Those YouTube clips from a 1971 Dick Cavett Show featuring Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Altman, Mel Brooks and Frank Capra that blogger Dennis Cozzalio posted earlier today were posted last August by UNC Chapel Hill screenwriting instructor Scott Myers. They’re terrific. I was may as well join the crowd.

Wouldn’t it be great if the big-time 1930s directors and stars had sat down for some kind of annual, informal, semi-throughtful chit-chat sessions with a renowned critic of the day, and if someone had caught these sessions on black-and-white film, say? There’s virtually no non-performing informal conversation footage of stars like James Cagney, Rosalind Russell, Carole Lombard, Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Joel McCrea, etc. A taste of how they actually were as themselves in their heyday. The studios kept them away from that kind of expression, of course. But what a shame.