Peter Bogdanovich hasn't made a theatrical feature film since 2001's poorly received The Cat's Meow, but The Last Picture Show director has been out and about all this time, tantalizing his fans with the prospect of directing another feature at age 70. Now the fans can rejoice-- Variety is reporting that Bogdanovich will write and direct and adaptation of Kurt Andersen's novel Turn of the Century, a satiric look at New York City at the beginning of the new millennium.
Compared to Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, Turn of the Century is a take on the Manhattan elite set in a slightly alternative universe, in which people work for networks called MBC and Bill Gates may or may not be dead. You can read an excerpt that was published in The New Yorker in 1999 at Andersen's official site. At this point the book is probably a period piece-- pre 9/11, pre-Bush, pre-Hulu-- so it might be even more fascinating for Bogdanovich to tackle. Who doesn't have nostalgia for those halcyon Y2K-fearing days?
