CLASSIC FILMS

KEITH UHLICH

Mask.

Films by Director Peter Bogdanovich (1939–2022)

Targets (1968)

The recent death of Peter Bogdanovich is a supreme loss for movie culture. Not only a pre-eminent Old Hollywood cinephile and critic, he was also a major director in his own right, though the acclaim tends to be limited to the three-film run of The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973). Here we’ll sing the praises of four other Bogdanovich films that equally deserve the term classic. Begin with his 1968 debut, Targets, which came about in large part because Boris Karloff (cinema’s original Frankenstein) owed producer Roger Corman two days work. Karloff plays aged horror movie star Byron Orlok, who is reluctantly roped into appearing at a drive-in screening of one of his movies. In a separate, no-less compelling thread, Vietnam veteran Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) murders his family and goes on a shooting spree, eventually ending up at the same drive-in as Orlok. A showdown between real-life violence and cinematic wish-fulfillment ensues, and the truly chilling thing about the picture is that neither perspective entirely triumphs. This is a smashing debut and something of a tonal outlier in Bogdanovich’s career. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)

They All Laughed (1981)

The release of Bogdanovich’s modern, NYC-set romance was marred by the murder of his then-lover Dorothy Stratten, one of this film’s ace ensemble that also includes Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, and John Ritter. They All Laughed marries the fantasia of an Old Hollywood screwball to a gritty East Coast realism, tracking via a madcap private-eye narrative several pairings of prospective romantic partners across the 1981 Big Apple. Its wild energy is infectious, as is its time capsule portrait of a city soon to have some of its edges permanently sanded. The real-life air of tragedy that hangs over the proceedings only deepens the aura of regret while not at all mitigating the profound sense of play. Among a grab-bag of highlights, nothing tops Gazzara’s throwaway line to Hepburn in a toy store (“Puzzles, puzzles”), which captures the myriad bemusements of the heart in a phrase. (Available via Amazon.)

Mask (1985)

After They All Laughed bankrupted Bogdanovich, he pivoted to what, in many hands, would be a shallowly crowd-pleasing tale of an outcast living life to the fullest. Mask—based on the true story of Rocky Dennis, a teenager with a facial deformity known as lionitis—was indeed a hit, though Bogdanovich brings his own Old Hollywood-inspired depths and concerns to the tale, specifically in the John Fordlike portrayal of the biker community that acts as a second-family to Rocky (Eric Stoltz). His actual blood relations are limited to his freewheeling mother, Rusty, whose portrayal by Cher garnered her a Best Actress award at Cannes and should be included in any pantheon of onscreen matriarchs. (This despite the fact that Bogdanovich and Cher got along like oil and water on set.) Mask is a tearjerker that earns every lachrymal drop, and it has fortunately been reissued on home video in Bogdanovich’s original cut, with seven excised minutes and the soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen songs (replaced hastily in the theatrical release by Bob Seger needle drops) reinstated. (Available via Amazon.)

Daisy Miller (1974)

Bogdanovich’s adaptation of Henry James’ novella about a doomed 19th-century socialite was heavily criticized for the title performance by Cybill Shepherd (Bogdanovich’s thengirlfriend). Her relentlessly bubbly demeanor is exhausting at best, irritating at worst, but quite on point to James’ satire of upper-crust social niceties. Daisy runs roughshod through anything customary, and this both repels and attracts the handsome young expatriate, Frederick Winterbourne (Barry Brown), who falls for her. Much of the movie is a screwball comedy of manners done in a kind of costumedrama drag. Bogdanovich maintains the unflagging energy right up until the devastating finale, when illness intrudes and the movie’s breezy lightness takes on the weight of grand tragedy. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.) n

interview

Into the Wild, Yonder With Jabari Asim

A.D. AMOROSI

ANY MONTH IS Agreat month to read the detailed, conscious work of author, poet, playwright, and associate professor of writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College Jabari Asim.

A one-time political science majorturned-author, Asim was the former editor in chief of The Crisis, before turning his skills to a series of non-fiction books (Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on the Law, Justice, and Life; The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why; and We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival), poetry (Stop and Frisk: American Poems) and live theater pieces (Brother Nat: Rise Revolt Redemption—a sung-through musical/opera).

Along with theater, I became aware of Asim’s writing through his vividly honest portrayal of social justice initiatives for kids in his children’s books. There are 14 so far, including his most recent book, Mighty Justice, and his fiction, richly explosive magical reality works such as A Taste of Honey: Stories and Only the Strong.

His newest work, Yonder [Ed. see page 16], is a love letter shared between enslaved children in the 19th century who, after growing accustomed to the horrors of plantation life, must consider a future without slavery. Questions of what freedom looks like, let alone what one would and wouldn’t do to attain it become paramount.

To celebrate his new Yonder, and focus on Black history, I spoke with the eminently thoughtful and thought-provoking Jabari Asim.

I want to draw a line between all of your work, to connect some dots, those marking your fiction and nonfiction, your theater pieces, and your poetry, up through your new novel, “Yonder.” What’s the through-line that drives you?

I don’t believe that I can reduce it to just one. When it comes to nonfiction, at least for adults, there’s an interest in social justice, arguing on behalf of the full spectrum of humanity for Black people. For my fiction, the through-line is romantic love. In particular, in real life, I’m interested in how couples come together.

That’s funny. In my mind, so many writers use love as a concept in a very broad sense. You seem as if there is something pointed, poignant, and specific about your vision of why love and romance matter.

Before I even thought about writing or having a life as a creative artist of any type, I was curious about this. I’m that guy who, when he meets a couple, has to ask them how they met and the circumstances. You know those wedding columns or pages in newspapers that describe the nuptials and the connection between each person in a couple? I always read them. I love those stories. So when I did commit to a life of writing, I knew that interest of mine would come out. Couples who want to be together but with obstacles in their way to make the relationship work are of particular interest.

I want to get back to how romantic couples with obstacles before them affect your new novel, “Yonder,” but I have a question about embracing the topic of social justice. With your wealth of children’s books, within several of them, there’s a dedication to questions of what is justice and social truth when it comes to Black youth. Young minds are flourishing minds. What does it mean to impart that knowledge to children, and how does it differ from kids to adults?

That’s interesting. In many respects, it’s more challenging, especially in the editing process. The challenge is that you want to tell the truth, but you don’t want to overwhelm or depress children so that they drop the book and walk away. At the outset, when I’m working with my editors, we’re always talking about this. In A Child’s Guide to African American History, I knew that we had obligations to be frank, thorough, and as historically complete as we could, but I didn’t want kids to run away screaming. I count on my editors to reign me in if necessary, sound a cautionary note, or rephrase things. It’s a very fine line. You want to tell a full story, but you also want to entertain them, hook them in a way that they’re not only committed to reading your book but to reading in general.

You’re a multidisciplinary artist. How did you land on writing, and how does your inner voice decide what goes where: What’s poetry? What’s theater?

How I got there was in college. I was spending all of my spare time on literature courses; I was drawn to it. A light bulb went off—it was what I loved most. In terms of how and what I know, where it will land, or what form it will be, I don’t always know. I just revisit these things a lot, and the form it’s meant to take will emerge.

Tell me how you developed and staged your “Nat Turner” musical opera/concert piece.

Back when I lived in St. Louis, my wife and I had a very small, bare-bones theater company where we created and staged our concepts. An overwhelming percentage of these pieces were musicals. We both love musicals and always have that form in our imaginations. We watched more than a few locally staged operas in Boston, so that was in the back of our minds. Back in 2018, my wife and I wrote the book and lyrics, and we brought in a composer for a children’s musical that we did in an arts festival in Boston, while at the same time working on a story on

Nat Turner, the slave-rebel of whom we were fascinated. After getting several grants, we worked on the book and eventually got involved with composer Melissa Jones and staged a concert version. We would love to do a fully staged, fully costumed version, hoping for a more elaborate form. “THERE ARE A LoT oF ‘WHAT IFS’ ABouT leaving one life for another THAT MAy BE EvEN WoRSE. THERE ARE generations of Black people who say THAT THEy WouLD NoT HAvE STooD FoR SLAvERy, that they would have fought back or run. IT’S vERy easy for us to impose that judgment oN PEoPLE WHo lived in circumstances not our own oR NoT oF THIS PRESENT.”

“I always write with my ancestors looking over my shoulder,” you wrote in “Yonder,” where magical reality sits next to that action we discussed. What connects the history in “Yonder” to your history?

In “Yonder” you tell a dynamic, historically significant, romantic story, emotionally. Beyond that, however, you tell it cinematically, and you can feel the action unfolding through every page, from start to finish.

A.D., you’re the third person who’s told me that this week. I didn’t envision it this way. That said, I have a friend whose ambition is to write literary fiction that moves, that has deep action. That’s it. I wanted a page-turner, one that never slows down. I was very conscious of keeping the story moving.

I was that nerdy kid who asked tons of questions of my grandparents. I wanted to know about everyone who came before them, about aunts and uncles who had died before I ever got to know them. I’m fascinated by the past, that ancestors can interact in your life. I write with photos of my ancestors on my desk while doing this. I’m looking at them now. In my fiction, they interact with the present day, especially ancestral women who intervene.

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