Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich dies
New York, Jan 6 (EFE).- Director Peter Bogdanovich, whose film “The Last Picture Show” (1971) was nominated for eight Oscars, died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter said. He was 82.
He passed away in the wee hours of natural causes, daughter Antonia Bogdanovich told The Hollywood Reporter.
Born in Kingston, New York, to immigrant parents, Bogdanovich became a film aficionado at an early age and by 16, he was taking acting lessons.
At 20, he starred in and directed an off-Broadway production of “The Big Knife” before embarking on a series of interviews with icons such as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock for pieces that would be published by the Museum of Modern Art Film Library.
Bogdanovich was already reviewing films for Esquire magazine and other publications when he decided to move to Hollywood in the early 1960s.
Roger Corman, the master of low-budget cinema, hired Bogdanovich to work on the 1966 film “The Wild Angels,” featuring Peter Fonda, and later backed his new protege’s first feature, “Targets.”
For his second film, Bogdanovich chose to adapt Larry McMurtry’s novel about a dying Texas town in the 1950s, “The Last Picture Show.”
Shot in black-and-white, the movie was a popular and critical triumph that garnered Bogdanovich an Oscar nomination for best director. Though he did not get the nod, cast members Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman walked away with the Oscars for best supporting actor and actress.
Bogdanovich followed that with the hits “What’s Up, Doc?” (1972) and “Paper Moon” (1973), but subsequently endured decades of setbacks and his last feature, “She’s Funny that Way,” came out in 2014.
In 2019, however, he helped bring to the screen “The Other Side of the Wind,” a Welles project from the 1970s in which Bogdanovich had a role opposite another legendary filmmaker, John Huston.
Bogdanovich is survived by daughters Antonia and Alexandra and three grandchildren.
EFE
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