Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon is set around 1910, when moving pictures were a cheap new amusement shown in storefront theatres with live piano accompaniment. Leo Harrigan, an attorney, and Buck Greenway, a hired gun, are sent to shut down an unauthorized film shoot, but instead throw in with the filmmakers and become part of the young industry themselves. Leo discovers a knack for directing, while Buck's cowboy manner turns him into a leading man, and both men fall for the actress Kathleen Cooke, setting up a rivalry between them.

Peter Bogdanovich directed and co-wrote the film with W.D. Richter, and Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff produced it. It followed a run of films Bogdanovich had made in the early 1970s, including The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon, and it was his fifth feature. Ryan O'Neal, who had worked with the director before, plays Leo, with Burt Reynolds as Buck, Tatum O'Neal as Alice Forsyte, Brian Keith as the producer H.H. Cobb, Stella Stevens and John Ritter in support. Around eighty performers are credited.

Released in December 1976, the film cost about nine million dollars. Its reputation is modest: on IMDb it holds 6.2 out of 10 from roughly 3,100 votes, and on TMDB 6.1 from around 58. A critics' rating of 5.1 from 16 reviews is close to those audience figures rather than above them, so neither viewers nor reviewers have rated it among the director's best-remembered work.