Imagine being a movie fan in the 1960s. No Internet, no cable TV, just revival theatres that show the classics. You LOVE movies, and so you soak them up like a sponge, seeing as many films as you can. You start to catalog films in a card catalog, typing up your thoughts and as many details as you can. You learn as much as you can.
Then imagine you then have an opportunity to meet all of your idols… Orson Welles, John Huston, John Ford, Howard Hawks. And more. And then interview them, talking about directing and writing and how film is made.
Then… you get to make a movie. It’s cheap, produced by Roger Corman’s company. You decide to make a cheap film look as good as possible and you even get Boris Karloff to be in it. Then… You get another chance. And another. And you get nominated for Oscars, and after that… you all of a sudden are a NAME. Just like Hawks, and Welles. You even get to guest host the Tonight Show one night.
And you fall in love. With a Playboy playmate, of all people. She’s wonderful. And you decide to write your next movie as a starring vehicle for her. You shoot the film, you start editing it. You are so incredibly happy, and can’t wait for the world to see that she was more than just a centerfold.
And then she’s murdered. By her ex-husband.
This, sadly, happened to Peter Bogdanovich. The woman he loved was Dorothy Stratten, and the movie she starred in was They All Laughed. And it was a movie that almost completely ended his career and nearly, his life.
This horribly sad story is the subject of the recent documentary One Day Since Yesterday, which tells the story of Peter’s life and shows in vivid detail how the murder of Stratten impacted him. I’m a fan of his work, and very much think his Oscar-nominated The Last Picture Show is one of the best films ever made… and even I did not know all the details that the documentary reveals. When his family talks about the aftermath of her death, and how Bogdanovich wanted to go driving… with the clear intent of taking his vehicle over the nearest cliff… it’s just heartbreaking.
Interspersed with the interviews is archival footage and, of course, footage from the film They All Laughed… a movie that is a neglected classic, and one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films. In the footage you can see how utterly beautiful and natural Stratten was, and the fact that most of her scenes are with John Ritter, also no longer with us, makes the footage doubly sad.
Loss is a tricky thing. Sometimes we recover, and other times… well, we don’t. Peter Bogdanovich has recovered , and went on to direct great films such as Mask. But he also didn’t recover, as he stopped carrying about making films for many years… years where he was at the peak of his powers as a writer and director. It’s useless to think about what might have been, but… my God, what might have been. He could have been as big as Spielberg or Scorcese, now.
But he lost Dorothy, and after that movies wasn’t as important any more.
One Day Since Yesterday is now available on streaming services and for purchase, and is highly recommended.