Peter Bogdanovich

About Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich was an American film director, writer, actor, and film historian whose work bridged classical Hollywood and the New Hollywood era. He directed The Last Picture Show (1971), which earned eight Academy Award nominations including Best Director, followed by the screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973). He authored several books on cinema including Who the Devil Made It and Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week, and won a Grammy Award for his Tom Petty documentary Runnin' Down a Dream.

In this interview

• Discusses his book Movie of the Week: 52 Classic Films for One Full Year
• Reflects on his career directing films like The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon
• Talks about selecting classic films, clarifying they are not all his own movies

Since this interview

Peter Bogdanovich continued directing, completing the documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration (2018) and helping finish Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, released by Netflix in 2018. He joined the directing faculty at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2010. He died on January 6, 2022, at age 82 at his home in Toluca Lake, California.