I have a Paper Moon 51st anniversary, celebratory post in the publishing queue for May 9, but I don't know if I am going to post it. Not anything to celebrate. 

Tatum O'Neal was physically, sexually, and emotionally abused for much of her life. Abandoned by father Ryan and mother Joanna Moore. Ryan hit on Tatum, who he didn't recognize, at the funeral of Farrah Fawcett, his partner, in two segments, of 26 years. The emotional abuse was there in the filming of Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich said that he and Ryan took turns yelling at 8 year-old Tatum. Ryan was jealous and upset that Tatum had gotten nominated for an Oscar and he hadn't. He told a London newspaper that she was "lazy as hell" and "stole the movie". So upset that he "socked" her according to reports, but Tatum does not remember that, perhaps, as she acknowledges, "blacked it out." Didn’t show up at the awards ceremony with her (her grandfather chaperoned her).

So Ryan was one of the great assholes of his time in film.

Bogdanovich seems to have been an asshole, too. "How did you work with Tatum?" "With great difficulty." She constantly "fucked up" her lines (she was eight). 

I got obsessed with the film. The deeper I went into it, the more of Bogdanovich's "genius" I saw (and heard). Genius: the word used to describe Bogdanovich in two leading obituaries. I don't know what to make of Bogdanovich. As I went still deeper into my research, the genius disappeared, from his own mouth! Those interviews, what was it? Age? Parkinson's dementia? I don't know! It is the strangest thing. Recounting the same humorous anecdotes; given two opportunities, one of them point blank using the term "lyrics"--from a fellow director!--to expound his genius on the songscore, specifically on the lyrics of the songs and..."I never thought of that!" "I'll buy that from you!"

He was as oblivious to the ethical and moral choices that his film presented. He didn't choose between difficult options, as Woody Allen did in Crimes and Misdemeanors: if you believe his own words Bogdanovich didn't see ethical and moral choices, only commercial ones: what would the audience want? Give them more of that. The Christmas screening: "The penultimate reel" ended with Addie entering her aunt's house and the door closing behind her. Moze had dropped her off once and for all, it would have been a poignant ending, one that showed how painful and emotional parental choices of "what's best" for our children can be, but zoom! it went right over Bogdanovich's head. "Is that the end?!" his guests cried. "No, it was a mistake!" as he put on the final reel. 

Bogdanovich does seem slow in the interviews, not mentally sharp as an old person can be not mentally sharp; forgetful, repeating stories. But he is not inarticulate. He seems old-slow, that’s all. I don't know anything about how dementia or Parkinson's dementia manifest themselves. I would think that if Bogdanovich had been really not with it that friends and loved ones would have implored him not to grant more interviews. But even if they did and failed, even with my lack of understanding of dementia and P.D., I cannot see how Bogdanovich would disclaim "intentionality" in the "ghostly images of women in the background of scenes, as if they were her Addie's deceased mother". SOMEONE put those goddamned sets together for crissakes. Someone gave Tatum a detective magazine with a woman smoking on the cover, rather than this cover or that cover. Most of all for me personally, I cannot understand how Bogdanovich would not have any knowledge of the unique role that the song lyrics played in the brilliance of the film, his film. That is, unless it really wasn't intentional. And that is what the man says. "I never thought of it!"

I haven't decided 100% if to post the celebratory "Remembrance" of Paper Moon. It's scheduled for midnight, May 9. It'll be there or it won't, and if it's not, you now know why.