Under the direction of Kathryn Ferguson, Humphrey Bogart is back on our screens in the new documentary, Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes. We get a look of never before seen archives of Bogart himself. Most know him for the gem of all films, Casablanca. The film won an Oscar in 1944 for Best Picture.

The Synopsis

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.

I had the opportunity to speak with the filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson to talk about her experience in putting together Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes. She discussed why she chose Bogart’s women in life as part of the structure of the documentary in addition to her experience in getting to go through the archive of a past time and much more!

Nancy Tapia: Well, Kathryn, congratulations on this project because, I don’t know, a lot of times there’s projects. We  feel very fortunate for some. Some, it’s part of the job. But this one I think you were very lucky to cover. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Oh, thank you. Thank you. No, it was a really nice one to work on. It’s great. 

Nancy Tapia: I personally feel lucky to be covering it and speaking to you about it. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Oh, that’s nice. That’s a nice place to start. 

Nancy Tapia: Tell me about directing a documentary that has so much content. There’s so much archive aside from the  ones that were already out in public. You get deep into stuff that no one had seen or heard before. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Yeah, it’s been really interesting. Universal approached me about the project a few years ago after I just  finished a feature documentary about Sinéad O’Connor, and it was a very interesting proposal to think  about really. I didn’t know a huge amount about Bogart prior to being approached about this. I knew a lot  about the Golden Age of Hollywood, but I was always very interested in the women and what happened  to them. So being presented with a project about this icon of 20th century masculinity, it proved to be a  very interesting challenge on how to make a film that I’d want to see. 

So I suppose how I went about it really was trying to, I suppose even just from starting to research into  him and his life. Both myself and my co-writer, Eleanor Emptage, were really struck very quickly by the  incredible women that he had in his life. Starting with his mother Maud, and quite quickly we realized it  was really their story and how they influenced Bogart’s. That was a story that we wanted to explore as  two female filmmakers. 

Nancy Tapia: It all makes sense now. The story starts with the mother, then the wives and how everything starts  shaping. That’s your touch. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Well, I think with this era particularly, so many women have been left as footnotes in history. So it really  felt like this was something that we wanted to explore and bring them back to life and talk about their  stories and who they were. And he’s obviously still considered one of the great titans of cinema that a lot  of the women, Bart, Lauren Bacall have been left behind, so we were really trying to bring them all back. 

Nancy Tapia: Tell me one of the things that surprised you to learn about him as you were doing your research. 

Kathryn Ferguson: I suppose just how long it took him to get anywhere. I think there’s quite an inspirational story in that and  how long it took him to really find love, I think. Both things happened at the same time really. He was in his forties, late forties by the time both things really started to happen for him. And that he’d worked for  20 long years before he really got anywhere as an actor. He’d been working solidly. He had a lot of  tenacity, a really good work ethic in that he just kept going. Even whilst it was obviously proving to be  very slow. I’m sure at points it must have felt like there was no point in continuing with what he was  doing, but he did keep going, and he finally pushed through. But I find that surprising, I didn’t realize he  was as old as he was when things worked out. 

Nancy Tapia: I agree. I think if anything, he’s a bit of an inspiration just to continue trying because you never know  when it’s going to happen. Today, we assume that you need to anything while young. If you start older,  then you think, it’s too late for me. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Yeah, exactly, I think it’s very interesting, that side of his story and just how he just kept going. Maybe  there was nothing else that he could do, but he just kept going. 

Nancy Tapia: Tell me about, do you know why it took so long to bring this documentary? Because I’ve been a fan for a  very long time. I took out these posters, these original lobby cards that I have from their frames, to show  you. Here’s one I have. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Oh, that’s fabulous. 

Nancy Tapia: And of course, I have one of the classics, Casablanca. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Lovely. 

Nancy Tapia: As inspiration, I grew up seeing the Golden Age of Mexico Cinema. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Fabulous. 

Nancy Tapia: Obviously, I grew up here, so then I was curious about Hollywood, and he’s one of the reasons why I  love entertainment so much also. 

Kathryn Ferguson: That’s really interesting. His influence and legacy seems to be very widespread. I think that’s how he’s  managed to keep his place in Hollywood history 70 years after he’s passed. It’s incredible that people are  still interested in him after all these years.

Nancy Tapia: Tell me a little bit about how the kids, not so kids, were also involved in making this happen. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Yeah, no, it was super great. Basically, it was actually before I got involved, but I think Universal had  been speaking to the kids for a while and convinced them to make this film really about their dad. Then  when I was brought in, I got to meet Stephen (Humphrey Bogart) and Leslie (Howard Bogart) and talk to both of them. I think they have just  been keen for something to be made that is more of a contemporary take on their dad, and maybe through  a slightly different lens. So they were very supportive and involved. Got to interview Stephen multiple  times, and both of the kids gave us access to their archives, which was really phenomenal to actually get  to see. 

Nancy Tapia: As you were looking at the archives, what was your feeling? At any moment, did you feel like you were  being transported into another time? 

Kathryn Ferguson: Yeah, I think even just looking at the photography alone, it’s such a different time. And just seeing the  glamour and I don’t know, just everything was so much more. I think there definitely were points when  we were deep in archive where, I’d also grown up being a massive fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood,  and I’d watched lots of classic Hollywood films with my mother on rainy Sundays in Ireland growing up  in the ’80s. There was just something very comforting about being transported back into that amazing  landscape of that era. It’s brilliant. 

Nancy Tapia: I thought it was interesting that you also brought up not only the wives, but the mother. She was a big  foundation. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Huge foundation. Yeah, huge foundation and a huge wound, I would say actually. Maud, we love Maud (Humphrey).  We think she’s incredible. She was obviously one of the highest paid illustrators in the world when Bogart  was born in 1899 and a leading suffragette in New York. The work she was doing was phenomenal, and  for a woman of that era, it’s quite remarkable. But it appears what she wasn’t also able to do was nurture  him in the way that he needed to be nurtured. And we feel like it just created this wound that then, I don’t  know, shaped the trajectory of the rest of his life, his love life, and even his career. Everything. 

She certainly just made such an impact on him, and he seems to seek out very ambitious women like her.  But then really wants and needs to be nurtured by them, but isn’t able to gain that from many of their  relationships. Until he meets Lauren when he’s much older. But I feel like that’s certainly why so many of his  relationship choices mirror the relationship he had with his mother. 

Nancy Tapia: The part of where you have Lauren Bacall, that you’re telling that story, I loved it. It was just like that fairy tale,  that perfect fairy tale section of it. How much fun did you have in putting that together? Did you find  yourself having to make it shorter because it was just beautiful? Beautiful story. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Do you mean the wedding part?

Nancy Tapia: Yeah. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Yeah, just seeing their joy together was a lovely place to be in in our edits at that point. Because  obviously there’s a problematic age gap as well, which we were very conscious of and didn’t want to shy  away from. But I think very much the proof is in the pudding, and their relationship is in that they did  really love each other, and they did have a very solid relationship and family as a result of them coming  together. But being able to put the footage together was a really nice part in it, especially after the slightly  more problematic and worrying sections that lead up to it. 

Nancy Tapia: If you have extra footage of that that you had to cut, I think that should be included in this format because  you got to show us everything. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Yes, yes, that would be. 

Nancy Tapia: So what do you hope the young viewers that were not familiar take away from watching this  documentary? 

Kathryn Ferguson: I suppose it’s a profile on one of these icons of 20th-century American masculinity. I suppose what we  tried to do with it is obviously show him and his place in cinema’s history, but really try to tell his story  through the lens of these women’s stories. I hope what it does, in many ways, is show how different it was  for men and women during that whole era. Really, all of the women, even Lauren in some respects,  weren’t treated particularly well by the system at any stage. 

And I suppose what we’ve continually tried to show is really their stories and how tough it was trying to  work in the entertainment business. And of course, it still is, but particularly during that century, it was  rough from Helen Menken and The Captive and pretty much being canceled because she played a lesbian,  through to Mayo Methot and the Hays Code and how her rules were just completely abolished overnight  because they were just deemed too raunchy or showing women in control or having any sort of autonomy  was deemed too risky. So that was instantly changed, and her career was ruined. 

Even with Lauren’s, where she was again told by the studio, “You have to do this, you have to do that,”  and making bad choices for her. I don’t know, I suppose it’s just trying to show the gender gap in many  ways, how his career kept going and his trajectory got more and more applauded and revered as all of  these women, their careers fell away. I suppose I would hope young audiences might think about that a  little bit. It’s certainly something that we know about. We know that Hollywood isn’t a great place for  women, but I suppose it’s a reminder of its origins and where it all started. 

Nancy Tapia: Well, thank you so much for your time. Congratulations. And you said you love Golden Age of Cinema,  so I don’t know if you’ve seen him, but Gustavo Dudamel, he’s a wonderful conductor. Last month I attended the Walt Disney Hall to see him and had Robert Rodriguez (Kill Bill) hosting From Mexico to  Hollywood. Casablanca was the ending, and it was so perfect for that, so you would get a taste of both  worlds of the Golden Age of Cinema.

Kathryn Ferguson: I’ll have to look that up. That sounds beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, no, I’d love to see it. 

Nancy Tapia: I cried, I recommend it. 

Kathryn Ferguson: Fabulous. I’ll check it out. Definitely. That sounds amazing. Thank you for your time. 

Nancy Tapia: You’re welcome. Thank you and congratulations.

Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes is now available On Digital

Source: LRMExclusive, Freestyle Digital Media