Dream Traders

The plot of the film takes the viewer to the dawn of cinema, when a young lawyer Leo Harrigan accidentally meets a film producer. And then the proposal of co-authorship is an unthinkable leap in his career. This is followed by the appointment of a director and the shooting of one silent film after another with a small troupe of actors. In the face of fierce competition, the patent office sends Buck Greenaway to sabotage the filming. Upon returning to Los Angeles, the film crew expects a new surprise - film fans.

• Ryan O'Neill - Leo Harrigan
• Burt Reynolds - Buck Greenway
• Tatum O'Neill - Alice Forsyth
• Brian Keith - G. G. Cobb
• Stella Stevens - Marty Reeves
• John Ritter - Franklin Frank
• Jane Hitchcock - Kathleen Cook
• Jack Perkins - Michael Gilhulie
• Brion james - bailiff
• Joe Warfield - Attorney
• Jeffrey Byron - Steve
• Don Kalfa - Waldo
• Frank Marshall - Dinsdale Assistant
• James Best - Jim
• M. Emmett Walsh - “father” Logan
• Miriam Bird-Netheri - Aunt Lula
• Patricia O'Neill - movie fan
• John Finnegan - Director
• Harry Carey Jr. - Finish

• Stage Director: Peter Bogdanovich
• Screenwriters: Peter Bogdanovich , W. D. Richter
• Producers: Robert Chartoff, Frank Marshall , Irwin Winkler
• Operator: Laszlo Kovacs
• Composer: Richard Hazard
• Set Designer: Richard Berger
• Costume Designer: Teador Van Runkle
• Make-up artist: Tom Ellingwood
• Editor: William Carrut
• Sound Engineers: Richard Burrow, Michael Colgan, Kay Rose, Victoria Rose Sampson, Morton Tubor
• Special Effects: Cliff Wanger
• Staging: Hal Needham

1977 - Berlin Film Festival : Golden Bear Award nomination - Peter Bogdanovich

• Orson Welles suggested that Peter Bogdanovich make the film black and white, but the studio rejected this idea. In March 2008, at the retrospective screening of Bogdanovich’s films at the Castro Theater ( San Francisco ), the director premiered a black and white version of the film.
• At the Los Angeles premiere, all guests and some critics paid 5 cents to watch, paying tribute to early Hollywood's pricing

Film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev in his book “3,500 film reviews” writes about the film:

Having shot two unfortunate pictures in the mid-70s, the American director Peter Bogdanovich returned to the favorite topic of old cinema. This time, he not only stylized the image for old films (as in the most famous works of the early 70s - “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon”), but also made the era of the Great Silent, the time of nickelodeons - prototypes the hero of the retro tape movie theaters. That is why the intonation of the story about the first filmmakers, adventurers by nature, people enthusiastic, obsessed, fanatically devoted to their favorite business is imbued with special nostalgia. They seem to revel in the freedom of independent creativity at the dawn of cinema, which at that time was still an attraction, a booth, a kind of buffoonery.

• Nickelodeon at the Internet Movie Database  
• IMDb Awards
• Interesting facts on the IMDb website