#Paper Moon Is The Road To Movie Heaven, With The Late Peter Bogdanovich As Your Driver

Platt, who was married to Bogdanovich until “The Last Picture Show,” was the production designer and uncredited costume designer for “Paper Moon.” It was she who first recommended both the novel, “Addie Pray” (the source material for “Paper Moon”), and O’Neal for the role of Addie. In the mind’s-eye, in that station wagon, she and Bogdanovich themselves cut a figure like that of Addie and Moze in their jalopy in “Paper Moon.”

Coppola had won the limo in a bet with Paramount Pictures — the studio that almost fired him — when “The Godfather” crossed the $50-million mark at the box office. As the book tells it, he was spritzing champagne and they were driving along the Sunset Strip, singing, “Hooray for Hollywood,” the same song that their contemporary, Robert Altman, used to close “The Long Goodbye.”

The limo and the station wagon pulled up next to each other at a stoplight, and Friedkin stuck his head out of the limo’s sun roof. He started touting his Oscar success and quoting a review of his film, “The French Connection,” which beat Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show” for Best Picture and Director at the 44th Academy Awards.

Bogdanovich, in turn, stuck his head out the window of the station wagon and reciprocated by quoting a review of his own film and its multiple nominations, quipping, “My movie’s better than yours!”

When it comes to “Paper Moon,” he still has bragging rights over most other directors in the class of ’73. To paraphrase a song released the year of “Paper Moon:” “If there’s a Hollywood heaven, well, you know they’ve got a hell of a film crew.” And maybe Bogdanovich has got a director’s chair up there somewhere — or a crescent moon made out of paper — where he’s smiling down on us all.