‘DIRECTORS UNPLUGGED’ A BOGDANOVICH/DE FELITTA JOINT?

NOTE: FOR SOME REASON THE ABOVE VIDEO HAS BEEN BLOCKED FOR VIEWING ON OTHER WEBSITES SO SIMPLY GO TO YOUTUBE (CLICK ABOVE LINK) AND WATCH IT DIRECTLY. 

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Shortly after I met Peter Bogdanovich at a party I gave in 2002 (actually about 20 minutes after we met) we discovered that both of us were serious fans of the popular music of the 1930s/40s/50s. I’ve been a pianist practically my whole life and knew the music of the so-called ‘Songbook’ backwards/forwards/up and down. It turned out that Peter was not only my equal in this area of knowledge but also a singer…kind of. I had a new Steinway baby grand and before we knew it we were performing for the small crowd of guests. A gentleman guest named Mark Lipsky instantly proposed that we record a CD. And somewhat incredibly I found myself in a downtown Manhattan recording studio making a duet CD of old popular songs with Peter Bogdanovich! The CD, misleadingly titled ‘Monday Morning Quarterbacks’ (we did a version of that Sinatra song which was written in the late 60s, thereby making it the newest song on the CD and thus completely unrepresentative of the entire project), has never been commercially released but has been passed around over the years and found its way recently onto Ebay, available for purchase for a cool fifty dollars. Peter’s singing is lovely–what he lacks in technical grace he more than makes up for in storytelling acumen.

But that’s not all. My friend Tom Hayes–who introduced Peter to me–added a video element to the project by filming us making the CD. (If you look at posts earlier this week you’ll see a couple of examples of us in the recording studio doing our repertoire.) He also shot a conversation between me and Peter at my apartment. The end result was a 20 minute video called ‘Directors Unplugged’ which I’ve posted above. In it we discuss how we met, the songs we recorded and other ephemera. Peter is charmingly low key and dapper. I am pompous, talkative and filled with self-love. Nevertheless it’s a lovely ‘picture in time’ (to paraphrase the title of one of Peter’s early books). Enjoy I hope!

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