, deedle . . . deedle, deedle, deedle...
...and Paper Moon...
...Indeed, the only people likely to feel at home with this book are mindless gossips and collectors of star-tinseled trivia, for it overflows with the kind of information that used to be the province of middle-aged ladies in queer hats...
...Unfortunately, Bogdanovich does not include an encounter with John Ford that is preserved in his filmed homage, Directed by John Ford...
...Marlene Dietrich, Bogdanovich tells us, is "just swell...
...and, most of all, its ego-tripping actors and auteurs...
...For those who have, till now, somehow managed to avoid hearing about him, Pieces of Time: Peter Bogdanovich on the Movies provides no incentive to learn more...
...Take Peter Bogdanovich...
...Hank Fonda feels that Jimmy Stewart is "one of the great guys I've ever known," and when the two once shared a house in Hollywood, "life was just too much laughing all the time...
...its tried-and-true emotion-packed storylines...
...Asked how a particularly "moving" and "meaningful" shot was achieved, the old veteran eyed the punk parvenu with undisguised contempt and replied: "With a camera...
...John Wayne, of course, would play the lead...
...its technical slickness...
...They are not only his craft, but his entire cultural heritage...
Vol. 56 • October 1973 • No. 20
