One of the brightest bulbs in the New Hollywood marquee was former film critic and historian Peter Bogdanovich. Exploding onto the scene in 1968 with the still-topical mass-shooter thriller “Targets,” Bogdanovich followed this breakout success with a slew of successful films, including “The Last Picture Show,” which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, the screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?,” and the Depression-set road movie “Paper Moon.”
But for as much success as he could find early on in his career, what goes up must come down, and during the latter half of the 1970s, he struggled to keep his initial spark aflame. Finally, moving further away from the studio system, Bogdanovich scaled back his approach, shooting an adaptation of Paul Theroux’s “Saint Jack” on location in Singapore with German cinematographer Robby Müller and actor Ben Gazzara. Though the film struggled at the box office, it fared well critically and provided direction for the kind of work Bogdanovich wished to be doing going forward. Then came “They All Laughed.”
The genesis of “They All Laughed,” a romantic, melancholic New York tale ultimately released in 1981, came from conversations Bogdanovich shared with Gazzara while making “Saint Jack.” Gazzara was going through a breakup with his wife (and coming off an alleged affair with Audrey Hepburn) and Bogdanovich’s romantic relationship with muse and collaborator Cybil Shepherd was coming to an end as well. However, a new love was starting to blossom between the 41 year-old filmmaker and Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, then only 20. Despite this age gap, by all accounts, the two fit together perfectly and brought a joy and calm to each other’s lives that had been missing for both. Bodganovich’s mood was lifted as he worked with screenwriter Blaine Novak to craft a detective story set in Manhattan and revolving around multiple investigations, all of which feature love and its hardships at their center. Though he was facing clinical depression at the time, Gazzara reunited with Bodganovich for the film and was joined by Hepburn (her final onscreen lead role), Stratten, Novak, John Ritter, and Colleen Camp.
The shoot was a dream, with Müller returning in peak form, capturing a time and magic in New York City that feels distant, yet alive, and Bogdanovich finding a natural rhythm with his cast that draws out performances both comic and endearing. But as the film was in post-production, tragedy struck. While trying to seek a divorce so she could be with Bogdanovich, Stratten was murdered by her estranged husband. Completing “They All Laughed” became even more of a priority for the filmmaker, serving as a way of coping with his loss and providing him a purpose: Sharing Stratten’s talent with the world. To add insult to injury, however, following poor test screenings in areas outside of major cities, 20th Century Fox pulled the release. Bogdanovich felt compelled to buy back the rights and release the project himself, a move that would ultimately ruin the filmmaker financially, but one he was determined to make in Stratten’s memory. Ultimately though, despite mostly rave reviews, “They All Laughed” struggled to be seen and had little presence on the home video market for many years.
That all changed the moment Bogdanovich met filmmaker and documentarian Bill Teck.
Teck was only 13 when he first saw “They All Laughed” at a theater in his hometown of Miami, an occurrence that was made possible by local film and music critic Jon Marlowe championing the movie and having it screened in the city.
“I went the first night and it blew my mind,” Teck said in an interview with IndieWire. “As a film buff/film geek, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s using silent film techniques and all these different things. It’s just such a radical movie.”
As much as he was “enamored” by the film, as he grew up, he came to find it had the same effect on other creatives, including Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and Noah Baumbach, all of whom are featured in Teck’s 2016 documentary, “One Day Since Yesterday,” which covers Bogdanovich’s career and the making of “They All Laughed.” But before he trained his lens on the legendary filmmaker and raconteur, he first needed to make some introductions and share his appreciation.
“I was able to meet him once at a book signing. At that book signing, I was like, ‘Hey, what did you think of the homages to ‘They All Laughed’ that Tarantino included in ‘Pulp Fiction,’ ‘Kill Bill,’ ‘Jackie Brown,’ and he was like, ‘What are you referring to?’ I laid it out for him, and I think he was touched that I knew so much about his film, and I brought a poster for him to sign,” said Teck. “I was already working in films and documentaries and commercials, so he and I said, let’s stay in touch. I finally gathered up the courage a few years later to ask him if I could make a documentary about it, which we did, and then that premiered at the Venice Film Festival and screened in Vienna and elsewhere, and it did well. We got to be very close as we traveled around.”
Describing Bogdanovich as a “dear man” and a “gentle soul,” Teck explained how it was “hard not to become taken with his spirit” and as such, felt a responsibility in making sure “They All Laughed” was finally seen by a wide audience.
“It contains so much of his enthusiasms. I think it really has that bubbly, light, romantic spirit that he approached life with,” Teck told IndieWire. “I mean, even at his most dire, he was quick with a joke, quick with a smile. Even when his health was failing, he was funny and urbane, just a good natured soul, and I think that movie represented that.”
Bogdanovich’s death in 2022 due to complications with Parkinson’s disease was followed by an outpouring of appreciation and praise from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Barbra Streisand, Jeff Bridges, Viola Davis, and more. For Teck, it was a moment that came as a great shock, but one that inspired him, as well as Bogdanovich’s longtime romantic partner and Dorothy’s sister, Louise Stratten, to push forward with efforts to get “They All Laughed” available on streaming and airing on TCM. Stratten was also very young when she first saw the film, only 12, and had the chance to do so before anyone else, but still knew at that moment the power it held.
“I saw the film finished in August after Peter had his first cut, and he screened it in his screening room after [Dorothy’s] murder,” Stratten wrote in an email to IndieWire. “It felt overwhelming to see it with an audience, and Peter beside me. Dorothy was so vibrant and so alive in the film, so wonderful, it was so hard to believe her life was taken from us. This would have made her a star.”
The film was originally set to be distributed by Time Life Films, but the production and distribution arm of Time Inc. went defunct right before the release and “They All Laughed” was then sold off to 20th Century Fox. When Fox decided to drop it after test screenings, and Bogdanovich bought the rights to put it out himself, he was only able to get it into a few theaters. Unable to recoup his losses and continue paying for the rights, they eventually reverted back to the Time-Life catalog, which was held by a developing cable network called HBO. A woman named Rebecca Smith would end up working there in the ’90s and assisted Bogdanovich with the film’s transfer to LaserDisc and VHS. In a small twist of fate, Smith would stay on at HBO, later working as a Post Production Coordinator on “The Sopranos,” a show Bogdanovich would guest star on and direct. Reconnecting with Smith, Bogdanovich was able to get her help with a DVD transfer for “They All Laughed,” and when she became Manager of Post-Production and Delivery at HBO, her current title, he would later team her up with Teck and Stratten to pursue clearing the rights for further distribution.
“[Rebecca] was like, ‘OK, well, I’m at HBO, I can help unravel this,’” said Teck. “And when we found out it was OK — it had gotten flagged because of some music clearances — but we had to find all the paperwork and where was the paperwork? Well, everybody figured it’s in storage.”
Unfortunately, this was during the COVID-19 pandemic and scouring through a storage unit somewhere in Long Island wasn’t the easiest of tasks. Again, Smith was able to get HBO to lend a hand and managed to have them send a “search party” to find the boxes of paperwork needed. They succeeded, but quickly discovered there were certain documents missing.
“There’s so much music in that movie, and a lot of these cue sheets were missing,” Teck said of the soundtrack, which contains an original song co-written by Bogdanovich, as well as famous tunes from Frank Sinatra and Rodney Crowell. “And I thought, maybe it’s at the Lilly Library because when Peter closed his offices and went through that hard time, a lot of his papers, his archive of his stuff, was sent to the Lilly Library, which has Orson Welles’ papers. I think they may have John Ford’s papers. They have a lot of great directors’ work there in Indiana.”
They also have a great digitization manager, Jody Mitchell, who was able to secure the final papers needed for clearance. The last hurdle Teck, Stratten, and Smith faced in getting “They All Laughed” on streaming, and TCM was, in many ways, the perfect denouement to a cinematic adventure years in the making. The song “Moon River,” a few notes of which plays over the logo for Bogdanovich’s company, Moon Pictures, was the last of the music rights that needed to be accounted for. Writing an impassioned letter to David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Discovery, which owns HBO, Max, and TCM, Stratten was able to convince him to cut a check for “Moon River” and make “They All Laughed” available to the public.
“People need to talk about this movie because it didn’t have a chance,” Stratten said of her desire for the film to find new light. “It was stolen through tragedy and it affected Peter and cost opportunities.”
As one of her last gifts to Bogdanovich, Stratten also reached out to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz to make sure the film would play on the channel he loved so much. She wrote in her email, “Peter was a huge TCM junkie if you will. He had fantasies of ‘They All Laughed’ playing on TCM. They tried and tried to no avail. He would say to me, ‘Can you believe, my favorite film of mine, and I can’t see it on TCM?!’”
While the film was made available to stream on Max back in March, it finally screened on TCM last week on September 15, a moment that held special importance for Teck and Stratten.
“I think it’s important to Peter’s legacy because to me, the real Bogdanovich is ‘Saint Jack,’ ‘They All Laughed’ — his second style, which is so unique. I would say it’s like his Jackson Pollock period. He just throws the book out and says, ‘OK, yes, I can do a classic Hollywood film, but this is something brand new,’ and he only made a few movies in that style before the tragic situation with Dorothy,” Teck told IndieWire. “It’s such an exciting, hyperkinetic, pure film style. The voyeurism in the movie, it’s almost like a Hitchcock or a De Palma. I think you rethink the way you think about Peter when you see ‘They All Laughed’ or ‘Saint Jack.’”
Following Bogdanovich’s passing, Stratten has done much to make sure he won’t be forgotten. In addition to her work on “They All Laughed,” she also worked with Guillermo del Toro to release the podcast, “One Handshake Away,” which features recordings of Bogdanovich talking to other directors about classic cinematic figures like John Ford and Don Siegel, whom he’d met in the past. More recently, Stratten released an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, which covers her version of events around her sister’s death and the relationship that grew with Bogdanovich years later. None of this will change what happened or bring her loved one back, but like how seeing Dorothy on the big screen made her sister alive again, if only for a brief time, in getting to watch “They All Laughed” on TCM, Stratten was able to be with Bogdanovich once more.
“I would have done anything to sit next to him and watch it together on TCM like I did so many years before at 12 years old in that screening room. ‘Roll them,’ he would yell,” Stratten wrote to IndieWire. “I sat in his favorite chair, and yelled ‘roll them’ after Ben announced the film so brilliantly.”
“They All Laughed” (1981) is currently available to stream on Max, and “One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & the Lost America Film” (2016) can be streamed on Tubi.
