Nickelodeon (film)

Nickelodeon is a 1976 comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and stars Ryan ONeal, Burt Reynolds and Tatum ONeal. According to Bogdanovich, the film was based on true stories told to him by silent movie directors Alan Dwan and Raoul Walsh. It was entered into the 27th Berlin International Film Festival.

The film started as a script by W.D. Richter called Stardust Memories which was purchased by Irwin Winkler. Winkler took the project to David Begelman at Columbia, who pursued Bogdanovich as director.He made David come to his office and wait until the receptionist said, Mr. Bogdanovich will see you now. As soon as we came inside, we were very haughtily told that he thought the script was a piece of garbage. Id been around long enough to know that I should take that as a bad sign. I remember coming out of the meeting, saying, David, why should we make the movie with someone who hates our script? And all David said was, Hey, hes a genius.... What he filmed had nothing to do with the original script. I know it meant a lot to Peter to have all of the authentic stories about the silent period in the film, but Ricks script, authentic or not, was terrific. It was just a great drama. By the time Peter was done with it, it was authentic, but it wasnt dramatic anymore. Peter hadnt really experienced any failure yet we hired him before At Long Last Love had come out so he was easily the most arrogant person Id ever met in the business, before or since. When we shot the picture, he actually directed some of the scenes on horseback. When I asked him why he was on horseback, he said, Because thats the way John Ford did it. ........

Source: Wikipedia