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June 2 - June 9, 2002 |
Revisiting Old Hollywood Lore
Veteran and controversial filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich returns with Meow
By Angela Baldassarre
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Peter Bogdanovich with Kirsten Dunst on the set of The Cat’s Meow
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Peter Bogdanovich is as close to old Hollywood as it gets without actually having lived it. The renowned filmmaker, whose controversial life is as famous as his unique stylistic vision, is an expert on the history of cinema, and author of books on Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Fritz Lang and his old friend Orson Welles. After six years working exclusively in television, Bogdanovich is back on the big screen with a film tackling one of the industry's most rumoured urban legends.
Titled The Cat's Meow, the picture takes place in 1924 aboard the yacht of William Randoph Hearst (played by Edward Herrmann) who is throwing a weekend birthday party for struggling producer Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes), at one time one of the most powerful men in the film industry. Co-hosting the party is Hearst's lover, actress Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst) who is also infatuated with one of the guests, Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard). Throughout the celebrations Ince tries to convince Hearst to consolidate their investments, but the media magnate is more concerned about Davies and Chaplin. Also hounding the poor rich man is columnist Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly), a New York-based film critic who wants a beat on the West Coast. But after a shot rings out on the yacht, the lives of everyone on board are changed forever. (This scribe will not divulge the name of the victim.)
"Orson Welles told me this story 33 years ago, the whole story," says Bogdanovich, 63, while in Toronto recently. "Marion Davies' nephew told it to him. That's how Orson knew, and that's as close to the horse's mouth now as you can get. And he told it to me in a conversation we were having about the differences between Hearst and Kane. His point was that Kane was not Hearst, he was a composite character based on a number of people. And as an example of how different Hearst was, he told me the story. And then as I say, 30 years later, the script arrived out of the blue after I had just taken an ocean voyage in which I had happened to tell the story for only the second time in 30 years to Roger Ebert. And he said, 'wow, that sounds like a good movie.' Then the script was on my desk when I got back. Very strange. I guess the story just wanted to be told."
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