Probable cause to name-drop

Peter BOGDANOVICH’S book begins this way: “Some thirty years ago, in Rome, Orson Welles and I were having a late-night drink in his suite at the Eden Hotel....” Oh, God, one thinks, another one of those: the legendary show biz figure, the glamorous, up-market setting, the promise of wee hours off the record recalled by a well-oiled tongue, recorded by an essentially uncritical acolyte. And, in truth, “Who the Hell’s in It” contains more than its fair share of celebrity suck-up. Bogdanovich really can’t help himself in this regard. He is, for good and ill, an incorrigible movie addict.

He arrived in Los Angeles, poverty stricken, in the early 1960s, a young man (early 20s) who had already directed and acted in some off-Broadway plays and begun writing about the movies (program notes for Dan Talbot’s blessed New Yorker Theater, Museum of Modern Art monographs about directors). He had an equally young and gifted wife (Polly Platt, a production designer) and a twin agenda: writing pieces about the movie capital in transition for Esquire and establishing himself as a director, which he did with “Targets” in 1968. This was followed in the 1970s by three engaging (and still highly watchable) hits: “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon.” He had much less luck with his later films and suffered a number of personal setbacks -- and one flat-out tragedy -- that seem to have permanently put his directorial career off course.

But -- and this is one of the admirable things about Bogdanovich -- he has gallantly kept going. He occasionally acts and directs on HBO’s “The Sopranos”; he makes TV films and the odd feature. And he goes on writing. Seven years ago he published “Who the Devil Made It,” a vast, readable compilation of his pieces about directors. The present work, equally generous, collects his profiles and Q&As; with movie stars. He might like to be mistaken for one of those young Frenchmen -- Truffaut, Chabrol, Godard -- grouped around Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s who used criticism as a springboard for distinguished careers as filmmakers. But although he shares their knowledgeability and some of their well-placed enthusiasm for movies ignored by the old establishment, he lacks the occasional sternness of their sensibilities as well as their sometimes gaga enthusiasms.

His critical gestures in this book are, on the whole, conventional and superficial. One feels that he doesn’t want to dig too deeply into what his subjects actually did or did not accomplish in the movies, lest he offend them -- and never mind that most of them are now dead and gone. On the other hand, there is something seductive about Bogdanovich, something about him that you can’t help liking. He’s 65, but something of the kid, his nose pressed up against the window of fame, still clings to him. He remains a kind of innocent egocentric, believing we really want to read about his reactions to seeing Lillian Gish gush about Mr. Griffith and “Way Down East” at a screening where he did not exchange a single word with her. Or about the time he encountered Marlon Brando on the street and got his autograph. Or about Montgomery Clift coming to see an old movie of his at the New Yorker, where he spoke kindly to the eagerly attentive Bogdanovich. A cannier, more self-protective writer would not have included these inconsequential pieces in his book; they are too much “A Fan’s Notes.” But the nakedness of his need for names to drop is somehow engaging -- and honest. For, in truth, all of us who hang around the movies do it -- use first names we are not entirely entitled to employ in our conversations, pretend to proximities with the famous to which we are not warranted.

This, of course, excites certain resentments about which no less an authority than Cary Grant warned Bogdanovich. As the latter tells it, he and Cybill Shepherd got some bad press early in their relationship, when they presented themselves as just a little too deliriously pleased with their affair. “Will you stop telling people you’re in love,” Grant admonished him. “And stop telling them you’re happy.” Why? Bogdanovich asked. “Because they’re not in love and they’re not happy.” But, he naively asked, does not all the world love a lover? “Don’t you believe it,” came the shrewdly experienced response. “Just remember, Peter, people do not like beautiful people.”

It might be more accurate to say that they do like them but only up to that point where the stars’ good fortune begins to rub the plain people the wrong way, reminding them how out of luck and prettiness most of them are. This is doubtless why Grant always presented himself to his universally adoring audience so modestly, as such a lucky, artless stiff, when in fact he had managed his career and talent with exemplary intelligence.

It is a lesson Bogdanovich did not take fully to heart. I’ve known him slightly for several decades, and there is something of an insider’s arrogance about him, a knowing air that can seem slightly patronizing and impatient. On the other hand, he has several times done me kindnesses with no expectations, as far as I could see, of receiving anything in return. He was just doing his bit for something we both care about: getting movie history down as accurately as possible. And I must say, his sense of that history is superb. He does not make the kind of stupid mistakes most writers on that topic commit.

Both qualities of his nature are on display here. In many of these pieces he makes sure we understand that he has all the best unlisted phone numbers. He tells us where the stars’ pianos sit, what crockery they favor, how they dress around the house. They rarely speak ill of others and Bogdanovich never speaks ill of them. Or of their work -- unless the star is himself dismissive of this or that film. Sometimes he comes close to fawning. Or self-congratulation -- I’m in, you’re not. But a lot of the time he is an eerily accurate surrogate for us. Ask yourself: Sitting in Grant’s living room or Jimmy Stewart’s, could you bring yourself to ask them about their turkeys? Or their romantic indiscretions? I think not -- especially when your silence on these matters is likely to be rewarded by some valuable anecdotes about how Hitchcock, Ford or Hawks managed their sets or achieved their sublimities. The trade-off is, in the last analysis, a reasonable one.

I do, however, prefer Bogdanovich in a more objective mode, simply asking the likes of John Wayne or Henry Fonda well-grounded questions and recording their generally thoughtful answers. You can learn a lot about old Hollywood from these exchanges, and his longer Q&A; with Jerry Lewis does much to redeem this curious, eccentric yet highly intelligent figure for some sort of serious historical consideration.

His piece on John Cassavetes does not acknowledge the defects of the filmmaker’s art -- for example, the way it indulges actors as they search for their moments, often losing the narrative pulse of the movie as they do -- but it does catch, quite wonderfully, Cassavetes’ merry, dauntless, utterly infectious spirit, the way he could make you believe, at least temporarily, in his mad schemes and obsessive dreams. He was neither the solemn visionary his critical supporters made him out to be nor the crackpot his enemies painted. He was a fellow who could punch out the hopeless Stanley Kramer when the latter betrayed their attempt to collaborate, or steal Pauline Kael’s coat after the two of them fell into disagreement during a panel discussion. But the main thing about him was that he shook things up, forced us to consider a fascinating alternative to movie-making customs. And he was, I must say, my kind of guy -- and, obviously, Bogdanovich’s.

Cassavetes once said to me, in his irrepressible way, “You know, I like Peter -- in spite of himself.” I have a feeling that people are going to be saying something like that about this book. *