It’s only 3pm Tuesday, and it’s already been a big week for news about titans of the 70s American New Wave. Consider the following;
Exhibit A: Tom Cruise may distribute Francis Ford Coppola’s comback film via the new United Artists. Quoth Variety: “Inspired by his daughter Sofia to make a low-budget personal film, Coppola may have skipped the festival route of selling the movie after witnessing the stir that her pic Marie Antoinette faced at Cannes last May…Youth Without Youth is both “intellectually challenging and emotionally remote,” said one acquisitions exec at a studio subsid. Another distrib likened the film to an arty Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Bittersweet irony: Coppola claims that he himself almost owned UA at one point int he 70s.
Exhibit B: Peter Bogdanovich Has His Third Act of Boogie Nights Moment. This Hollywood Reporter item has gone weirdly undiscussed: “Actor/filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and his business manager have been sued for allegedly shaking down a man trying to get his son into the film industry…[the lawsuit] alleges the Oscar-nominated director of The Last Picture Show and [his manager] demanded $100,000 to hire [some guy's] son as a director’s assistant on Bogdanovich’s next film.” Apparently, two years after that mindblowing deal was cut, Bogdanovich still hadn’t been able to get a movie together, and now the kid’s dad is suing. Bittersweet irony: Bogdanovich famously got his own start in Hollywood not through bribery, but by being annoying. He used to sneak into industry screenings and try to schmooze with moguls. Eventually, B-movie master Roger Corman gave him a job. As Bogdanovich tells it, “I went from getting the laundry to directing the picture in three weeks.”
Exhibit 3: The guy who directed Cool Hand Luke died. Yeah, that’s pretty much all I’ve got on that one.
