Exclusive: Director Kathryn Ferguson talk new documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes
Now out on Digital Release is the documentary, Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes by director Kathryn Ferguson (Nothing Compares).
BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES is the first official feature documentary to explore the remarkable life and career of Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart. For the first time ever, narrated in Bogart’s own words and using previously unseen archives, letters, and interviews from those closest to him, the film definitively explores the impact of one of the most influential cinematic and cultural icons of all time.
Set against the glitz and glamour of Jazz Age Broadway to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and framed around the five key women in his life – his mother and four wives, including his final marriage to screen icon Lauren Bacall – the film intricately weaves together his most important relationships against a backdrop of world events which defined Bogart's career trajectory.
A nuanced portrait of the man behind the myth, and a fresh perspective on the legacy of one of Hollywood’s most revered stars.
Featured interviews include Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, Dan Seymour, Pat O’Moore, Helen Hayes, Stephen Bogart, Helen Menken, Mary Philips, Mayo Methot, Louise Brooks, and more.
In 2022, Kathryn released her debut feature documentary NOTHING COMPARES - which takes as its subject Sinéad O'Connor's artistry and activism. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 then toured the international festival circuit, where it picked up multiple awards, before hitting cinemas in October 2022.
When you do a story about Bogart, there's so much out there that we didn't really know about the guy outside of what we saw on screen and what you can read on Wikipedia. When you have so much material that you want to focus on, what's the challenge of knowing where to start and where to end?
Kathryn Ferguson: Good question. I suppose what we wanted to do was try to tell a slightly different take on Bogart. I think there's obviously been many docs made about him and there's been obviously a huge interest in him for even the 70 years since he's passed away. So I suppose for me as a female filmmaker particularly, I wanted to make a film that I want to watch. I was very interested in the women in his life that I feel shaped him. So this was the approach that myself and my co-writer Eleanor M. Ditch took when we were first approached about this film.
We wanted to really deep dive into the stories of the women around him and how they shaped his career and life trajectory. When you say shaped, where is that coming from? Is that coming from what you've done research for as far as his relationship with each one of them that made him progress as a person and actor over the years? I think it was just when we started doing the research itself and what became really apparent was that he never had a minute on his own, really. He was never single.
He always had this key relationship with him throughout all of these seismic moments in his life. So we really wanted to find out what that was about. And what became very apparent to us from researching was the key relationship was with his mother, Maud Humphrey, who at the turn of the century in 1899 when Bogart was born, was one of the leading illustrators in the world, one of the most highly paid women for her work in the world and a suffragette.
And for all of her incredible success, I think what Bogart really felt was lacking was nurture from his mother, which then goes on to really affect the rest of his life and his decision-making and his career choices, really, in many ways. So that was the kind of foundation of how we began this.
When you're working with his estate and his son, how much is your vision matching up with what they want? When family gets involved, sometimes they don't want to share too much. How much control did you have as far as, this is what I want to shape out compared with what they wanted you to do?
Kathryn Ferguson: Well, to be honest, we didn't have any nose about anything, which was fantastic. I think after I'd read Stephen and his son's book, I could see that he was very honest about the relationship with his father and his view on his father. So that was a good starting point because I feel like when we did present the approach that we wanted to take, there wasn't any pushback or any shocks really from that side of things. And really we didn't show them what we were doing again until we had a nearly locked edit at the very end of the filmmaking process. So they were very hands-off and very relieved that they're very happy with the film now, which is a big relief.
The biggest thing about any documentary is the editing process, especially when you're mixing in conversations along with footage that you've gotten that we probably haven't seen before. And then it's a matter of like, okay, who gets more attention of the woman that you're exploring? Why her and not the other? Obviously everybody knows about Lauren Bacall and that relationship, but with the previous three, I don't think most folks knew so much unless you're old enough to read stuff. When you're working with the editors, was there a point of what got left out that you wanted in or did you get everything in that you wanted?
Kathryn Ferguson: I think we got everything that we wanted, but I suppose with some of the women, we would have loved more information. The problem is that they had been left as footnotes in history and even trying to find their archives and their histories proved challenging. Someone even like Mary Phillips, his second wife, it was hard to find as much information about her because it just, nobody's kind of kept it safe? And 70 years later, she died. So that was the only frustration was just we would have liked to have had more to be able to create fuller pictures of those women and their lives and relationships. Mick Mahon was the editor on this project.
He also edited my last film about Sinead O'Connor. It was a really enjoyable process trying to work out. The biggest challenge we had was the amount of time. It was really 58 years that we were trying to cover in a one hour, 30 minute documentary. So it was hard to like distill it down so it didn't just feel like it was a rush to the end, but also trying to cover a large chunk of history and social history as well and trying to get all of that element in as well that was relevant to his story.
Was there any aspect of his life as you were putting this together that you found fascinating that you weren't aware of?
Kathryn Ferguson: I think the fact that he worked so hard for 20 years before he got anywhere at all, I find really interesting. I didn't know that about him at all, that he really had to really just pound the pavements for two decades before he was recognized in any way. I also find the fact that he recanted on the Chiang communist witch hunt trials surprising given how steadfast and headstrong he'd been about everything else in his life. I find that bizarre. I think those are the two things that surprised me the most.
People always say the print world is dying and that not enough people are buying books anymore and magazine or newspapers. So all we have now are videos. And if that's the case, what do you want people to get from watching this movie that they can't get from getting a book?
Kathryn Ferguson: There's amazing biogs about them out there. We've read all of them, that they're great. But I think just seeing the living embodiment on screen of these characters, like the candid, I mean, I particularly loved the candid home movies the best, really. Being able to see these like titans of cinema lounging around together at home or on boats and just being able to see behind the kind of veil a little bit, I think is what makes it a nice watch.