Bogdanovich's ``Cat'' may not purr at box office

The Cat's Meow (Historical drama, Germany-U.K., color/B&W, no rating, 1:50)

By Derek Elley

LOCARNO, Switzerland (Variety) - Playful and sporty, with just a small twist of the knife, ``The Cat's Meow'' is good, uncomplicated fun that's likely to disappoint those in search of weightier fare from veteran helmer Peter Bogdanovich.

A semi-comedic speculation on the real reason for silent movie producer Thomas Ince's death, a few days after weekending on the yacht of media mogul William Randolph Hearst, the '20s-set pic is given considerable bounce by a splendid cast, led by Kirsten Dunst in an eye-opening performance as Marion Davies.

In the general arena, however, this first theatrical feature by Bogdanovich in nine years represents a specialized sell, with no hooks for a younger, non-film-buff audience that won't have a clue who most of the characters are. Pic may do marginally better in Europe, where, coincidentally, the whole thing was funded and shot.

With its literate script, good performances, well-appointed look and Hollywood-scandal subject matter, the movie would probably have had a very respectable box office career 30 years ago when Bogdanovich's reputation was at its peak and general audiences were more receptive to such Tinseltown sagas. (In several respects, the film plays like a cross between his own musical comedy ``At Long Last Love'' and James Ivory's drama ``The Wild Party.'')

But with most young movie audiences barely aware of Charlie Chaplin nowadays, let alone Hearst, Davies or Ince, the potential audience for ``The Cat's Meow'' is largely one of mature film buffs curious to check out what Bogdanovich is up to after a half-decade spent in the telemovie wilderness.

Bookended by B&W sections set at the Nov. 24, 1924, funeral of Ince, the picture packs a considerable amount of information into the first two reels as the viewer is introduced to this long-forgotten world by Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley, oozing eccentric class). A bestselling, British-born novelist of the time, Glyn was one of the guests at the weekend birthday party of Ince, hosted by Hearst, during which the young producer was fatally struck down.

The gathering received no press coverage and, as Glyn reminds us, only one of the 14 passengers was ever questioned by the authorities. Ince officially died in his bed, at home, two days later, of ``heart failure following indigestion,'' and no photos or sailing logs from the weekend survive. Though on board, Glyn herself was not privy to the full story, and imparts to the viewer only ``the whisper told most often.''

With those words, Glyn metaphorically pulls back the curtains on mid-'20s Hollywood -- ``a land just off the coast of the planet Earth'' -- and the picture slips into color as it flashbacks to Nov. 15, with the guests arriving on Hearst's yacht moored at San Pedro Harbor in Los Angeles.

Arriving first at the dock, but hiding in her car, is Glyn herself, who relinquishes her voiceover duties as she becomes one of the protags. She's closely followed by the rest of the guests, all in fine backstabbing form and -- like the players in an Agatha Christie whodunit (which pic often resembles) -- all with problems or hidden agendas.

Behind his confident front, Ince (Cary Elwes, in a rather vanilla performance) realizes he's losing his earlier clout as an industry pioneer and is eager to merge his operation with Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. Ince also brings along his business manager (Victor Slezak) and nagging mistress (Claudia Harrison).

One of the biggest egos on the boat is Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), whose last pic, ``Woman of Paris,'' has bombed and who's currently setting up a comedy, ``The Gold Rush,'' amid rumors that his 16-year-old mistress, the actress Lita Grey, is pregnant. More apposite to the weekend, Chaplin has also been conducting an affair with Hearst's own mistress, Marion Davies (Dunst).

Also on board is young Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly), a klutzy, starstruck movie critic on one of Hearst's papers, and Hearst's discreet private secretary, Joseph (Ronan Vibert).

In addition to the other guests, who include two party girls (Chiara Schoras, Claudie Blakley) and a doctor (James Laurenson), there's a lot of info to digest in the film's first 15 minutes, especially amid all the repartee and general bitchiness. However, it's a measure of Bogdanovich's handle on the protagonists, and his skill at maintaining clear character choreography, that by the time everyone sits down to watch some after-dinner dailies from Marion's latest movie that the general dynamics are pretty clear between the sizable ensemble cast. As the weekend progresses, Chaplin's affair with Davies is the trigger to a fatal meeting of wounded pride with desperate ambition.

Steven Peros' script, from his own play, is hardly rich in laugh-out-loud one-liners; but the vigor of the performances and let's-have-fun tone is infectious enough to keep a smile on the lips. By getting his cast to adopt a slightly exaggerated, but never slapstick, style of playing, Bogdanovich signals this isn't a deadly serious analysis of Hollywood corruption. Yet the quality of his cast ensures that, as the movie progresses,the characters slowly gain depth in small layers.

Most surprising of all is Izzard as Chaplin. Though the somewhat chunky British standup comic looks nothing like the real character, Izzard captures so well the mixture of self-absorption and sheer fecklessness in Chaplin's character that the physical mismatch hardly matters as the plot progresses. So, too, Tilly as a young, pre-gossip queen Parsons, who, in one of the best written scenes in the movie, finally casts off her squarky, dumb-belle persona and plays serious career poker with her patron.

Looking closest to their characters are the hatchet-faced Herrmann as Hearst and Dunst as Davies. The former, especially, grows into the role, largely taking a back seat during the early and middle going but coming through for a strong finish as the accident with Ince requires high-level hushing up. In a switch from the usual portrayal of Hearst as simply a controlling monster, Herrmann's mogul is more of a sad jester, hopelessly in love with the young Davies and determined to protect her as-yet unproven talent at any cost.

That's where Dunst's performance is key, and it's a challenge she meets with surprising success. Looking not unlike the real Davies, and with a splash of Jennifer Jason Leigh gravitas, Dunst gives her best performance to date amid a skilled older cast. Believable as both a spoiled ingenue and a lover to two very different men, Dunst endows a potentially lightweight character with considerable depth and sympathy. Overall, the script comes down hardest not on her or Hearst, but on Chaplin, who emerges at the end as a total self-obsessive who isn't even aware of the extent to which he wrecks people's lives.

Shot in rich blacks and golds, and piercing whites, by Bruno Delbonnel (who started his career on Jean-Jacques Beineix movies and most recently lensed French smash ``Amelie''), pic looks succulent but not lavish.

Production design by Jean-Vincent Puzos is on the nail for Hearst's hand-tooled yacht, and Caroline de Vivaise's costumes have an accurate, well-laundered appearance. With exteriors in Greece standing in for California, all interiors lensed in Germany and several Brits seamlessly playing American roles, the production itself is a tribute to movie artifice.

A final payoff (in which picture switches back to color) re-establishes a lighter tone, seemingly reminding viewers that, if they want a major analysis of power and corruption, go rent ``Citizen Kane.''

Marion Davies.............. Kirsten Dunst

Thomas Ince ............... Cary Elwes

William Randolph Hearst ... Edward Herrmann

Charlie Chaplin ........... Eddie Izzard

Elinor Glyn ............... Joanna Lumley

George Thomas ............. Victor Slezak

Louella Parsons ........... Jennifer Tilly

Dr. Goodman ............... James Laurenson

Joseph Willicombe ......... Ronan Vibert

Celia ..................... Chiara Schoras

Mrs. Barham ............... Ingrid Lacey

Mr. Barham ................ John C. Vennema

Margaret Livingston ....... Claudia Harrison

Didi ...................... Claudie Blakley

A CP Medien (Germany)/Dan Films (U.K.) production. (International sales: Lions Gate Films, Marina del Rey, Calif.) Produced by Kim Bieber, Carol Lewis, Dieter Meyer, Julie Baines. Executive producers, Wieland Schulz-Keil, Mike Paseornek. Co-producer, Ernie Barbarash.

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Screenplay, Steven Peros, based on his own play. Camera (color), Bruno Delbonnel; editor, Edward Norris; production designer, Jean-Vincent Puzos; supervising art director, Christian Eisele; art directors, Jan Niesler, Loukos Iconomopoulos; costume designer, Caroline de Vivaise; hair/makeup supervisor, Trefor Proud; sound (Dolby Digital), Paul Oberle; assistant director, Gesche Carstens; casting, Sarah Beardsall (U.K.), Carol Lewis (U.S.). Reviewed at Locarno Film Festival (Piazza Grande), Aug. 3, 2001.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

Kirsten on the Cat's Meow (excerpt from Dark Horizons Presents... BEAUTIFUL BUT NOT CRAZY Kirsten Dunst Q&A Session by Paul Fischer in Los Angeles) added 07.24.01

Q: What did you do to get out of that funk at the end of the shoot?

A: I went off to Berlin and played Marion Davies [In The Cat’s Meow] and got all dolled up like the 20s.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about that?

A: That was an amazing experience. It was my first really adult role. I played 27 in the movie. It was so much fun researching Marion Davies. What a cool woman to portray? Nobody's done her justice in the past, so I hope my portrayal will enlighten people’s perspective. She really was a great comedian.

Q: She wasn’t such a good singer, though.

A: Not a good singer, but we don’t concentrate on that, even though they made me sing a little song for the end credits. It’s cute. It was cool.

Q: Who’s in that?

A: Edward Hermann, who s such an amazing actor, and Eddie Izzard, and he’s awesome, and we had Joanna Lumley, who’s from Absolutely Fabulous.

From Coming Soon!
Plot Summary: It's the roaring 20's and in this widely held Tinseltown legend, publishing mogul and would be film tycoon, William Randolph Hearst throws an extravagant birthday party on his yacht, setting the scene for deception, blackmail and betrayal that ends in hushed mystery. Kirsten Dunst plays Hearst's beautiful mistress Marion Davies, the young starlet of the moment and socialite extraordinaire torn between her devotion to Hearst and the affections of the dashing Charlie Chaplin, who's at the height of his career. Chaplin, played by Eddie Izzard, is not only vying for Marion's attention, but also jockeying for the top position at Hearst's newly formed studio. Chaplin's main competition for the spot is Thomas Ince, a Hearst protégé, who incites Hearst's growing jealously of Marion's attraction to Chaplin. Behind the opulence of the celebration, the other guests, including a renowned gossip columnist, several powerbrokers and a pair of showgirls are putting their own nefarious plans into action. Each one has their designs on Hearst's money and power, but unbeknownst to them, Hearst is wielding his own influence behind the scenes. The power struggle escalates to murder when a gun goes off, leaving one of the guests dead and Hearst orchestrating the cover up.

Cat's Meow  (This is a Variety review of the play which the movie  is based on) | Thanks Maureen
(Coast Playhouse, West Hollywood; 99 seats; $18 top)
 
Rialto Entertainment presents a play in two acts by Steven Peros, directed by Jenny Sullivan; line producer, John Peros

CAST:
Albert Stratton (William Randolph Hearst), John C. Mooney (Thomas Ince), Kim Bieber (Marion Davies), Pamela Gordon (Elinor Glyn), Joseph Fuqua (Charlie Chaplin), Nancy Cartwright (Louella "Lolly" Parsons), Marianne Ferrari (Margaret Livingston), Tim Van Pelt (George Thomas), Steve Tyler (Joseph Willicombe), David Bickford (Dr. Daniel Goodman), Von Rae Wood (Mrs. Goodman/Mrs. Ince), Tracie May (Celia Moore), Precious Chong (Didi Dawson). Ship stewards: Michael Thompson, Padraic Aubrey, Paul Eppleson.

By Julio Martinez

One of showbiz's juiciest "Hollywood Babylon" stories involves the death of silent-film pioneer Thomas Ince during a weekend cruise aboard the yacht of publisher William Randolph Hearst in November 1924. Steven Peros' intriguing, fictionalized speculation imagines the worst as everyone cavorts through an oceanic orgy of intrigue, seduction, infidelity, blackmail, booze, drugs and murder. Director Jenny Sullivan has fashioned a visually sumptuous staging that is both enhanced and thwarted by its own production values. The wonderfully creative modular set design of Bill Eigenbrodt, the mood-enhancing lighting of J. Kent Inasy, the wonderfully detailed costuming of Christine Tschirgi and the evocative sound design of Joe Morrissey create a gloriously decadent atmosphere aboard Hearst's luxury yacht, the Oneida, as it carries its glamorous but amoral passengers along two days of hijinx on the high seas.

What suffers is the flow of action as each of the many scene changes is ponderously and laboriously carried out by three silent but stalwart ship stewards (Michael Thompson, Padraic Aubrey, Paul Eppleson). Sullivan would have served Peros' text better with less set and more action.

But what titillating action it is, once it gets going. Among those on board are Ince (John C. Mooney), Hearst (Albert Stratton), film stars Marion Davies (Kim Bieber) and Charlie Chaplin (Joseph Fuqua), and columnist Louella Parsons (Nancy Cartwright). Also on board is Elinor Glyn (an effectively droll Pamela Gordon), the writer who coined the term "it" when referring to star quality and who serves as semi-narrator.

Each of the weekend voyagers is imbued with an intense, self-serving agenda. Ince is determined to get his host's financial backing to save his crumbling film company. The all-powerful Hearst, who is revealed to be a dud in bed, is equally determined to keep the rapacious Chaplin away from his hot-eyed mistress, Davies.

Chaplin is indeed intent on having his way with the blond bombshell, while musing over his own pending problems, due to his impregnation of a 16-year-old starlet from his financially troubled production of "The Gold Rush." Davies is ambivalent over whether to stay in Hearst's decidedly cold bed or respond to the sexually smoldering but morally untrustworthy Chaplin.

Other intriguing subplots are provided by "Lolly" Parsons' single-minded desire to get her employer to upgrade her status in the Hearst publishing empire; actress Margaret Livingston's (Marianne Ferrari) angst over her second-class status as Ince's mistress; and the shenanigans of two starlets, hilariously portrayed by Tracie May and Precious Chong, who are rigorously out to have a good time.

The absolute highlight of this production are the performances of Bieber and Fuqua. Bieber's Davies exudes "it" from every pore as she beautifully balances a deeply caring affection for her aged lover while radiating a tangible sensuality whenever in the presence of Chaplin. And Fuqua is masterfully believable as the comic genius who is so obviously aesthetically superior to everyone around him, yet is an absolute slave to his own physical passions.

Though occasionally unsure of his lines, Stratton is highly effective as Hearst, who exhibits a pitiful vulnerability in his relationship with his young mistress, but forcefully demonstrates his far-reaching power while covering up the shooting of Ince.

Mooney is quite credible as the devious Ince. Not faring nearly as well is Emmy-winner Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson), who never seems comfortable in the persona of Louella Parsons.

sets, Bill Eigenbrodt; lighting, J. Kent Inasy; sound design, Joe Morrissey; costumes, Christine Tschirgi; hair and makeup, Judi Lewin. Opened Oct. 25, 1997, reviewed Oct. 27; runs until Nov. 30. Running time: 2 hrs., 10 min.

Laughs From Across the Pond
Izzard wonders why the British aren't coming
by Marilyn Beck |SF Chronicle | 01.23.01

Comedy sensation Eddie Izzard believes that it's time to restore the comedy bridge between the United States and England.

"You don't have a lot of British comedians coming over here these days" -- unlike, say, the times when U.S. audiences were gaga over the Monty Python troupe, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook.

"There are executives today who don't think there's an appetite for English humor in America. I come along, and I'm English and a transvestite, and they say, 'Well, this certainly won't work.' But of course, in show business, the next right thing is always a wrong thing," notes Izzard, who nabbed two Emmys for his HBO special "Dress to Kill" and whose U.S. tour last year was a smash.

Izzard has been making feature films back to back. He co-stars to great effect in Lions Gate's current black comedy-horror movie "Shadow of the Vampire." He's also completed the World War II drag drama "All the Queen's Men" with Matt LeBlanc and "Cat's Meow," which has him as Charlie Chaplin in a drawn-from-life tale of the attempted murder of Chaplin during a William Randolph Hearst yacht party in 1924.

Now Izzard's considering squeezing in another movie before the possible industry shutdown. He has another television special completed and says HBO wants to "air it sooner rather than later. But I own the copyright -- I retain rights to all my work -- and I'd rather have it on later, say two years from now. . . . You know, Chaplin owned all his work. And another one who did was Lucille Ball. I say always retain the copyright, or if you can't do that, retain the licensing in perpetuity throughout the universe." 

Scandal? He's an expert
His past is shocking, his new film no less so. David Gritten meets director Peter Bogdanovich
www.telegraph.co.uk | January 28.2001 | thanks Spoot

IT's hard to think of another director who has scaled such heights and plumbed such depths both personally and professionally as Peter Bogdanovich. An invitation to Berlin to watch him making a feature film was irresistible - it's the first he has been entrusted with in eight years. And what a delicious, scandalous piece. The Cat's Meow concerns a hushed-up shooting that took place in 1924 on the Oneida, a yacht belonging to newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

On board was a glittering guest list: actress Marion Davies, who was Hearst's mistress; Charlie Chaplin; Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons; and Elinor Glyn, the racy British novelist. Bogdanovich, 61, has assembled an intriguing cast that includes in key roles two British actors closely associated with comedy: Joanna Lumley is Elinor Glyn, who narrates the story in voice-over, while Eddie Izzard plays Chaplin - though not for laughs. Kirsten Dunst is Marion Davies, Jennifer Tilly portrays Louella Parsons, and veteran American Edward Herrmann plays Hearst.

At a studio in former East Berlin, the lavish wood-panelled dining room of the Oneida had been reconstructed. A long banqueting table was set for dinner with silver cutlery - and the ketchup that Hearst liked so much. The cast were dressed for a formal dinner in tuxedos and long gowns. To establish character, Bogdanovich had devised a tracking shot along the table, passing each of Hearst's guests involved in witty, brittle dialogue with their neighbours.

With neat, swept-back hair and tinted horn-rimmed glasses, Bogdanovich saunters around the set, prompting members of the cast in a soft voice. He moves languidly and has a deadpan manner - but he commands authority. An entertaining conversationalist, he eagerly regales listeners with anecdotes about great film-makers. "Did you ever meet Jean Renoir? A wonderful man."

In his early role as a documentarian and critic for magazines such as Esquire, Bogdanovich met many legendary names, Howard Hawks and John Ford among them. He befriended one in particular - Orson Welles, who was by then down on his luck and ostracised by Hollywood's power-brokers. It was Welles who first tipped him off about the tale that became The Cat's Meow.

"Orson told me the whisper about this story in 1969," he says. "We were doing a book together about his films, and Hearst's name came up. This story was in the first draft of Citizen Kane, but Orson took it out. He said Herman Mankiewicz [Welles's co-screenwriter] put it in, in an early draft originally called American. Orson took it out. 'I didn't think Charlie Kane was a killer,' Orson told me."

Bogdanovich plays down the exact details of the story, fearing that too much advance information might spoil The Cat's Meow. "At the start of the movie you know there was a shooting, because it begins with a funeral," he says. "You know someone's going to get hurt - the question is who? All these famous people were reputed to be on the yacht, and there are several versions of who they were. In her narration, Elinor Glyn says, 'Everything was told in whispers. This is the whisper told most often.' But no one knows what really happened on that yacht."

The director relates all this with enthusiasm. There is no indication of the troubles and setbacks that he once suffered in an extraordinary fall from grace. It's hard to convey what an important figure he was 30 years ago. He first made a splash in 1971 with The Last Picture Show, his elegiac black-and-white classic. Then in consecutive years he enjoyed huge hits with What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon.

He estimates that together these three films grossed 10 times their production costs, a figure that now seems unthinkable. Critics and audiences alike loved his work. Blessed with an agile mind, he made commercial films that were thoughtful, literate, and generously acknowledged the memory of early Hollywood legends such as Welles, Ford and Hawks.

He got very rich very quickly, bought a mansion in Bel-Air, and lived with the leading lady whom he had created: Cybill Shepherd, star of The Last Picture Show. In four short years he had become king of his world. Then his bubble burst abruptly. His next films were showcases for Shepherd, but Daisy Miller (a Henry James adaptation) and At Long Last Love (a disastrous homage to Astaire and Rogers musicals) failed at the box-office, as did Nickelodeon, a comedy about the silent-movie era. He and Shepherd split up - and then his life became immeasurably worse.

His next protegee was his mistress, Dorothy Stratten, a former Playboy centrefold. Grooming her for stardom, he gave her a role in his film They All Laughed. But before the film opened, she was shot dead by her estranged husband. Then the film was shelved by its distributor, 20th Century Fox, so he took it over himself, with disastrous results. Its woeful box-office performance cost him $5 million, and he declared bankruptcy. Many in Hollywood openly gloated at Bogdanovich's comeuppance.

His career was briefly resurrected in 1985 with the well-received Mask. But his later marriage to Stratten's 20-year-old sister Louise (who was only 12 when Dorothy died) revived the gossip among his enemies. It has been a hard road, then, and The Cat's Meow is Bogdanovich's first feature film since 1993's little-seen effort The Thing Called Love. In between, he has made half a dozen forgettable TV movies.

But there are signs of a comeback. Bogdanovich has a cameo in the hit TV series The Sopranos. He and his producers plan to take The Cat's Meow to Cannes, before releasing it in this country later this year. There is also the heartening development that he has been taken under Quentin Tarantino's wing. After Bogdanovich declared bankruptcy a second time in 1997, when a court ruled that he owed $4.2 million in a property dispute, Tarantino invited him to stay at his home, and offered support - in much the same way that Bogdanovich had assisted Welles decades earlier.

"We've become friends," he says dryly of Tarantino. "I think he's good, and he thinks I'm good, so we get along."

Tarantino will act in Bogdanovich's next film, Wait For Me, a ghost story in which a movie director looks back on his life, playing one of six ghosts in the film. Bogdanovich says shooting will start this summer. Jerry Lewis will play a cameo role and Cybill Shepherd may also appear.

"After that, I have a film called Squirrels to the Nuts lined up," he adds. "With a title like that, it had better be a comedy, and it is - a sex comedy set in New York."

Despite his mixed fortunes, Bogdanovich still has a luminous reputation among actors. Joanna Lumley said that she had put on hold a commitment with BBC TV to play Elinor Glyn. "It meant going to Germany, and none of us is working for much money," she said. "But it's a chance to work with Peter."

Could it be that Bogdanovich will pull off one of the most astonishing comebacks in movie history? He raises his eyebrows, somewhere between resignation and disbelief. "In this business, who can ever tell?"

The Cat's Meow
The Power and the Gory
Pardo News, 4 agosto 2001

A bloody crime spoils a luxury cruise for the rich and powerful, in a classic Hollywood murder mystery

Veteran U.S. helmer Peter Bogdanovich is in Locarno this weekend for the world premiere of his latest feature “The Cat’s Meow” in Piazza Grande. The 1920s period piece has an Anglo-American cast including comedian Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin, Kirsten Dunst as starlet Marion Davies and Jennifer Tilly as gossip columnist Louella Parsons.

The core of the film is the rumoured murder of a guest aboard the luxury yacht of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, cruising off California in the 1920s – a claustrophobic setting for a power play of jealousy, greed and lust which ends in violence. The glittering array of celebrities who boarded the yacht varies according to rumour – Charlie Chaplin, novelist Elinor Glynn, Louella Parsons, silent film pioneer Thomas Ince – and the scandal was never fully proven, effectively hushed up by the powerful tycoon. The only certain part of the tragedy is its catalyst: Hearst’s maniacal jealousy of his young and beautiful mistress, Marion Davies.

The story was scripted by Steven Peros; he couldn’t sell it as a screenplay, but turned it into a successful stage piece, at which point the movie rights were snapped up. Bogdanovich saw the new version and recognised a little-known tale he first heard anecdotally thirty years before, from Orson Welles (who had it direct from writer Herman Mankiewicz – the episode was originally part of their screenplay for Citizen Kane):

“When I opened the script and saw the character names I said, my God, is it that story? And it was, it captured the basic elements very well, the mechanics of how the event happened. He’d done a good job of spinning that out. But we changed the script quite a bit. Before production we dropped the first forty pages, and made the decision to drop everything from the beginning except the funeral, go from there to the yacht.”
Doesn’t opening with the funeral mean you lose an element of suspense?

“No, I think it makes the suspense element work. It tells the audience somebody gets killed, but it doesn’t tell them who.”

Did the story have a personal message for you? You’ve had plenty of ups and downs in your career and private life since your huge successes in the 70s – so did you identify with the sense of an industry that can make or break you?

“No, what interested me was that I could identify with every character in the piece. I’ve been through success, I’ve been through failure, I’ve been through murder, I’ve been through illicit affairs... So I could understand all of what everybody was going through. Ince is desperate, his career’s in bad shape and he’s trying to get it back; Hearst is obsessed with Marion, terribly jealous of anybody’s attention; Chaplin is trying to get laid, he isn’t really thinking much beyond that; Marion is torn between affection and loyalty and sexual passion. I didn’t have trouble understanding anybody…”

Does that picture of Hollywood belong to the past?

“Well, it isn’t simply Hollywood, I think it represents life among the rich and powerful. It’s a period story but it has sharp contemporary applications. Basically it’s about a murder and a cover-up – seems like those are two things we’re still very familiar with.”

You shot the movie in Germany and Greece. How did that work out?

“We built the interiors of the yacht on a soundstage in Berlin. But the main “set” was the yacht itself. It had to be a period yacht, and it had to be big – 220 ft. – to look like William Randolph Hearst’s yacht in the 1920s. We had a hell of a time finding one. The exteriors were finally shot off the coast of Greece because when we did find a good yacht it was in Athens, and they wouldn’t move it too far. But it was all great. I had a lot of luck with this picture, but the biggest luck I had was with the cast. They were awfully good.”

John Young

From El Mundo (translated with the aide of high school Spanish. I only translated the parts that pertain to The Cat's Meow)

The " resurrection " of Bogdanovich

The American film director breaks eight years of silence with his film " Cat's meow "

BEATRICE SARTORI

With a new direction, the 54th edition of the International Festival of Cinema at  Locarno begins tomorrow. The return of Peter Bogdanovich and the European opening of the Planet of the Apes are some of the strong contenders of this contest.

The Cat's Meow  signals the return to the cinema of director Peter Bogdanovich, after an eight year absence.   

 Also in the Great Piazza, Peter Bogdanovich will present/display Cat's Meow, carried out by Kirsten Dunst and Eddie Izzard.

From the Locarno International Film Festival Website
THE CAT’S MEOW
Director Peter Bogdanovich
Section Piazza Grande

Screenplay
Steven Peros d’après sa propre pièce
Picture
Bruno Delbonnel
Editing
Edward Norris
Cast
Kirten Dunst, Cary Elwes, Edward Herrmann, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Tilly
Production
Cat’s Meow Production
International rights
Lions Gate Films
2001 - 35 mm - Couleurs - 112' anglaise
The film
November, 1924. On his private yacht, billionaire William Randolph Hearst leaves San Pedro along with his mistress, the actress Marion Davies, and a small group of celebrities. These include: Charlie Chaplin, as brilliant as he is narcissistic; producer, director and scriptwriter Thomas H. Ince, a motion picture pioneer preoccupied with his recent financial setbacks; Louella Parsons, an ambitious gossip columnist; and the eccentric British novelist Elinor Glyn. Even though it is clear that the excursion will be distinguished for witty repartee and good humour, deceit and deception are also on the menu. Each seems to have a secret agenda. One guest is trying to be associated in Hearst’s production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures; another is fishing for a promotion; whilst yet another plans to steal the beautiful Miss Davies from under the billionaire’s nose. Based on a play by Steven Peros, who also wrote the screenplay, The Cat’s Meow was inspired by a true story, told to Peter Bogdanovich by none other than Orson Welles. The legendary filmmaker had himself used the press magnate William Randolph Hearst as a model for the Charles Foster Kane character in Citizen Kane (1941): a portrait which Hearst wasn’t happy with. “The story of The Cat’s Meow was in the first version of the script for Citizen Kane. At the beginning of my film, you know there’s going to be a murder, since it opens with a burial. You know there’s going to be a victim, but the question is: who? One of the reasons I was attracted by this story, apart from its relationship with destiny, was that fundamentally it was all about how to manage success – which comes with a kind of curse attached…” (Peter Bogdanovich)

From the Corriere della Sera- Edicola (loosely...very loosely translated from Italian)

Shown at Locarno,   Bogdanovich's " The Cat' s Meow "  is  about a  Hollywood mystery 

The secrets of Chaplin in a film

Surprised with his  lover, he  risked  being killed by the magnate Hearst

There was once a Hollywood Babylon of which the immortal Chaplin was a part. . Lover of the old cinema and its legends, 62 year old director Peter Bogdanovich after a long involvement with television work - he acted in " the Sopranos " - he returns to his first love, the story behind the brilliant facade. " The Cat' s Meow ", the meow of the cats, previews world-wide  4 August at the Festival of Locarno directed by Irene Bignardi (the festival which has also obtained  the new film with Brando, Norton and De Niro), tells the most mysterious story  of the Golden Age (of Cinema),  involving Charlie Chaplin: the cruise of the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, through the eyes of Orson Welles in " Fourth power ". A trip that  ended in San Diego with a dead person on board, the movie producer Thomas Ince, passed away on the night of 19 November ' 24 officially from   cardiac arrest from indigestion, unofficially victim of a murder (foul play). Bogdanovich, director of " Paper Moon " and " The Last Picture Show", in which he dealt with human comedy, which has attracted world attention. The episode is told by Kenneth Anger in " Hollywood Babylon ", the tantalizing chronicle of the dissolutionment of the times. In the film's unsolved crime, all the sins of Hollywood are represented, but the heart of the film is more narrowly focused on the a and her powerful protector.

The facts: The abstemious and jealous Hearst (Edward Herrmann) and his girlfriend had invited to his yacht the two patriarchs of the cinema, Chaplin and Ince (Eddie Izzard and Cary Elwes), the dissolute writer  Elinor Glyn and the doctor Daniel Carson who made women young again and the blond woman Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst).  1908 Champagne, French cuisine,  jazz music: a vacation for the rich, and lost time to talk about business deals (Ince wanted to produce with Hearst). During the trip  all noticed the attentions of Charlie for the beautiful but faithful actress. One night Hearst thought he saw them being intimate  on a stairway of the ship, took a pistol with a handle encrusted in diamonds and fired. But to collapse instead was Ince. The homicide had a secret witness, the editor Louella  Parsons (Jennifer Tilly), whose silence Hearst exchanged for a role of being a correspondent on Hollywood life; and with a lot of money it seems that he has bought also the silence of the widow of Ince. The day after, 20 November, the newspapers published the news of the death  of one of the fathers of   cinema, and  moreover they told stories about Hearst spying on his guests having sex in the bedrooms of his castle.

One said also that Ince had mistakenly drunk a  poisoned cocktail meant for Chaplin. But such it was the power of Hearst that nobody spoke. The director demonstrates himself to be well informed on the facts, in part from love letters written and then thrown away by Chaplin for Davies, collected by Ince and promptly given to his lovesick boss in the most moving night of cinema. And what if Chaplin had been killed? But this is another film.

Eddie Izzard is wizard as Charlie Chaplin
(unmissabletv.com | thanks Spoot! | added 06.15.01)

SEE ED HERRMAN TALK ABOUT EDDIE (must have RealAudio)
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Eddie Izzard's sense of humour clearly translates Stateside - his antics on the set of his latest movie are keeping his co-stars in stitches.

Character actor Edward Herrman, who plays newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in the movie The Cat's Meow says he enjoyed working opposite Izzard who plays Charlie Chaplin.

He describes Izzard as 'very professional... He was a straight-up professional guy and then he'd show up in his dress in the lobby which could be a bit unnerving.'

The movie's being directed by Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) and is based on rumours surrounding the mysterious death of a businessman on Hearst's yacht.

In 1924, movie producer Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) died while celebrating his 43rd birthday on Hearst's yacht.

The gossip was that Hearst (Herrman), catching his mistress Marion Davis (Kirsten Dunst) kissing Charlie Chaplin (Izzard), shot at Chaplin and missed, accidentally hitting and killing Ince.

The film has just finished shooting on location in Germany and Greece.

Eddie Izzard: Charlie Chaplin Reincarnation

Eddie Izzard really is Charlie Chaplin - according to Hollywood starlet Jennifer Tilly. The two stars have just completed The Cat's Meow - a film centred on the love triangle between Chaplin, Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s. And Tilly says that transvestite British comic Izzard is so convincing as the silent movie star, people will think Chaplin has returned from the dead. She explains, "He's so sexy and he's so perfect as Charlie. People who have seen it have said it's uncanny how he looks exactly like Charlie in the movie."

-- from imdb.com (thanks Nicolletta)

He Still Has A Few Reels Left
by David Gritten |LA Times |03.11.01
Thanks Spoot for the pix!

BERLIN, Germany--It's hard to think of another director who has scaled such heights and plumbed such depths both personally and professionally as Peter Bogdanovich. For a brief spell in the 1970s, he was a king among Hollywood filmmakers, but artistic decline, personal scandals and financial setbacks combined to drag him down. After toiling in television for a lengthy spell, he's now back directing a big-screen film for the first time in eight years.

     
Conveniently, it deals with two subjects familiar to Bogdanovich: Hollywood and scandal. "The Cat's Meow" is an independent movie, and he's shooting most of it here at a studio in the once Communist-dominated eastern part of the city. Its story, which unfolds over one weekend in 1924, concerns a largely hushed-up shooting incident on the Oneida, a pleasure yacht owned by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The guests on the Oneida that weekend were a glittering assembly: Hearst, his mistress, Marion Davies, Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and Elinor Glyn, a writer of mildly racy novels.
     
"The Cat's Meow"--the title is an old-fashioned expression meaning "the best"--was written by Steven Peros, and first saw the light of day as a play. It was performed onstage at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood in 1997.

For the film, which is scheduled for release in the fall, Bogdanovich has assembled an intriguing cast; two British actors closely associated with comedy appear in key roles. Joanna Lumley, from the cult sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous," plays Glyn, who narrates the story in voice-over, while stand-up comic Eddie Izzard plays Chaplin. The other three stars are American; Kirsten Dunst is Marion Davies, Jennifer Tilly portrays Louella Parsons, while veteran actor Edward Herrmann is Hearst.
     
"The Cat's Meow" has a modest, undisclosed budget, requiring a tight shooting schedule. That suited Bogdanovich perfectly. Between 1994 and 1999, he stayed out of features, instead directing half a dozen movies for television.
     
"If I hadn't done them, I don't think I'd have been able to do this one with such speed," he noted. "Doing television reminded me that one can do good work quickly. It's no coincidence that Hitchcock shot 'Psycho' with a television crew, because he knew he wanted to go fast."
     
At this point, he was called to the set, a reconstruction of the dining room of the Oneida. A huge long banquet table was set for dinner, with silver cutlery--and the bottles of ketchup that Hearst liked so much and that visitors to the Hearst Castle at San Simeon invariably comment upon. Bogdanovich, 61, had devised a long tracking shot along one side of the table, passing each of Hearst's guests involved in witty, brittle dialogue with their dining neighbors: an economic means of establishing character.
     
The director, instantly recognizable with his neat, swept-back hair and trademark tinted horn-rimmed glasses, sauntered around the set, prompting members of the cast in a soft voice. Bogdanovich has languid body language and a deadpan manner--which he used to great effect on "The Sopranos" last season playing a psychiatrist treating psychiatrist Lorraine Bracco, a shrink's shrink as it were--but he commands real authority on set.
     
He is an entertaining conversationalist and eagerly regales listeners with anecdotes about Hollywood's great filmmakers. "One reason I was pleased to be doing [TV] was I felt everything in movies had gotten too expensive, took too long, everyone was spoiled," he said when the complex scene was finally shot. "What with spiraling costs, all the fun had gone out of it. So when some TV work was offered, I thought, why not do it? All the schedules were 19, 22, 24 days. It felt more fun to work fast. Your chops had to be pretty good."
     
Bogdanovich added that he actually asked for less shooting time on "The Cat's Meow," insisting it could be completed in 30 days. "I'm not only speaking personally but historically when I say that it's healthy to make pictures at an accelerated pace," he said. "It's better than taking time and spending the kind of money that now is obscenely spent as matter of course on big pictures. There's something that hurts the creativity in that area. All the money and the technology in the world are no guarantee of better pictures."
     
He paused with a wintry smile. "On the other hand, a low budget and a fast shoot are no guarantee either. But at least you spend less."
* * *     

Of course, the unspoken question in all this is why Bogdanovich, once one of America's most feted directors, spent so long in the wilderness. He candidly admits the movie studios that once clamored for his services were shying away from him.
     
"I certainly wasn't on the A-list," he said. "I probably wasn't on anyone's B-list."
     
But he insists he felt no rancor or bitterness: "I've already been through enough and seen enough other careers to know that in show business, careers go up and down. It's the nature of the business. None of the last few films I'd made had good distribution, so they didn't have a chance to make money. I thought they were good. But I know that reflected on me. . . . I've had my share of personal and business challenges and obstacles."
     
That's an understatement. His life and career have been marked by extraordinary fluctuations; he has known contentment and despair, remarkable success and hugely publicized failures. It is hard now to remember just what a big deal he used to be. A New York-based film writer and critic, he emerged with critical acclaim for his first feature, "Targets" in 1968, followed three years later with his elegiac black-and-white classic, "The Last Picture Show."
     
In successive years, critics and audiences alike adored "What's Up, Doc?" and "Paper Moon." (It was estimated that "The Last Picture Show" and these two films grossed on average 10 times their production costs, a statistic that now seems unthinkable.) Bogdanovich had a reputation as a director with an agile mind, an artist whose films were commercial but thoughtful and literate, and paid generous homage to the memory of earlier American movie-making legends--John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles. He got very rich very quickly, bought a mansion in Bel-Air, and was living with his most famous leading lady--Cybill Shepherd, star of "The Last Picture Show."
     
Within the space of four years, his position in Hollywood seemed unassailable. But then his bubble burst abruptly. Two films conceived as showcases for Shepherd, "Daisy Miller" and "At Long Last Love," failed at the box office, notoriously so in the latter case. So did "Nickelodeon," a comedy about the silent movie era. Bogdanovich and Shepherd split up, and then the director's life became immeasurably worse. His movie "They All Laughed" was shelved by its distributor, 20th Century Fox. This encouraged him to distribute it himself, with disastrous results. The film's woeful performance at the box office cost him $5 million, and he ended up in bankruptcy court.
     
But that was not the worst of it. Featured in the film was Bogdanovich's mistress Dorothy Stratten, a former Playboy centerfold; he was grooming her for stardom, as he had done for Shepherd. But before "They All Laughed" opened in 1980, the 20-year-old actress was shot dead by her estranged husband. It was a bleak period for Bogdanovich, intensified by the knowledge that many people in Hollywood seemed to be gloating at his comeuppance. His career was briefly resurrected in 1985 with the well-received film "Mask."
     
Then his subsequent marriage to Dorothy Stratten's younger sister Louise, who was only 12 when Dorothy died, kick-started more gossip among his enemies; he and Louise Stratten are still together. These days Bogdanovich refers obliquely to his turbulent past with a resigned, world-weary air.
     
It is fair to say he has been out of favor with mainstream Hollywood for much of the last 20 years. But there are signs that his star may be ascending once more. After he declared bankruptcy a second time in 1997 and after a jury found against him to the tune of $4.2 million in a real estate dispute, fellow director Quentin Tarantino offered to let him stay at his home and offered support. Bogdanovich, who doesn't live with Tarantino anymore, now lives in New York.
     
"We've become friends," said Bogdanovich dryly. "I think he's good, and he thinks I'm good, so we get along."
     
Tarantino has offered to act in an upcoming Bogdanovich film, "Wait for Me," a ghost story in which a movie director looks back on his life. He will play one of six ghosts in the film. Bogdanovich said that Jerry Lewis would also play a cameo role, and that Shepherd might also appear. "After that, I have a little comedy called 'Squirrels to the Nuts,' lined up," he added. "With a title like that, it had better be a comedy, and it is. It's a sex comedy set in New York."
     
What with this burst of feature film work, combined with plans to take "The Cat's Meow" to the Cannes Film Festival, one might conclude Bogdanovich was on the cusp of a major comeback. He raised his eyebrows, assuming an expression somewhere between resignation and disbelief. "Oh, in this business, who can ever tell?" he said with a small sigh.
* * *  
"The Cat's Meow" has an intriguing history in Bogdanovich's life--one that goes back 30 years. He befriended Orson Welles and was in a minority of film people who continued to champion Welles throughout his later years, at a time when most of Hollywood had shamefully deserted him. "Orson told me the whisper about this story back in 1969," recalled Bogdanovich.
     
"We were doing a book together about his films, talking about 'Citizen Kane,' and the name of Hearst came up. This story he had heard was in the first draft of 'Citizen Kane,' but he, Orson, took it out. He said [screenwriter Joseph] Mankiewicz put it in, in a draft originally called 'American.' Orson took it out when he revised the script. 'I didn't think Charlie Kane was a killer,' Orson told me."
     
Bogdanovich wants to play down the details of the shooting incident, because he feels too much advance knowledge might spoil "The Cat's Meow" for the audience. "All you know at the beginning of the movie is there was a shooting, because it begins with a funeral," he said. "You know someone's going to get hurt--the question is who?
     
"There was this mysterious occurrence on Hearst's yacht in 1924. Famous people were reputed to be on the yacht, and there are several versions of who they were. Elinor Glyn narrates and says: 'Everything was told in whispers. This is the whisper told most often.' We've gone with 'the whisper heard most often.' The whole picture plays in two days, and we follow what's reputed to have happened. There are holes in the narrative, so no one knows what really happened on that yacht."
     
Playwright Steven Peros, whom Bogdanovich invited to stay on the set of "The Cat's Meow" for the entire shoot, recalled he had originally written the story as a screenplay in 1990. "For six years, various people tried to get it made, until finally I got tired of talking about it. A producer agreed to finance it as a play, and I wrote an adaptation. "The play made the screenplay better. It's a better film for the 10 years that have passed. I like to think I'm a better craftsman now. I think the story has strong appeal. It's not a whodunit, but a 'who will it be done to?' "
     
Bogdanovich said the script, temporarily titled "California Curse," landed on his desk because "of my knowledge about old Hollywood. No one knew I knew the whisper. No one connected it to Orson at all."
     
From the point of view of the cast, there's no question that Bogdanovich remains an attraction. Lumley said she had put on hold a commitment with BBC Television to play Glyn. "It meant going to Germany, and none of us is working for very much money," she said. "But then again, it's a chance to work with Peter Bogdanovich."
     
So, to adapt that famous line from "Sunset Boulevard," it could be: "Ready for your comeback, Mr. Bogdanovich?" The director remains noncommittal about his prospects, or whether he ever sees himself working with a major studio again: "You know, it all depends. It depends on the material, the deal, the budget. Right now, I want to do some good pictures, and I have some good scripts I like that I'm preparing. I'm not saying no to anything in principle."  

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