Tag Archives: What’s Up

Woody Allen’s Comedy Experiment

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By today’s standards, it doesn’t seem like such a novel movie concept — take a low-budget film, re-dub the soundtrack adding new dialogue, music and sound effects, and create an entirely new experience. You can trace pioneers in this technique back to the syndicated TV series Fractured Flickers hosted by Hans Conried in the early sixties and maybe even before that (Fractured Flickers took silent movies and gave them new soundtracks with voices, sound effects and music). Certainly one of the more famous practitioners of this idea is Woody Allen, who explored the possibilities of redubbing found footage – in his case, a Japanese spy movie – with What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966).  Continue reading →

In Conversation with Peter Bogdanovich

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Writer/Director/Producer Peter Bogdanovich

The following conversation with Peter Bogdanovich was conducted in April 2010 just prior to the first official TCM Classic Film Festival in which the director co-hosted a screening with Vanity Fair writer David Kamp of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. Bogdanovich, of course, was a close friend of Welles’ and is the creator of that indispensible interview collection, This is Orson Welles. Among other topics discussed are such films as Targets, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Saint Jack, unproduced Welles’ projects like Heart of Darkness and Welles’s obsession with fake noses.   Continue reading →

Reelin’ in the Years with Buck Henry

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Screenwriter/actor/director/producer Buck Henry

Buck Henry has had a remarkable career in the entertainment industry, one that has encompassed acting, screenwriting, directing, producing and even dubbing foreign language film imports. Not content to sit on his laurels, Henry at age 86 remains active in Hollywood where he is allegedly working on the screenplay to Get Smart 2. His previous assignment was writing the screenplay for The Humbling (2014), a comedy-drama directed by Barry Levinson starring Al Pacino and based on the novel by Philip Roth.

In April 2010, Buck Henry was a guest at the first annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood and was present at a retrospective screening of The Graduate to answer questions from Vanity Fair contributor Sam Kashner. I conducted the following interview with Henry about his career prior to that festival for Turner Classic Movies.  Continue reading →