The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

62 Peter Bogdanovich
And you were pointing out to me that Col. Robert McCormick, owner
of the Chicago Tribune, was actually part of the inspiration for Kane,
as well.
Bogdanovich: Big time. Robert McCormick had a girlfriend who was a
singer for whom he built the Chicago Opera House. Well, I mean, hello? Is
that a rather large part of the plot of Citizen Kane? He wasn’t doing Hearst
and Marion, ’cause he doesn’t make her into a movie star. He doesn’t build a
studio around her. She’s in opera; that’s McCormick.
You were directed by Welles in The Other Side of the Wind, which at
press time still has yet to be released. What was he like to work with as
a director?
Bogdanovich: Oh, he was incredible. Directing is really creating an atmosphere,
a particular kind of atmosphere and usually one that is very peculiar
to the director. It doesn’t necessarily have to be. Some directors have no
personality and it shows. But one way or another, what the actors are doing
or the crews are doing, they’re trying to please the director.
And Orson, I can’t say what he was like on Kane, but he always said he
liked “to give the actors a good time” is the way he put it. And he did, he
did. He always made it a lot of fun. He was funny; he was teasing; he was
warm; he was encouraging; he was spontaneous. He loved anything that you
did—he was effusive if he liked it, kidded around if he didn’t, never made
you feel anything except that you probably were gonna be better than you’d
ever been in your life.
Was his directing style more like a theater director? Was it an ensemble
feel, or did he—
Bogdanovich: Ensemble, yes. Very “We’re all doing this together. It’s all
a kind of conspiracy that we’ve got here, and we’re gonna put it over on
somebody.”
How did he influence your work? Where can you see it in your oeuvre?
Bogdanovich: Oh, I don’t know. We’re so different. Certainly I like his use
of overlapping dialogue, but he does it differently than I do, and he does it
differently than Howard Hawks did. But I sort of borrowed the idea from