One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & the Lost American Film

One of the great things about making movies

is it's a communal art form.

You have all these artists working together

to make something beautiful

and meaningful to other people, you know.

The relationships, the friendships,

the closeness that you develop,

that quality, Peter wants in his films.

He's exposing a part of his personal life.

Just after one decade of great prominence and success,

he found his true self as a filmmaker.

"They All Laughed" was his most pure vision

of what he's most drawn to.

It's almost unfathomable when you look back

to think how famous Peter was.

And then, also... but it just shows

how big he was that... you know, how far he fell.

No one should go through

what he's gone through with his movies

and what happened on "They All Laughed."

Devastating from a personal level.

You know, I don't know how you ever recover from that.

We didn't know Dorothy that long, you know.

I mean, we knew her for a year.

I think, for me, I mean,

I do feel like I lost my father that day.

Well, I'd first met Peter,

and he was writing for "Esquire" magazine, I think.

And he pretty much knew everything

there was to know about movies and films,

and he was just a fascinating guy to talk to,

because he had already interviewed

all these great directors and actors,

and he was out here doing second unit work on a movie

called "The Wild Angels" for Roger Corman.

They're wild and no angels.

Law-defying,

getting their kicks from violence and torture.

I had something happen to me on "The Wild Angels."

There was a fight with the townies and the Angels,

and there were very few townies.

There were, like, four.

And Roger leans over to me. He says,

"Run in there as a townie."

And they were the real Hell's Angels, right?

They were the real Hell's Angels.

They hated me, because they hated Roger,

and I was always standing next to him.

And I got in there, and they started beating the shit out of me.

Oh, no. Really? Oh, really.

I just said, "Fuck this,"

and I fell down on the ground.

When is he gonna say, "Cut?" Fuck it.

And it was the longest time

I ever heard to hear the word, "Cut."

Peter really wanted to be a director.

Mr. Corman had said, "Well, I could give you

the money to make your first movie."

If anybody ever got to do what they really always wanted to do,

it's you making pictures.

It's true. Are these rumors true

that you've spent probably 80% of your life

either seeing movies, reading about them, writing about them,

or cutting them up, or something?

Not cutting them up.

I never cut a picture till I did one, you know.

Your own? Yeah.

But, uh, seeing 'em, yeah. Yeah.

And writing about 'em a little bit,

but seeing 'em a lot. With Peter,

he's making movies on the heels of this whole other career

of being a film sort of historian.

You know, Peter obviously was very connected

to all the guys who came before him,

and, you know, he interviewed them all,

and he studied them, and he knew them so well.

In Peter's early movies, that's a big part of them.

I mean, first he's got a movie which is not even his choice.

A typical American family at dinner.

Mum and dad, their beautiful daughter-in-law,

and their only sun, Joe,

a homicidal maniac.

Hey, what are you doing?

Aah!

But he took this thing,

and he made it about Boris Karloff, the movie star.

What's it all about?

What?

Everybody's dead.

I feel like a dinosaur.

Oh, I know how people think of me these days,

old-fashioned, outmoded.

Well, not after this picture, they wouldn't.

You can't change your whole lifetime with one picture.

What have you got if you quit?

That movie, as you know,

was a kind of success for a first film for a young man.

Low-budget, Roger Cowman,

Boris Karloff for a few days.

It had to be that he owed them a few days.

But that's how it all began.

This is a work of art.

This is the kind of property

I'm gonna be proud to put my name on.

Are you writing this down, Ed?

Sometimes I think making movies

is... is kind of magical in a way,

and there are a couple of different kinds of magic.

You know, there's the magic that you see magicians do,

like sleight-of-hand, and that's...

And movies certainly have that.

It's really about creating illusion, you know.

And then there's that other kind of magic of...

you know, the real... the real magic,

you know, turning you know, water into wine, lead into gold,

that kind of stuff, alchemy.

And, uh, Peter has both of those kinds of magic.

The... The latter kind, you know, the real magic,

that comes out a lot with the vibe

and the kind of atmosphere that you create

for this thing to happen, you know.

The balls that Peter would have

to just hang on a moment

and let the life go on between the actors in that moment,

you know, rather than cutting, cutting,

close... You know, he just let it sit there, you know?

Mose, let's give him some money.

Mose, let's give him some money.

No!

Just a little bit. We got $305.16.

Whole 'nother business giving it away.

It's bad enough you give away bibles.

But they're poorly!

The whole country's poorly. I told you before.

But Frank D. Roosevelt said we gotta look out for one another.

I don't care about Frank D. Roosevelt.

But he says it. That so?

Why don't you ask Frank D. Roosevelt

what he thinks about taking care of himself?

You think he don't eat off silver trays?

He could eat off tabletops

like the rest of us, but he don't.

You know why? Because that would make him look common.

And, besides, Frank D. Roosevelt ain't running this thing.

I'm runnin' it, so don't you make up no rules

about what we're gonna give away.

It's my money, too, you know.

$200 belongs to me, and don't you forget that.

You want it? Well, just put my share in my pocket,

and I'll take you to a train station.

How do you like that?

Get the map! Find out where the nearest depot is!

Nothin' but trouble, anyway.

First you charge too much.

Then you want to give it away.

Where are we now?

We just left Plainfield.

$12 for a bible. Then it's up to 24.

If I stay with you, I'll spend the rest of my life in jail!

There's a depot in Lincoln.

You can take me to Lincoln!

You bet I will. Where's Lincoln?

Clear over there! Ah, boy.

You think I'm gonna take you clear over there

just to get you to some depot?

Then keep going east. We'll hit one in Sylvan Grove.

Where's Sylvan Grove? Right here!

Well, th-that'll take us down through Lucas.

You gotta go through something to get to Sylvan Grove.

I am not complaining! I'm just saying it'll take you through Lucas.

You gotta go through Paradise and Walden

and Lorraine... Lorraine, huh?

If you want to get to Sylvan Grove!

Well, those are pretty good towns in there.

We could do some business in there.

Well, it won't matter much.

We're near out of bibles anyway.

What do you mean, we're out of bibles?

Why didn't you tell me we were out of bibles?

You look in the box, too, don't you?

Well, you know, you got an excuse for everything.

'Cause you blame me for everything.

If we were running out of bibles,

you should have told me we were running out of bibles!

Well, we're running out of bibles!

Well, then we gotta get new ones!

Then let's get new ones!

We can pick some up in Great Bend.

Great Bend's the other way.

Well, we gotta have bibles, don't we?

Let's see now. We can veer down to Lucas,

and we'll veer over to Wilson,

veer off to Lorraine and Bushton.

We could... We could veer off to Hoisington.

Just have to keep on veering, that's all.

I think if, like in "The Last Picture Show,"

whew... I even break...

I'm just thinking about it.

That last scene with Cloris and Tim.

My God, every time I think about it,