Watts: It’s amazing, because you can watch Paper Moon on mute and completely follow what’s happening.īogdanovich: That’s nice. The next picture I’m going to direct is a fantasy film that has ghosts in it and I might use a score for that. I think I used a score in At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon. I’ve used it for virtually all the pictures I’ve made. Just sounds - a record playing or something. He has a score at the start and at the end, but all through the rest of the picture, nothing. But I stole the idea of using no score from Rear Window, Hitchcock’s picture. The songs never finish the sentence.īogdanovich: The whole idea was to make it feel like it’s realistic, the action is just happening. And then there’s the scene later on when they’re spying on the bootlegger for the first time and there’s ‘Nobody’s Darlin’ But Mine’, and right as the lyrics say, “My momma’s dead in heaven, my daddy.” you cut. At the hotel, Addie is listening to ‘A Picture Of Me Without You’, and it cuts right before it says “you”. The songs that are playing never resolve in the scene. I was watching it again last night and one thing I realised this time was how often you use a song and cut it off in the middle of a line. Watts: Every time I watch Paper Moon, I pick up something new. We did 25 times the first day! It was the most difficult scene in the picture – Peter Bogdanovich Someone said, “Shall we get a close-up of Walter under the tree?” And he said, “Oh Jesus, no! They’ll just use it.” Watts: That was a way to maintain control in the studio system too, right?īogdanovich: It was indeed. Most of the major directors I spoke to in my interviewing days only shot what they needed. The door closed and the lights came up and everybody said, “Is that the end?” I told them, “No, no, it’s a mistake!” and went back to the projection room. The penultimate reel ends with going into Aunt Billie’s. Watts: It must’ve taken you five minutes to edit!īogdanovich: We actually showed it to the studio three weeks after we wrapped, at Christmas. I have a hard time imagining shots that were cut out. I was trying to figure out why that is, and I think it’s because there’s a precision to it you don’t always see in films. It’s always on Top Ten Films Of All Time lists. Everyone loves it, but directors seem to especially love it. Watts: I tried to come up with some questions that are not the ones everyone has asked for a thousand years about Paper Moon, and I’ve found that directors love the movie. You showed The Cat’s Meow when I was at NYU and I remember there was a big Q&A but I didn’t get a chance to talk to you afterwards. It was a dream come true, and I left the interview feeling inspired and with a whole new list of questions that I wanted to ask about his other films. It’s as if he’s a medium and all the ghosts of old Hollywood are speaking through him. The thing that doesn’t come across in written interviews with Peter is that when he’s telling a story about an old star, director or producer, he’s doing an uncanny imitation of them. He loves talking about the process, the happy accidents, the gossip. Instead, I found myself sitting across from someone who seemed as excited about his films as when he made them. I was worried he’d roll his eyes at my questions. Who The Devil Made It, his collection of interviews with classic filmmakers, is essential reading for anyone who cares about how films are made. Peter is the ultimate interviewer of directors, so I was understandably nervous about talking to him. I wanted to talk to Peter Bogdanovich because I wanted to know how he made something so precise look so effortless. It’s hard to imagine it being filmed it’s as if the film reels just appeared, fully formed and ready. To me, there are few films that feel as complete. It was a complete outlier and I loved it from the moment I saw it.Īs I learned more about the craft of filmmaking, I returned to Paper Moon many times, always discovering new details that deepened my appreciation for the film - the long takes, the use of music, the immaculate production design. There were curse words and sexual innuendo but it had a sweetness and humour that felt different from the other ‘classic’ ’70s films I was watching. The story of two con artists - a man named Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) and the nine-year-old Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal) who poses as his daughter - it was set during the Depression and filmed in black-and-white, but the VHS box claimed it was made in the ’70s and was a comedy. When I first saw Paper Moon as a kid, I didn’t understand what section of the video store it belonged in.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |