Peter Bogdanovich: The director who grew to despise Burt Reynolds
Hollywood has never been shy of a few broken relationships along the way. Everyone might be doing things for the love of the craft, but oftentimes, some creative partners end up being their own worst enemies over time. And despite Burt Reynolds becoming one of the most celebrated leading men of his time, this director knew that he had little time for him the more he looked at his filmography.
But it’s not like Reynolds ever went Hollywood in the same way that the biggest stars in the world have. He certainly had his fair share of heavy hitters at the box office, but whenever looking at his material throughout any part of his career, there’s never a moment where he feels like he’s phoning it in or becoming the kind of casualty that comes far too often when someone gets too big a head on their shoulders.
Then again, a lot of what Reynolds did was follow where his star was leading him. You can call it selling out if you want to, but looking at where he went after his success in films like Smokey and The Bandit, it was clear that he had a formula that seemed to work well for him. Although some of the accompanying sequels were a bit questionable, it was a far cry from the actor Peter Bogdanovich once knew.
Despite being known for having some of the greatest films of all time to his name, like The Last Picture Show, Bogdanovich remembered feeling disappointed in looking at where Reynolds went following his work with him in movies like Nickelodeon. Compared to what he had become known for, these were massive bombs for Reynolds, and he spared no expense in pointing the finger directly at Bogdanovich in his autobiography as well.
But Bogdanovich never saw it in that light. Looking back on what he had in mind for the film, he had a gritty drama lined up for Reynolds to star in, only for a lot of it to be chewed up by the studio that wanted it to have a slightly more comedic tone, which ended up making the entire thing collapse in on itself.
Nevertheless, the movie did fail under those conditions, but Bogdanovich grew to despise Reynolds right after working with him, saying, “He was a little nasty about me in his autobiography. I liked Burt, but he was a bit of a shit. He blew with the wind. He very much followed the box office. He was very affected by how people were talking about his films. He wasn’t a great friend, but he did two of his best pictures with me [Nickelodeon and At Long Last Love] .”
But it’s understandable to see why Bogdanovich would be more than a little bit upset. Just because the public didn’t resonate with a certain movie doesn’t mean that it was garbage from front to end, and looking at where Reynolds went afterwards, it did look like he was far more concerned with growing with his audience than seeing all of the different demographics he could cater to.
It might be hard to balance which projects every actor takes on, but sometimes it’s better to take the approach actors like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise use. Both of them have their massive blockbusters, but they also aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty when doing something a bit off the wall.
