Word: bogdanovich
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...honeymoon in telephone booths on various Greek islands. 'Im a hustler," she admits, but she does not like to be called a "packager." She considers herself instead a "liaison between the motion picture community and the artist." Mengers' well-pruned roster of artists includes Candice Bergen, Peter Bogdanovich, Gene Hackman, Ali MacGraw, Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds and Barbra Streisand, whose Mengers-arranged role in A Star Is Born last year earned the Brillo-headed diva about $10 million, minus the agency's 10%. (The story goes that when a frightened Streisand wanted to leave Hollywood...
Elsewhere in this little magazine, a spunky fellow whose company we enjoy and whose opinions we respect goes after Orson Welles in a roundabout way. This is an OK thing to do, except that it offends those of us to whom Orson symbolizes...oh shit! That's what Bogdanovich does: "Orson said to me yesterday...I asked Orson what he thought and you know Orson...
...When Bogdanovich is concentrating on atmosphere, showing a small independent company making up stories in order to take advantage of the locations, or fighting off gunmen sent out by the competition, his picture has a pleasant authenticity. There is also a nicely handled romantic triangle involving O'Neal, Burt Reynolds as a star and Newcomer Jane Hitchcock as a comically nearsighted actress. What goes wrong with the picture is an overreliance on slapstick, the nearly lost silent film technique, as a device to evoke the spirit of the time. Bogdanovich apparently does not quite trust his film...
...really didn't have to, since the growth of the story is away from the comic mode toward something more rueful, and more interesting, in mood. Bogdanovich ends his film with the 1915 premiere of The Birth of a Nation, the first major American feature-length film, a work of unprecedented scope, cost and profitability. Its success over night made the movies into a serious business. To remain competitive there after required a considerable investment of time and money...
...Bogdanovich is right to mourn the passing of the foolishness and charm of the happy-go-lucky flickers: It is too bad that the frantic slapstick of the film's early passages ill prepares one for the ending, vitiating its force. It is by no means a fatal flaw, there being so much about Nickelodeon-including supporting performances by Tatum O'Neal, Brian Keith and Stella Stevens-that is captivating. It is just that the film does not realize all of its potential...