THE LAST PICTURE SHOW 1971

Some films adapted from books play much better when you've read the novel first (Doctor Zhivago, The Great Gatsby, The Day of the Locust); others are such vast improvements over their source material that reading the book after seeing the film can feel recessive at best (The Godfather, That Cold Day in The Park). Then there are those films so faithful to their origins that book and motion picture serve to both compliment and illuminate one another (Women in Love, A Room With A View); and, of course, there are the movies that deviate so significantly from the books upon which they’re based that it’s best to regard them as distinct, isolated entities (The Shining, A Place in the Sun). In the case of The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich’s sweetly evocative film of Larry McMurtry’s 1966 novel, it’s one of the rare movie adaptations to succeed in capturing the power and poetry of the written word in terms wholly and eloquently cinematic (Roman Polanski accomplished much the same in adapting Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby).

Timothy Bottoms as Sonny Crawford

Jeff Bridges as Duane Jackson

Cybill Shepherd as Jacy Farrow

Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion

Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper

Ellen Burstyn as Lois Farrow

A slice-of-life allegory of loss and passage as reflected in the lives of the residents of a small, dying, Texas oil town in the early 1950s, The Last Picture Show benefits from having McMurtry adapt his own semi-autobiographical novel for the screen. It's a sensitively-written contemplation on a place and time that resonates with subtle details of dialog and character only possible from experience (McMurtry wrote about his hometown of Archer, Texas, the very town Bogdanovich uses in the film. Fictionalized and renamed Thalia, Texas in the book, the town [whose largest export seems to be dust] is called Anarene in the film). Still, it’s Bogdanovich’s touches, both technical and in the handling of his cast of newcomers and veterans, that really makes the film for me, and why, when I saw it for the first time on TCM back in 2008 as part of a month-long salute to Academy Award winning films, I instantly fell in love with it.

As Genevieve Morgan, the waitress in the town's only diner, Eileen Brennan gives a sublimely understated performance 

Let me tell you, it’s really out of character for me to have waited so long to see a film considered by many to be one of the seminal motion pictures of the 70s (especially since I absolutely adore Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon), but I had my reasons. The Last Picture Show and the hazily sentimental The Summer of ’42 were both released in 1971, kicking off the decade’s pop-culture fascination with all things nostalgic. I was 14 years-old at the time, and as an African-American youth inspired by the emerging prominence of black actors on the screen and excited about the upsurge in positive depictions of African-American life in movies of the 70s, these retro films, with their all-white casts and dreamy idealization of a time in America’s past that was in all probability a living nightmare for my parents and grandparents, felt like a step in the wrong direction. The antennae of my adolescent cynicism told me that all this rear-view fetishism was just Hollywood’s way of avoiding the unwieldy game-change presented by the demand for more ethnic diversity onscreen, the evolving role of women in society, the increasing visibility gays, and the touchy topic of America and the Vietnam War.

The Royal Theater in desolate Anarene, Texas

Finding little of what I consider either heroic or noble in the mythology of the American West, I was at a loss to imagine what I could possibly find poignant in a film I perceived as attempting to mourn and mythologize the passing of an era that symbolized hatred and ignorance for me more than it did simplicity and lost innocence. (In her 2007 memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself, actress Ellen Burstyn recounts that even as late as 1970,  the racist harassment of local blacks was something of a recreational pastime engaged in by some of the idle white youths of Archer, Texas hired as extras during the filming of The Last Picture Show.) 

Jumping ahead some thirty-some years later, I’m glad I waited so long to see The Last Picture Show. Why? Well, for one, enough time had passed for me to be able to view the film in a context independent of the year in which it was made. No longer being an impatient youngster annoyed at the concept of a film looking back when there were so many “now” stories that needed telling, I had a different perspective on the subjectivity of a certain kind of nostalgia and a more expansive concept of the human condition. I found that there is something valuable and personally enriching in being able to find the shared commonality in people and lives that have no relation to my own.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Ironic, given how much my distaste for sentimental nostalgia played a part in avoiding The Last Picture Show for so long, but one of the things I most like about the film is how unidealistically perceptive a vision of small-town life it is. As dramatized in the cross-cutting lives of the town’s aimless high-schoolers (pals Sonny, Duane, and dreamgirl, Jacy) and the largely dissatisfied elder populace (town father-figure Sam the Lion and neglected housewives Lois and Ruth), nostalgia features in the narrative chiefly as heartache and regret. Not necessarily for the way things used to be, but for the loss of even the illusory dreams and hopes that are a part of being young. In many gently insightful ways The Last Picture Show actually contrasts the idealized images we hold of 50s life with a naturalistic look at Americana that proves very effective and surprisingly moving. It amuses me to think I avoided The Last Picture Show for so long because I thought it sentimentalized the past. The truth is, The Last Picture Show is the absolute antithesis of The Summer of ‘42’s brand of soft-focus wistfulness and I consider it one of the finest films to come out of the 70s.

The film's moral and mythical core is personified in the paternal figure of Sam the Lion, a dying breed of decency among the ethically-adrift denizens of Anarene, Texas.

PERFORMANCES:

I can’t say enough about the caliber of performances Peter Bogdanovich was able to elicit from his remarkable ensemble-cast. Each player brings such a wealth of depth and feeling to their portrayals that the film’s languid look at a year in the life of a sleepy Texas town has a strange, sad poetry about it. Life seems to be moving on without even a passing glance at this dusty little burg.

Cybill Shepherd, a near-insufferable presence during the 70s in everything save Taxi Driver, gives the performance of her career as the guilelessly destructive, small-town beauty, Jacy Farrow. Far from being the usual one-note misogynist nightmare of unattainable beauty, Sheperd's Jacy is one of the most insightful depictions of quiet desperation in females I've ever seen. Denied access to avenues of expression for the same youthful restlessness allowed the young males of the town, Jacy learns (not always successfully) that her beauty is the only power and hope she has to change her life. The clumsy wielding of that power renders her more hurtful than even she is aware, but I love that the film seems to understand her and finds no more fault in her shortcomings than it does the equally lost male characters. In viewing the film, I have the sense that every single move, gesture, and intonation has been orchestrated by Bogdanovich (as is rumored of Tatum O’Neal’s Oscar-winning turn in Paper Moon) but when the result is a performance of such dimension and humor, I really don’t care. She’s marvelous.

Ruth, the lonely wife of the town's high-school coach has a transformative affair with high-school senior, Sonny

Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, and especially Cloris Leachman...they all give remarkable, laudable performances. But for me, Timothy Bottoms is the one who really makes The Last Picture Show work. Saddled with the requisite (and reactive) “sensitive youth” in a coming-of-age film, his performance is something of a revelation. How he manages to so movingly portray a character at once searching, naïve, perceptive, and unsure, while never once leaving in doubt what is going on internally is miraculous. Especially considering he was just nineteen at the time. I just assumed and took it for granted that Bottoms was among the eight Oscar nominations the film garnered. I was shocked to see that he was overlooked and Bridges (good, but less impressive to me) nominated.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

As I’m wont to do when viewing American films made before our current age of cinematic puerility; I find myself somewhat flabbergasted at how adult mainstream films were in the 70s. And by adult I merely mean mature.  There’s a considerable amount of nudity, sex, and profanity in The Last Picture Show, and while it had its censorship battles in the past (it was banned in Arizona in 1973), what I find most shocking about seeing it today is its total lack of prurience. 

Rich Kid Morality
The casual sexuality of Anarene's moneyed set is highlighted in this comically daring sequence where Jacy and her date Lester Marlow (Randy Quid) are guests at a nude swimming party (the naked backside belongs to Gary Brockette)

There’s an welcome bluntness to the way sex is presented and spoke of in the film, a tone intentionally presented in contrast to the film’s nostalgia-evoking cinematography. A film that dares expose the amoral, sexual hypocrisy of America’s Bible-thumping, “Traditional Family Values” set is a winner in my book from the get-go, but Peter Bogdanovich’s wholly appropriate, matter-of-fact depiction of it all feels trail-blazing and unimaginable today. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I was inspired to re-watch The Last Picture Show (I hadn't seen it in well over two years) due to having only last week read Larry McMurty’s beautifully written novel (love those used bookstores!). While the book is richer in fleshing out characterization and narrative detail, it’s a testament to Bogdanovich’s talent how extraordinarily the film succeeds in meeting McMurty’s descriptive prose with equally evocative imagery.

Bogdanovich cast Timothy Bottom's real-life younger brother Sam (in the cap) as Sonny's friend, Billy, an orphaned mute teen unofficially adopted by Sam the Lion.

And on the topic of Peter Bogdanovich, I wish someday someone would make a film or write a book about his life. He fascinates me. Footage of him from the 70s reveals him to be a well-spoken and charming young man of almost intolerable arrogance and self-assuredness (his laid-back demeanor, where words rather than being spoken seem to instead  ooze from his lips, reminds me of Rex Reed). A perfect candidate for the kind of hubris-based, fall-from-glory Hollywood thrives on, Bogdanovich is both everything that was good and lamentable about those glorious “New Hollywood” years.

My Own Private Last Picture Show 
This is a picture of me from 1997 in front of The Sierra Theater, the sole movie house in the small town of Chowchilla, California, the hometown of my partner (his father worked there as a teen!). The theater was built in 1941 and had been shuttered and abandoned since the mid or late 70s. The theater was still standing as late as the year 2001, but has since been torn down. 

Jan. 6, 2013 addendum
I loved Larry McMurty's 1966 novel The Last Picture Show so much that when I found a hardback copy of the 1987 sequel, Texasville, at a used bookstore, I snapped it up. Well, I just finished reading it and can only say that until now, I thought Son of Rosemary, Ira Levin's 1997 sequel to Rosemary's Baby, was the most disheartening example of an author desecrating his own work (maybe it has to do with authors falling in love with the actresses cast as their heroines. Levin dedicated his sequel to Mia Farrow- McMurtry to Cybil Shepherd).
What the hell happened??? Not only did I find it and interminable and self-consciously arch mess, (not to mention repetitious)  but its focus is Duane, the character even Peter Bogdanovich said was difficult to cast because he was essentially so unlikable. All the main characters are abhorrent or unpleasant, and all the sympathetic ones (Sonny and Ruth) have been shunted to the sidelines. I suppose it can be said the virtually unwatchable 1990 film Bogdanovich made from this chore-to-read mishmash is faithful, for I loathed it with equal vehemence.
Sadly, I purchased the third novel in McMurtry's continuing Thalia, Texas opus, Duane's Depressed at the same time I bought Texasville. I think I'll be donating that book to charity, unread.

Copyright © Ken Anderson