Peter Bogdanovich was perhaps that rare breed of director who was actually better as a result of starting out as a film critic (whereas Quentin Tarantino seemed to start out as a screenwriter who really just wanted to be a film critic). And since he moved to Los Angeles during a period when the industry could still be “broken into” by sheer happenstance, it was that kind of fortuitousness that led him to striking up a conversation with “Pope of Pop Cinema” Roger Corman while at a movie premiere screening. Before he knew it, he was working on a Corman-produced movie called Targets (this was after Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women) and learning about the slapdash process of filmmaking firsthand instead of just critiquing it.
With his first proper debut, The Last Picture Show, Bogdanovich revealed that his reverence for cinema history had paid off with Howard Hawks’ Red River as a noticeable influence, as well as Orson Welles’ (his then live-in guest) advice to Bogdanovich that filming in black and white was the right choice. And when the director of your favorite movie of all-time (Citizen Kane, obviously) tells you to do something, you do it.
He followed up the success of The Last Picture Show quickly with the unlikely What’s Up, Doc?, wherein Bogdanovich further showcased his aptitude for incorporating cinema’s past into the present via the screwball comedy genre, with Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday being major influences on this particular script.
It was his third “proper” feature after What’s Up, Doc? (which co-starred none other than Ryan O’Neal), however, that really cemented Bogdanovich as an auteur with the distinct ability to wield his superpower of cinema knowledge into his own movies. 1973’s Paper Moon (based on Joe David Brown’s Addie Pray) would not only establish Tatum O’Neal as the youngest actor ever to win an Academy Award, but it would also de-stigmatize the plotline of a “sort of” father figure and a young girl traveling the country together in a car, sometimes on the run from the law. Yes, taken out of context, it could easily dupe one into believing that it’s the plot of Lolita, which came out in Stanley Kubrick’s film form just over ten years prior to Paper Moon. And so, whether he meant to or not, Bogdanovich seemed determined to make the “anti-Lolita.”
Who knows? Maybe some part of him wanted to “untaint” the father-daughter dynamic that Nabokov had caused, even if Humbert Humbert wasn’t “technically” Lolita’s father. Just like Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) might not “technically” be Addie Loggins’ “pa”—to use the parlance of the 30s (during which the film is set) in referring to one’s father. Nonetheless, Addie wants to con him into thinking this is probably the case so as to avoid being dropped off in Saint Joseph, Missouri at her aunt’s house (she being the sole “blood relation” left after Addie’s mother dies in a car accident). And since she is so good at running a con, maybe she is his daughter. After all, that’s his “profession” as well. Largely relying on a grift that involves showing up to widows’ doors (after perusing the obituary section) with a bible and claiming their husband ordered one just before he died with her name engraved on it. But oh, he didn’t yet pay for the thing so maybe his wife would like to? It’s a good gambit, but ultimately small-time as far as big-minded Addie is concerned (she’ll eventually set her sights on bootlegging money).
In this regard, Addie is similar to Lolita in that she plays the “innocent” card when it suits her child’s guise. But, ultimately, she knows exactly what she’s doing (at least, if we’re to go by Humbert’s perspective, even if frequently cast as the unreliable narrator). Unlike Lolita, however, she seems more concerned with keeping her “Daddy” to herself. Which is why she hatches a plan to ditch the “exotic dancer” (at a carnival)/prostitute named Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn) that Moses has invited to join on their road trip. Along with Trixie’s “maid,” Imogene (P.J. Johnson), who proves instrumental in aiding Addie’s plan to get Moses to see Trixie for the “harlot” she is, only out for the cash (which is why she already convinced Moses to spend so much of the earnings he’d made with Addie). Her awareness of the sexual depravities of adults and the ways in which they fall so easily into carnal temptation is, in addition to smoking cigarettes, part of what makes Addie seem as mature as Lolita.
In the end, though, she’s just a girl seeking a father figure who will lavish her with his approval. That Lolita got an excess of “approval,” if you take one’s meaning, is what completely fucked her up in an opposite sort of way. But Addie will be emotionally damaged (though at least not physically, like Lolita) as well. If we were to flash forward in Addie’s future as we do in Lolita’s, we would likely see the same fate that befell Tatum and Ryan O’Neal’s relationship in real life.
“When you grow up, don’t you be the kind of woman who goes around deceiving men,” Moses tells Addie after he catches Trixie in flagrante delicto. She assures, “I promise, Moze,” seemingly unaware that this is precisely the type of woman Moses is “training” her to be through his own con job examples. Lolita, in contrast, was never that kind of girl. It’s just that Humbert painted her out to be that way from his pedophile’s perspective, in desperate need of making her more “adult” than she actually was to justify his own perversions.
In a certain sense, too, Moses is “adultify-ing” (not quite the same as parentification) a child who, at her core, doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about. She’s just along for the ride until, perhaps, something (or someone) better comes along. Of course, he never does. Instead, the likes of Lolita and Addie will both just spend the rest of their lives unearthing one cad after the next, her “Daddy” having already set the precedent. Hence, sometimes no father is actually preferable to a “kind of” father.
