I recently attended a lecture by Peter Bogdanovich at the UCLA Hammer Theater. For those of you who don't know as well as being a director he is also a well acclaimed film historian who has interviewed, as well as developed close friendships with actors and directors ranging from Martin Scorsese to Orson Welles. One of his more famous works is "Who The Devil Made It" is a book consisting of interviews with sixteen different directors.
This lecture he lovingly titled "Sacred Monsters" was a more in depth look at a few of the directors from his book. I was expecting the lecture to be a bit dull simply because that is usually the case with two hour lectures. Fortunately I was absolutely wrong. Although Bogdanovich spent the entirety of his time on stage talking about different characters he had encountered in his life, I think he turned out to be the biggest character of all. Bogdanovich's impersonations happened to be spot on. One of my favorite parts of the lecture was him discussing one of the first times he met Alfred Hitchcock. He told the story acting out both his part as well as that of Hitchcock.
Bogdanovich explained that Hitchcock had taken him out for drinks one night for an interview at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. They both got into the elevator to finish the interview in Hitchcock's room. Right as they stepped onto the elevator Hitchcock turned to Boddanovich and said ''Well, it was quite shocking, I must say there was blood everywhere!'' He continued to go on explaining the gruesome details of this event all the way up 25 floors. All of the other hotel patrons on the elevator pretended not to be eaves dropping. "There was blood coming from his ears and from his mouth". Right as the elevator doors open Hitchcock says "And do you wanna know what he said to me?" The elevator doors open and shut once before people finally began to exit. Once everyone had exited Bogdanovich asked what the bloody man had said and Hitchcock replied "Oh nothing, that's just my elevator story." It seems to me that nothing could better explain Hitchcocks theory that suspense is always superior to shock than this little anecdote about him.
Bogdanovich was able to do this with every person that he spoke on. I feel that I learned a great amount about the film world right down to the fact that even Cary Grant was self conscious about his looks because he felt that his "nostrils were the size of parking garages". It was a great experience that I would recommend to anyone with the opportunity to see him speak again.
