Some correspondents think I was too harsh on Peter Bogdanovitch's She's Funny That Way (see my post from yesterday). To me it wasn't that the movie was not funny - that can be very subjective --but that it was not serious, i.e., the best comedies are serious, they are about something. The deus ex machina at the end of Bogdanovitch's film demonstrated to me a complete lack of seriousness.
So I am here to celebrate Bogdanovitch's seriousness in Who the Devil Made It (Knopf, 1997), interviews with twenty directors of the classical era, all of whom are now dead. Bogdanovitch played an important role in bringing these directors to the public's attention and, because of him, their films were celebrated while they were still alive. John Ford is not included because Bogdanovitch's book about him is still in print (University of California Press,1968), but there is Hitchcock and Hawks, as well as Ulmer and Joseph H. Lewis. These interviews mostly appeared in obscure journals or books long out of print, so it is good that they are now all collected, providing a great deal of insight into the creative and financial aspects of the classical film, including lessons that Bogdanovitch ignored when he started making his own films (yes, it is different now). Even my four-year-old daughter's favorite director is included: Chuck Jones, who directed the justly celebrated Road Runner cartoons, as well as many of the best of Bugs Bunny, et al.
Bogdanovitch may or may not make additional films (he's now 75) but he played a crucial role, along with Andrew Sarris and others, of making us aware of the many great films that have already been made and encouraging us to seek them out.
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