Hollywood- [E! Online]- Once lauded as the second coming of Orson Welles in the 1970s, Peter Bogdanovich’s career as one of Hollywood’s most esteemed auteurs was derailed by negative reviews and a scandal-plagued personal life.
And the hits keep coming.
Bogdanovich has been sued by a man who alleges the director and his business manager, William Peiffer, extorted a large sum of money from him when he approached them about trying to help his son break into the film business.
The lawsuit, filed last Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York on behalf of Iaroslav Jivov, accuses the 67-year-old filmmaker of demanding a whopping $100,000 in return for employing Matt Jivov as a director’s assistant on his next movie.
According to court documents obtained by snoop site The Smoking Gun, Bogdanovich first broached the shakedown scheme when he and Peiffer met with the entrepreneur in January 2005 to talk about possible jobs that might be available for the younger Jivov.
During a second meeting at a Manhattan eatery, the parties agreed that the elder Jivov would wire money to an account designated by Peiffer, which Jivov claims he did on Feb. 7, 2005. As soon as he received the dough, the Oscar-nominated helmer of such classic ’70s flicks as The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc? and Paper Moon was supposed to initiate a “mentoring program,” per the complaint.
“The position was to involve all aspects of movie production from preproduction to delivery of the motion picture to the distributor,” read the suit. “Prior to preproduction, Bogdanovich was to serve as mentor to Matt and train him for the assistant position and for future movie-making.”
The only problem was that Bogdanovich apparently renegged on the deal and never hired Jivov, whose credits up until then included making a World War II-themed short and tending goal for the Ontario hockey team owned by his dad.
Court papers also state that Peiffer told the elder Jivov that Bogdanovich had two films in the works at Paramount Pictures. The first, on which Matt Jivov had allegedly been promised a position, was due to start preproduction in March 2005 and begin shooting that June. However, according to Jivov, he was informed that the film was postponed because of the usual script rewrites and difficulties securing financing for both movies.
When no one had contacted his son by January 2006, Jivov demanded the $100,000 payment back, at which point he claims Bogdanovich and Peiffer breached their agreement to refund his money if the films did not go forward, despite earlier statements that they would do so.
The Jivovs are seeking to be reimbursed for the original sum, plus additional “compensatory and special damages.”
Bogdanovich and Peiffer could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
When he’s not allegedly auctioning off errand boy spots to wealthy parents hoping to buy their offspring a shot at showbiz, the twice-bankrupt director is busy trying to stay afloat in an industry that hasn’t necessarily been pining for his services of late.
His last movie was 2001’s The Cat’s Meow, which despite favorable notices, failed to find an audience and bombed at the box office. Since then, Bogdanovich, who got his start as an actor, has been supplementing his income playing an analyst on HBO’s The Sopranos, as well as helming the occasional TV movie.
During his heyday, Bogdanovich sparked controversy in his personal life after he left his production designer wife, Polly Platt, for then 19-year-old Cybill Shepherd, whom he cast in Picture Show. After that affair ended, he later became the lover of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten before she was brutally murdered in 1980 by her deranged boyfriend.
Bogdanovich next appears on the small screen in a plot reminiscent of another tawdry tabloid tale when he guest-stars as a porn publisher in a ripped-from-the-headline episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent based on the tragic life and death of Anna Nicole Smith, scheduled to air on May 8.