But What I Really Want to Do is Direct
On sale
19th November 2026
Price: £24.99
Peter Bogdanovich liked to say “I was born. And then I liked movies.” As a director, he soared to fame, becoming one of Hollywood’s most revered directors of the 1970s, channelling his passion for Golden Age cinema into beloved films such as The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon and becoming a central figure in the New Hollywood movement.
First, however, came his apprentice years as a young New York film critic who took the gamble to move, alongside his wife, the great production designer and producer Pauly Platt, to Hollywood in the last days of the studio system. Here he found an extraordinary assemblage of the great filmmakers, still working (or trying to). Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Renoir: they all befriended the young film obsessive.
But Bogdanovich, determined to make movies of his own, was a young man in a hurry. Based on the journals he kept between 1965 and 1971, this uniquely personal book charts his journey from Hollywood outsider sometimes watching three or four films a day to working filmmaker on the eve of his extraordinary first success. It is a story shot through with later, hard-earned wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of professional ups and downs and personal tragedy. But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct is a remarkable show business memoir with the depth, audacity, and verve of peers like Act One and The Kid Stays in the Picture.
Based on intimate journals and charting his apprentice years leading up the making of his iconic, Oscar-nominated film, The Last Picture Show, it’s a tale of filmmaking excellence, and the ‘once upon a time in Hollywood’ culture thousands still fantasise about to this day.
First, however, came his apprentice years as a young New York film critic who took the gamble to move, alongside his wife, the great production designer and producer Pauly Platt, to Hollywood in the last days of the studio system. Here he found an extraordinary assemblage of the great filmmakers, still working (or trying to). Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Renoir: they all befriended the young film obsessive.
But Bogdanovich, determined to make movies of his own, was a young man in a hurry. Based on the journals he kept between 1965 and 1971, this uniquely personal book charts his journey from Hollywood outsider sometimes watching three or four films a day to working filmmaker on the eve of his extraordinary first success. It is a story shot through with later, hard-earned wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of professional ups and downs and personal tragedy. But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct is a remarkable show business memoir with the depth, audacity, and verve of peers like Act One and The Kid Stays in the Picture.
Based on intimate journals and charting his apprentice years leading up the making of his iconic, Oscar-nominated film, The Last Picture Show, it’s a tale of filmmaking excellence, and the ‘once upon a time in Hollywood’ culture thousands still fantasise about to this day.