Who the Devil Made It?, by Peter Bogdanovich
This Is Orson Welles, by Peter Bogdanovich
Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy Who the Devil Made It?, by Peter Bogdanovich.
Buy This Is Orson Welles, by Peter Bogdanovich.
Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) was always the
first to say that he was never a film critic. He got into the game simply
to meet directors and talk to them about their technique so that he himself
could become a director. Who the Devil Made It is a rich collection
ranging from in-depth interviews with Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and
Fritz Lang, to short interviews with Josef von Sternberg, Raoul Walsh, and
Frank Tashlin, to interviews with nearly-forgotten B-movie directors like
Joseph H. Lewis and Edgar G. Ulmer. This Is Orson Welles (edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum) is
a book-length interview with Welles alone. Bogdanovich is a superb interviewer,
and not only gets the juicy gossip, but also the technique, the style, and
the craft of each director. (Bogdanovich also did a book-length interview
with John Ford that I have not been able to find yet.)
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