Amen, Amen

 

Peter Bogdanovich

1939 - 2022

        I keep wanting to get back and discuss my original subject, Smash His Camera, documentary about photographer Ron Galella.  But then people influential in the entertainment business keep dropping dead on me, and taking my attention.

        It has been three in the past week:

Betty White      99 years

Peter Bogdanovich      82 years

Sidney Poitier      94 years

We have chatted here about the wonderful Betty White, and now we must recommend, for a little Sidney Poitier, type in on You Tube

Sidney Poitier, Amen

and you can hear a good song.

-------------------------------- Peter Bogdanovich was a director, a film historian, and he did some acting as well -- notably (for me, anyway) as a psychiatrist on "The Sopranos."

        The shrink whom Tony Soprano sees, Dr. Melfi, in turn goes for counseling herself, with Bogdanovich's character.

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3 key movies by Peter Bogdanovich:

The Last Picture Show   (1971)

What's Up, Doc?   (1972)

Paper Moon   (1973)

Paper Moon can be watched right now on Amazon Prime.

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Smash His Camera adds new information, for me, and also brings back memories.

I first learned of Ron Galella's existence when I was junior-high age -- in Rootstown, Ohio, I was going to go downstairs and at the top of the stairs where the railing ended in a flat surface like a little shelf, there was a magazine with a photograph of Jackie Onassis on the front.

I picked it up and looked up the story and read it.  It was about a photographer named Ron Galella in New York City who would take Mrs. Onassis's picture when she was out and about.  And she didn't want him to -- wanted him to stop.  And they were going to court over it.

I remember not really knowing what to think about that.

And I wondered how to pronounce the name Galella -- and then realized there's really only one way...  But it was unusual, to me, then -- an Italian name.

In Smash His Camera, a British guy comments, "His name is Galella.  And he lives in New Jersey.  And when you get to his house you look, and you go, 'My God -- it's the Sopranos!'"

Near the beginning of Smash, there's film of Ron Galella with his wife, cutting a hole in the hedge by Katharine Hepburn's driveway so that he can see through it with his camera to take a picture of her when she comes out to get in her car and be driven to a NYC theater where she's appearing in a play.

        They are "lying in wait," as the expression goes.

Television host David Frost is narrating the proceedings -- he says, with his English accent, "We asked Mr. Galella if harassing a 71-year-old woman in this fashion was a decent way to go about making a living..."

The photog is blocked from his shot when Hepburn's chauffeur moves the car up.  Galella then races to the theater to be there when she alights -- she walks, carrying a huge umbrella turned sideways to block his view of everything but her feet.  He gets a good picture of the umbrella and the feet.

        And he isn't disappointed -- he says, "You see, she holds the umbrella to block me.  That's her personality!  That's interesting!"

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