Word: bogdanovich
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During the nine-month wrangle with Universal, Gilliam, a Monty Python alumnus who directed the 1981 surprise hit Time Bandits, felt as forlorn as his hero. The studio, which had just emerged from a noisy battle with Director Peter Bogdanovich over the cutting and scoring of his film Mask, demanded in March that Gilliam reduce his 2-hr. 22-min. Brazil, already in distribution in Europe, to the contracted 2 hr. 5 min. (The average running time for the last 25 winners of the Best Picture Oscar is a leisurely 2 hr. 26 min.; Universal's only other Christmas release...
...book," says Leaming. Welles shares her animosity. In one of his expensively unfinished films, The Other Side of the Wind, which stars John Huston as an aging movie director attempting a comeback, Welles included a snotty critic called "Higgam." This role was played for a time by Director Peter Bogdanovich, who was also collaborating on a book, titled This Is Orson Welles, until Welles canceled the book. It is all a bit like that marvelous scene at the end of The Lady from Shanghai, in which Welles had Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane firing away at each other's reflections...
...Hollywood cliche (in this case, that heroes are always handsome) in order to reveal several others (beauty is the beast; the good die young). Anna Hamilton Phelan's script neither sidesteps nor wallows in these homilies; it is notable mostly for the bathetic excesses it avoids. So is Peter Bogdanovich's directorial touch. Bogdanovich may be the last and finest avatar of the classic Hollywood style; discreet tracking shots, invisible editing, no camerabatics, no teary close- ups for emotional blackmail. Nobody is trying to make a masterpiece here. Mask has a sturdy, disposable feel to it, like the tissues moviegoers...
...moment, it is Bogdanovich who feels disposable. He has his biggest hit since Paper Moon a dozen years ago, yet he has virtually disowned Mask. Seems Producer Martin Starger cut two scenes from the film and replaced music by Bruce Springsteen (Rocky's favorite rock star) with four Bob Seger songs. Twenty-two directors, including Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Frank Capra, came to Bogdanovich's defense; so did an impromptu protest committee, Moviegoers Against Studio Kibitzing (M.A.S.K.). So the picture offers two parables: one of Hollywood devouring its own, one of the man in the lion mask. The second...
...Bogdanovich's incessant fumbling stains Mask with the "what-might-have-been" syndrome of a good idea lost in poor direction. Instead of another Elephant Man, which could have showcased the acting talents of Stoltz, Cher and Elliott to their best advantages, we get People presents the Life and Times of Rocky Stoltz...