Bogdanovich Receives Visionary Award

By Leslie Halpern

Peter Bogdanovich received the American Visionary Award at the 16th annual Florida Film Festival during a recent special event with the legendary director and film scholar. The event, held at Enzian Theater in Maitland, included an archival 35mm print screening of his 1973 Oscar-winning Depression-era comedy “Paper Moon,” starring Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal, and Madeline Kahn in the story of a bible-toting con man forced into delivering a young orphan to her relatives in Kansas. The first annual American Visionary Award was given to director John Waters in 2006 during last year’s Florida Film Festival.

The 67-year-old Bogdanovich was honored for directing influential films including the small-town drama “The Last Picture Show,” the comedy “What’s Up Doc?,” the wrenching drama “Mask, and “Texasville,” a follow-up to “The Last Picture Show.” His many literary achievements and work as a film historian also were acknowledged. Bogdanovich is the author or “The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock,” “Pieces of Time,” “Who the Devil Made It?” and “Who the Hell’s In It?” Television audiences may also recognize him from his recurring role as a psychiatrist on “The Sopranos.” In accepting his American Visionary Award, Bogdanovich offered anecdotes about his career which included impersonations of his conversations with John Wayne, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock. He also talked about his newest film project, a documentary about singer Tom Petty.

Bogdanovich said he chose “Paper Moon” as the best representative of his work to be screened during the tribute event. Based on the Joe David Brown novel “Addie Pray,” “Paper Moon” is often praised for its beautiful black-and-white cinematography and outstanding performances by Kahn and Tatum O’Neal (who received a best supporting actress Oscar for her work).

The father-daughter team sometimes had difficulty working together, particularly because Tatum’s reading skills were quite limited at age nine. Bogdanovich said he recorded all her lines using the intonation he wanted, and she learned them from a tape recorder instead of a script. He also discussed the origin of “Paper Moon,” saying that he didn’t like the title “Addie Pray” for a motion picture.

“Addie Pray...I thought it sounded like a snake or something,” Bogdanovich said. “It’s the name of the little girl, but I didn’t like the title. So as I did with ‘The Last Picture Show,’ I started looking through song titles – not just looking for a [film] title – but I wanted to find songs that were from that period. As you can see in the movie, there is no score, just songs from the era – 16 original recordings of songs from the 1930s. So I was looking for titles of songs that were popular and I came across a song...called ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon.' I don’t know why, but the two words ‘paper’ and ‘moon’ jumped out at me. So I went to Paramount and said I wanted to change the title to Paper Moon.”

“An Evening With Peter Bogdanovich” was part of the 2007 Florida Film Festival, which ran from March 23 through April 1 and included 170 films with 26 world premieres. Selections were divided into narrative features, documentary features, documentary shorts, narrative shorts, animated shorts, international showcase, international shorts, midnight shorts, Italian cinema night, family films, retro films, Florida sidebar, and Florida shorts sidebar.

Copyright 2007 Leslie Halpern

For more movie news and reviews visit: http://home.cfl.rr.com/lesliehalpern/leslie_halpern.htm Central Florida entertainment writer Leslie Halpern wrote the book “Reel Romance. The Lovers’ Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies” (Taylor Trade Publishing), which reviews date movies and suggests romantic ideas inspired by these films. She is also the author of “Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science” (McFarland & Company), an analysis of representations of sleeping and dreaming in more than 125 movies.

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