But at a certain point, and I don't really know... people have asked me this. I don't know exactly what it was that pushed me towards directing, but I think it was a naive notion that if I directed I would be able to play all the roles. A kind of greed.
One of the things that wrong with pictures today, I think, is that so many of the people making them started out wanting to.
The actors are in control, getting outrageous amounts of money. The reason they're getting this kind of money is because the studios don't know what else to do. They don't have a clue about what to do except to pay an actor a lot of money.
There's good directors and bad directors. Some of the critics are really conscientious and really try to do what they can popularize the work or to explain the work and so on. And then there's the critics who just wants to make a reputation by attacking. Those are the ones I'm not keen on.
You see so many movies... the younger people who are coming from MTV or who are coming from commercials and there's no sense of film grammar. There's no real sense of how to tell a story visually. It's just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, you know, which is pretty easy.
Peter studied acting with the legendary Stella Adler when he was in his teens.
His father was Serbian and his mother was Austrian, both immigrants escaping from the nazis.
Peter was with Cybill Shepherd from 1971-1978. He still has a signed photograph from her hanging in his New York City apartment signed "Dear Sven, I wouldn't be here without you." "Sven" is short for "Svengali", a character who, through hypnosis, teaches the eponymous heroine to sing and controls her singing for his own purposes.
In 1980 Peter dated Dorothy Stratten who was Playboy's Playmate of the year and was murdered by her estranged jealous husband.
Peter has two children, Antonia and Sashy Bogdanovich with Polly Platt.
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