Saturday 28 September 2013

Paper Moon (1973 Peter Bogdanovich)

As it happened, a double bill of what Mark Cousins would refer to as "deep space".

Ryan O'Neal's 1935 con man transports Tatum O'Neal (who may be his daughter) across Depression era Kansas to Missouri: she comes to be invaluable, especially when protecting him from Madeline Khan.


Brilliantly shot in deep focus by Laszlo Kovacs,with the help of Orson Welles who told him to use red filters to make the skies blacker. Like Bogdanovich, he was not even nominated, though Tatum won and at the time was the youngest recipient.




The Region 1 DVD contains fascinating extras, such as these outtakes. In this scene, Ryan had had to eat dozens of waffles as Tatum kept fluffing the line:



In one of many long takes, it took 30 attempts before Tatum got it right, and each take lasted a mile and a half before they could turn the car around.


Written by Alvin Sargent (with major contribution by PB uncredited) from Joe David Brown's novel "Addie Pray". Bogdanovich asked Welles what he thought of the new title and he replied "It's so good you shouldn't make the film, just release the title!"

A Coney Island, by the way, appears to be a hot dog, and a Nehi is a nasty-looking soda.

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