Peter Bogdanovich, threshing machine

otm

I just like yesterday learned of the existence of YMRT when searching for info on the Warner Bros. doc of the same name. Was curious and now am curiouser after reading y'all's posi reviews. Will seek out.

Interesting. I found that season too depressing and kind of tangential (admittedly I didn't even finish it). It's perhaps too long, but the Blacklist season remains a high point for me. I also thought the Song of the South one was very strong.

Second both the blacklist and song of the south seasons, great stuff. The Dead Blondes season has a lot of interesting (and depressing) stuff too. Really don't get why ppl fixate on the Manson season.

I have a You Must Remember This t-shirt. Fella in Clissold Park shouted "great show!" at me, only popcult clothing related interaction I've ever had.

The Manson season was the first one that integrated such a variety of sources into a single narrative, while still retaining a discrete episodic focus that made each episode a focused piece of writing. Earlier seasons had been built on themes, but usually a loose one that linked various disparate stores (eg Dead Blondes, Star Wars); the Manson one wove lots of elements of disparate stories, as researched by earlier writers, into a coherent tale of a period with a distinct throughline.

The Polly Platt season is similarly a triumph of melding elements, but more so. Longworth takes Platt's unpublished text, her own new interviews with other first-person sources, and historical research by what is now a three-person team, and writes something that appears to be a richer expansion and improvement of Platt's unfinished memoir into a better tribute to her work, with a deeper appreciation of her as a person and artist/creative.

Very much so. It's a real triumph. (And I'm just fine with her voice.)

Manson also contexualises Los Angeles during that time, and takes time to explore everything feeding into what Manson was part of, showing how he didnt exist in a vacuum and that the envy of the Hollywood/LA way of life was something that fed Manson much more than a lot of books about him ever really acknowledge.

It’s not a story about Manson, it about Manson within the world as it existed at that time. It made for a much more interesting story imo

The only thing I’ve read that matches this series on Manson for depth & context it is the Jeff Guinn book.

Are there text transcripts of the show?

No, it's very much written for audio. Longworth's recent book on Howard Hughes is good though (& written in a different voice), if that's of interest.

also contexualises Los Angeles during that time

Yes, I meant to say "period and place"

I need to read that Hughes book

oh you'll love it

and you can watch this entire Max Ophuls movie as prep, on youtube

I popped into this thread a couple of days ago, I think because I heard an ad for or mention of the/a Peter Bogdanovich podcast/doc on an (old?) episode of a podcast I was listening to. Anyway, I don't listen to many podcasts mostly because there are too many podcasts, but also because the affectations (vocal delivery and audio cues, like incessant old time jazz tooting in the background; thanks, Woody Allen and This American Life) sometimes drive me nuts. So I see this thread pop up and pop in and read back a few posts, where I encounter commentary on Karina Longworth's vocal affectation. I file her and that conversation under "interesting things about someone I'm not really familiar with who sounds interesting talking about interesting things." Fast forward two days and a friend coincidentally recommends her You Must Remember This podcast, specifically the Song of the South season, and I think, huh, I was just reading about her o ILX and she sounded like something I would like. But, hmm, wasn't there some discussion about her vocal affectations? And indeed almost as soon as I start the thing up I think, wow, why is she talking like that? Why does she sometimes overemphasize certain letters or syllables, or elongate words that don't need that sort of emphasis, like "Hollywuuuuude." Strange though it may be - is she I guess essentially playing a character? - I don't think it will be a deal breaker, and in fact while it was distracting I immediately found a way to mentally correct: by pretending the podcast was actually narrated by Danny DeVito. Same script, just his voice. It was a very funny thing to imagine and made the episode that much more enjoyable.

I don't watch television shows because there are too many of them, and all of them are about Japanese people hurting themselves climbing on large wet obstacles.

Danny DeVito

an interesting choice given his role in the Polly Platt story

is longworth's delivery really an "affectation" though? fine line i guess, but it feels more like her "radio voice." like when i'm lecturing in class, it's definitely not in my natural voice because i'm consciously slowing down, enunciating more, and also i'm reading my stuff off a page. and there are probably a few things here and there that are affected, like i just sorta like certain words sounding a certain way. but overall the difference between that and my regular voice is more that i'm asking it to do this different job and not like i'm trying to sound a certain way to produce a certain effect or attain a certain status or w/e, which is what 'affectation' reads as to me.

It’s the pronunciation that gets me.

One episode she’s talking about Dorothy Stradden and the next episode it’s Dorothy Stratten.

As Daniel alluded to upthread, aiui posters on the podcast's own messageboard criticized her D-like Ts so much that she massively overcorrected. So it's actually the constant complaining about her voice that caused that particular problem

I did like the story about Orson Welles yelling WHO ATE ALL THE TAPIOCA PUDDING, especially since Cybill Shepard wrote about him doing the same but about fudgsicles.

that was amazing

also all the Ford stuff was uh...interesting. talk about opening the kimono *barf*

I listened to the Pretty Baby ep last night.

Christ, Brooke Shields' Mom...

yeah I had no idea about any of that

I too used to find her delivery offputting, but the podcast is consistently great, and this latest round her best yet. I really enjoyed it, too, as a corrective to the Bogdanovich podcast, which was a good listen, but while the presenter let Bogdanovich have enough rope a couple of times to reveal his innate pomposity and how he'd profited from an era that celebrated and indulged its white male creative heroes, it was clear throughout that it would err on the side of hagiography. Longworth's series went much deeper, never risked seeming like a puff-piece, and also did a great job of rescuing Platt from Bogdanovich's shadow and celebrating her as an artist in her own right, while also acknowledging her own feet of clay and exploring her as a well-rounded person, with her own flaws and motivating damage.

It's an accomplished work of biography, which the Bogdanovich podcast isn't.

innate pomposity

I believe you are talking about his ascotsity.

(I know it's a bandana, but he wears it like an ascot.)

I assume there are transcripts of the Longworth podcasts, because yeah, unfortunately her voice/presentation is not my favorite. My friend (who recommended the series to me) told me he listened to the Val Lewton one and had to grit his teeth every time she said his name. "Looden," apparently.

I assume there are transcripts

your reasoning does not follow

?

A lot of podcasters post transcripts for, at least, the hearing impaired, etc.

There are scripts or transcripts of every episode on Patreon. We will post the scripts for the new season once all the episodes have debuted.

— Karina Longworth (@KarinaLongworth) October 15, 2019

for, at least, the hearing impaired, etc.

That's a completely different reason tbf

I didn't give a reason, tbf, nor does it matter. Don't know where she posts them, though.

You literally just posted a tweet where she says where they're posted.

Oh, wait, I misread her tweet as meaning they were available on Patreon as they're released, but would be made available to everyone when the season was done.

For posterity:

I watched the first half-hour of They All Laughed the other night, and I didn't.

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 6, 2012 11:40 AM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

<3

Nickelodeon leaves Prime today. Really amped-up slapstick. Only 30 minutes in and it feels like I've already seen 100 pratfalls.

Amazing extended comedy fistfight sequence with Ryan O'Neal & Burt Reynolds.

is it the color version? I've been trying to find a copy of the "special DVD" that supposedly came out in 2009 with both color and B&W versions

It's the color version. I remember seeing that DVD in stores at the time; I don't think many were pressed.

I've only seen it in color, there's a B&W version? This film was not to my tastes in any event.

Bogdanovich wanted to shoot it in b&w, but the suits said no. He ended up with the rights to the film and many years later digitally removed the color with both versions (same cut) bundled with The Last Picture Show in a 2-DVD set.

Yeah, I was just reading about this.

IMDB says the B&W version is 7 minutes longer.

I really enjoyed it. It's flawed but fun, kind of a claustrophobic caricature film. Oddly enough, it reminded me a lot of Heaven's Gate, in that the period detail is so loving and that so many scenes are filled to the brim with actors doing stuff (shades of Altman).

Prime also has The Fortune by Mike Nichols leaving today, so I think I'm gonna do a mid-'70s buddy film diasterpieces double feature.

Bogdanovich and Kovacs actually lit the movie thinking they would strike some B&W prints, or get to it eventually, so it's more than an afterthought effect (according to him). Had no idea that DVD was bundled with Picture Show, no wonder I've had such a hard time finding a copy. I figure if I'm gonna see it, I should just wait until I find a reasonably priced copy of that DVD. As a massive fan of They All Laughed, I'm much more eager to see this because of John Ritter.

wish i'd realized Nickelodeon was on there sooner! i'm sure i'll roll the dice on it somewhere down the line...

The Fortune is *dire* imo, with an enormous, painful gap between the talent involved and what's onscreen.

This is gonna sound all Mr. Burns "I once saw Gentlemen Jim Corbett box an eskimo; back then if a fight didn't go 15 rounds we'd demand our nickel back" but I recall seeing Nickelodeon when it came out - the gimmick was that theaters charged 5 cents for admission.

RIP. L.A. Times obituary

Polly Platt very thoroughly sidelined by both that text, and even moreso by the NYT's much longer and superficially more comprehensive obit. Kind of stunning. Gee, wonder why the first few films were such huge successes and completely-realized statements, and things seemed to go somehow awry after Paper Moon....

Among the many amazing things you could notice in this picture, Orson Welles is smoking a cigar in a grocery store. https://t.co/7hPew8kL3h

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 6, 2022

Wild story of Bogdanovich fandom and the recovery of Squirrels To The Nuts, the original cut of PB's last narrative film, She's Funny That Way.

https://tremblesighwonder.com/2022/01/20/you-saved-one-of-my-best-pictures-my-adventures-with-peter-bogdanovichs-lost-last-picture-show/

Wow. I was on the edge of my seat!