When Directors Directed

Director Peter Bogdanovich, author of the recently published “Who the Devil Made It” (Knopf)--a compilation of his 16 interviews with legendary directors--was in town recently in conjunction with the start of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s film series, “From Dwan to Siegel: The Bogdanovich Interviews” (the series continues Fridays and Saturdays through May 24).

Bogdanovich, who was nominated for an Oscar for directing 1971’s “The Last Picture Show,” recently relocated to New York because he’s tired of L.A. He spoke about his book (the title refers to a Howard Hawks quote about the importance of a director’s storytelling method) and the film series.

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Question: Would you say the whole purpose of the book is stated by Warren Beatty in that rather melancholy introduction when he says, “Jesus . . . everybody’s dead”?

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Answer: Yeah, everyone’s gone and who’s going to remember them? I’m glad that the book is selling because it brings them back. One of the reasons I first did the interviews was because I wanted to get the word out about them--the directors that weren’t written about a lot at the time. Now it’s really time to get the word out because now so much has been forgotten. When they were alive, at least they were making pictures.

Q: Wasn’t the main reason you interviewed the directors to learn about directing from them?

A: It was everything . . . apart from seeing pictures and having an instinct about it. I picked up a lot when I was a kid seeing silent movies since I was 5 years old ‘cause my father took me. But in terms of how you do it, I learned a lot of that from them. [Howard] Hawks said to me watching him shoot “El Dorado,” “That guy when running down the street, when he turns the corner, we cut over here.”

I said, “Won’t the audience knows it’s not the right geography?” He said, “Audiences never know about the geography of places unless you show them. If you don’t show them, you can do whatever you want.” Well, that was a big piece of news, which I used on every picture.

Q: They were more than mentors, they were father figures for you, weren’t they?

A: How could it not be? They were all much older than me. I was a kid in my 20s who knew their work, which was flattering. Jesus, Allan Dwan, when I met him in 1965, he was already 80. When I met Hawks in 1962, he was 67. When I met [John] Ford in ‘63, he was 69. When I met Hitchcock in ‘61, he was 62. So none of them were remotely near my age. The closest one was Orson [Welles], who was about my age [57] now.

Q: Josef Von Sternberg gave you the advice about being nice to producers and studio executives--ironic coming from him. Who gave you the advice about not falling in love with actresses?

A: I think [Fritz] Lang said he was advised don’t have an affair with an actress. And Lang said, “I didn’t listen.” And I thought when I was doing the interview, I didn’t know what was in store. That was five years before “The Last Picture Show” [and the affair with Cybill Shepherd]. Well, it’s an occupational hazard--you’re creating somebody in a way.

Q: What was it like doing the follow-up interviews recently with B-movie king Joseph Lewis, animation director Chuck Jones and Sidney Lumet?

A: It was weird because a lot of years had gone by. It was a little scary. Joe looked the same. Chuck and Sidney, I only spoke with on the phone. There had been a lot of water under the dam. Sidney had only done four movies when I first interviewed him, and I hadn’t done one. It was nice to bring it up to date and find out what they think now.

Q: The longest and most instructive chapter is on Hitchcock. How did you get him to concentrate totally on craft?

A: He didn’t like talking about all the other stuff. One of the things that struck me was how much he enjoyed talking about how he did it. That’s one of the things a lot of people could learn from today. Let’s learn a little craft here, folks! I mean, movies are so badly made.

Q: I’ve heard you say recently that you haven’t been passionate about American movies since 1962. Is that true?

A: Sort of. I don’t think I said that exactly. Maybe. But I thought that was the end of the Golden Age. I would begin the Golden Age about 1912 with things like “The Muskateers of Pig Alley” [D.W. Griffith’s gangster film] to about 1962 with “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” [Ford’s western about legends and mourning the past].

Q: This is because of the deterioration of craft?

A: That’s what’s upsetting about the new films. Not all films, but I mean there’s a sense that nobody’s seen anything that was made before. Very few of the young people give you a sense that they’ve seen anything. They act like they’re reinventing the wheel, like movies started in 1970.

Most contemporary films are very anecdotal. They’re sort of like one act’s worth stretched into three. And there’s really no ending. It’s very distressing. Some of the old films are so much more modern than the ones today. At least you get the feeling that there’s somebody home when you watch them.

Q: The film series is fairly basic. Was that your aim--a return to the basics?

A: I thought it was pretty good to go for the archetypal films, but not all of them. It’s hard to only pick one movie from every director. I don’t think “Rebecca” is my first choice for Hitch. I would’ve preferred “Notorious,” but we couldn’t get a 35mm print.

We were also making decisions on how recently the pictures have been run and what was going to be shown. For example. I wanted to show “His Girl Friday,” but Ian [Birnie], who runs the museum’s film program, didn’t want to compete with UCLA’s current Hawks retrospective because they restored it.

Q: Do you have a personal favorite among the movies you’ve directed?

A: My favorite is “They All Laughed” . . . for so many personal reasons, obviously. It was the most personal film I made up to that point--it still is.

Q: There’s a description about Joseph Lewis being “an artist without a diploma.” Wouldn’t you say this sums up these pioneering directors?

A: Yes, what was so great about these directors was that they didn’t aspire to be picture makers. The medium was too new--they all came from different occupations. The passage I wrote after that is my favorite. I have to read it to give it justice: “ . . . those born picture directors who gave birth to this once unpretentious yet complicated art, and who personalized the machinery of the medium to make it speak individually for each, to show the world from their own peculiar angle.”