Peter Bogdanovich: On the other side of the camera

Peter Bogdanovich never stopped being an actor, hard as he tried. Even after his career became focused on directing such acclaimed films as “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon,” Bogdanovich would occasionally still find himself drawn to the other side of the camera, most recently on “The Sopranos” and a new film called “Pasadena.”

He was just 15 when he began acting professionally in summer theater, and directed his first off-Broadway production at age 20 in 1959. When he moved to Los Angeles to become a movie director, he let his aspirations as an actor slip away, though he now wishes he hadn’t.

“I like acting. I regret that I didn’t continue acting as part of my career for many years,” Bogdanovich says by phone from Winston-Salem, N.C., where he teaches at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. “I just let it go, and I regret that. I would have had more clout.”

During the 1970s and ‘80s, he turned down major film roles, including featured parts in Samuel Fuller’s “The Big Red One,” and Sydney Pollack’s “Electric Horseman” and “Tootsie.” Looking back now, he says, “I should have done those. The one I regret most is ‘Tootsie’ because it was a really good part and it was a good picture.” The role went to Dabney Coleman.

Bogdanovich sounds ready to make up for those missed opportunities, even as his directing career continues. “Pasadena” marks his first starring role. He plays a veteran foreign policy expert linked to the failure of Iraq who drinks too much as he gathers for Thanksgiving with his extended family of adult children in financial crisis. Based loosely on the real family of writer-director Will Slocombe, “Pasadena” had its West Coast premiere last week at the Newport Beach Film Festival as it continues on the film festival circuit while producers seek distribution.

“He’s a little blasted,” Bogdanovich says of the character, who lives in a mid-century modern house in Pasadena, where virtually all the action takes place. “He’s not all there. He drinks a lot to forget everything and be in a semi-comatose state so he doesn’t have to deal with anything. He’s a sad character, but I can understand his regrets.”

The script took several years for Slocombe to complete. It carries for him considerable emotional weight, since it’s based on his own father and family structure. Added to that was his casting of Bogdanovich, a genuine American film auteur with dozens of major directing credits.

If having Bogdanovich on the set promised to be intimidating to a much younger director with only a pair of small indie films to his name, those fears were allayed fairly quickly, says Slocombe.

“The first time I talked to him on the phone we had this hour-long conversation and he immediately put me at ease because he made it very clear that he just wanted to be an actor,” Slocombe recalls. “He was very funny and we liked the same things. He was a really cool guy to talk to.

“I’m not going to pretend that there were not issues on set. He’s a director and he knows what he wants and he’s been around. Peter doesn’t hesitate to give his opinion on much. He’s very forthright guy, which is his charm. At some point he really did just become an actor.”

The low-budget film’s shoot in Pasadena took just 12 days, about half the 23-day shoot of Bogdanovich’s very first film as a director for Roger Corman, the 1969 thriller “Targets.” Slocombe’s real father is based in Washington, D.C., but he chose Pasadena as the film’s setting because he saw it as the most East Coast-like town in Southern California. It also meant the cast-members could sleep in their own beds.

Casting the lead role wasn’t the only hurdle for Slocombe, he says now. As he watched the auditions, he found himself getting emotional. “It was very weird,” he said. “I would just cry. It was very tough to watch.”

The final cast would also include Ashton Holmes, Alicia Witt, Sonya Walger, Ross Partridge, Amy Ferguson, Wilson Bethel and Cheryl Hines. “Pasadena” also includes an original song by Ben Folds and Witt.

“The whole thing was based on things that are real in his life,” added Bogdanovich. “It was very personal to him and that’s what makes it good.”

Over the years, Bogdanovich has appeared in a couple of his own movies “sort of by default,” including “Targets” and 1979’s “Saint Jack.” It’s only in recent years that he has actively chased acting work, and landed the recurring role of mob-obsessed psychiatrist Dr. Elliot Kupferberg on “The Sopranos.”

Bogdanovich is preparing to direct a new comedy he wrote with Louise Stratton, “Squirrels to the Nuts,” starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. It begins shooting this July in Manhattan. Filmmakers Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach are producers, and they call the elder filmmaker “Pop”; they represent a modern version of the generation of young distinctive filmmakers that Bogdanovich was identified with in the 1970s.

“If anything, their films are more personal than my generation, which is good,” said Bogdanovich, who is writing a memoir of his early days in the movie business. He expects to continue acting, but knows a starring role like “Pasadena” is hard to come by.

“You don’t just snap your fingers and get a script like that,” he said. “It was a really good part, so I couldn’t exactly turn it down.”

--

Follow Steve Appleford on Twitter: @TCNArts.