"A High-Wire Act": Interview with Peter Bogdanovich, The Cat's Meow

Cynthia Fuchs

Getting to the point. "It's true, nobody trusts anyone. I did sort of take it like that was normal -- it shows you how deeply enmeshed I am in it."

Peter Bogdanovich comes packing several bottles of distilled water. He has a long day ahead of him, with a full schedule of interviews leading up to this evening, when his new movie, The Cat's Meow, opens the Washington DC International Film Festival. For a man who's spent so much of his early career in the spotlight, the 62-year-old Bogdanovich is pleasantly un-in-love with himself. This doesn't mean he's not elegant, or attentive to details of demeanor and language, or even that he's not prideful. But he does appear to appreciate the simple (but also complex) fact of being alive. He has unexpected humility.

Once touted as a brilliant young artist, whose The Last Picture Show (1971) evidenced both a youthful sensibility and tender nostalgia, Bogdanovich counted among his friends Orson Welles and John Ford. He went on to make Paper Moon (1973) and Mask (1985), as well as some films that were less well received (At Long Last Love [1975] and Nickelodeon [1976]). And, of course, he would marry and eventually divorce his girlfriend Dorothy Stratten's half-sister Louise, some years after Dorothy's brutal murder by her ex-husband (recalled in his book, The Killing of the Unicorn).

More recently, Bogdanovich is probably best known as a director of cable movies (Rescuers: Two Women [1997]), the wise and respectful commentator for DVDs of films by directors like Welles or John Ford, and in his recurring role on The Sopranos, as Dr. Melfi's shrink, Dr. Elliot Kupferberg.

Everyone's femme fatale? Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies in The Cat's Meow.

The Cat's Meow is a deft picture that examines Hollywood scandal from the inside. It's based on a story that Bogdanovich first heard from Welles while interviewing him for a book, This Is Orson Welles; Steven Peros' script came to him coincidentally. Framed as a flashback by writer Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley), the film takes places on the yacht of William Randolph Hearst (Edward Herrmann), in 1924, when the producer Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) takes ill and a few days later, dies mysteriously. The film takes up the most persistent rumor about what happened during the cruise, namely, that Hearst shot Ince, believing him to be Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), who was romancing Hearst's girlfriend, Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst).

We began with a brief discussion of my own experience teaching Last Picture Show in a film introduction class, which, I informed him, surprised students by its relevance to them.

Peter Bogdanovich: It's amazing that there's no film culture in America anymore. There used to be a lot of film culture. When I was interviewing Orson Welles, when The Last Picture Show came out, in 1971, we talked about Citizen Kane, which was then 30 years old. It seemed like a long time ago. Now, Picture Show is 30 years old, and it doesn't seem like such a long time, on some level. Time, according to that old cliché, is deeply relative.

The last available picture of The Last Picture Show. Jeff Bridges sings his nostalgic high lonesome to a lithe Cybil Shepherd.

Cynthia Fuchs: Did Welles have a sense that films in the '70s were not living up to what films 30 years before had been?

PB: Yeah. But so did I. What I thought we were all trying to do then was something different than what happens now. And it was different. It was a whole burst of youth at the end of the '60s and into the '70s. Orson felt that as the '70s wore on, that we were debasing our audience, and that eventually we would all be stuck with what happened with the fall of the Roman empire, which was that the entertainment was sex and violence, murder and killing and sexual diversions. We aren't too far from there.

CF: Do you think that with the "market" so wide now, with room for films as well as product -- in festivals, on cable, and even in theaters -- that young filmmakers have opportunities?

PB: Yes, I think Picture Show would have been an art picture today. It sort of was then; only a major studio picked it up for release, slowly. But all films were released somewhat slowly in those days, except exploitation films. And that didn't change until the mid-'70s, with Godfather and Jaws. What happens now is you've got to open the picture on the first weekend and do big grosses; otherwise you're gone. Lions Gate is handling this film on a platform, which is more old-fashioned.

We opened Picture Show in New York and Los Angeles, it was in one theater only in each city, not even three, but one. It makes sense, because the less theaters you have, the more sure you are that you're going to have a packed house. And a packed house is always a better audience than a half-empty one.

The all-time '70s art picture? "It sort of was, but all films were released slowly in those days."

CF: The "art houseness" of Cat's Meow seems to me partly thematic. It's a tough picture, character-wise: no one trusts anyone else, throughout.

PB: It's funny that you said that. I didn't actually think of that consciously. I just took it as part of the general atmosphere of the show business, or that kind of show business. But it's true, nobody trusts anyone. I did sort of take it like that was normal -- it shows you how deeply enmeshed I am in it.

CF: Talk a little about the flashback structure.

PB: When I got the script, it began at the funeral [for Thomas Ince] and ended at the funeral, but before it went to the yacht, there was about forty pages introducing Chaplin in his studio, Marion in her studio, and Louella [Parsons, the Hearst gossip columnist, played in the film by Jennifer Tilly]. I didn't think we needed all that. I thought the unity would be more interesting if we went from the funeral to the yacht, and back to the funeral at the end. I like the flashback idea, particularly when we figured out we would shoot the beginning and the end of the film in black and white. It was a practical solution to a problem we had. The fact that I artistically thought it would be dynamite for the picture, I didn't really share that with everyone, because producers tend to like it better if it's a practical solution to a problem, rather than an artistic one. I don't know why [laughs].

However, I must say, on Mike Pasternak's behalf -- he was one of the producers -- that I did share with him that I thought it would be as effective as hell, going from black and white to color, and going from the coffin to the yacht. It's an obvious parallel, but I thought it would work. And the studio was worried about it because they had a deal for a 100 percent color movie, and this was going to be 97 percent color. But the problem was that we were shooting in Berlin, and there was no way to make Berlin in December look like L.A. in the summer. The light wouldn't be right. We solved that [snaps! his fingers] easily with black and white.

Dorthy Stratten. "'Scandal' is something that people say about someone else."

CF: The flashback is also tricky for narrative, in terms of giving viewers information Elinor might not know.

PB: Well, yes, that's a license you take. And we did it. I love the narration Steve wrote.

CF: I was fascinated as well by the way the film looks at "scandal," not as something titillating that happens to other people, but as a series of events that befall specific people, or characters.

PB: Yes, "scandal" is something that people say about someone else. It isn't how people feel when it's happening to them. It's something else, it's their life. It seems very contemporary, doesn't it? Scandal, cover-up, disgrace. Everybody is interested in all of that. People live very difficult lives, most people, and they're on kind of a treadmill, and maybe the scandal that happens to the celebrated and famous, gives them some vicarious pleasure, and makes their own lives more interesting.

I mean, I've had it myself, being in the spotlight, but I notice that when there's some hot story going on, I read about it, and tend to think it enriches my life. It doesn't, really: it depletes it on a certain level. But you think it gives you something to think about and talk about, beyond the routine of your own life.

CF: Yes, it creates a community of some kind, when everyone can talk about the same thing.

PB: Yes, like the weather.

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