ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE 1974

Given how so many of my favorite movies are films I first saw while working as an usher at San Francisco’s Alhambra Theater on Polk Street (it still stands, currently a Crunch gym), it's no wonder that I tend to look back upon my high school years working there as my preparatory film school education (after graduation I studied film at The San Francisco Art Institute).

The Alhambra was a beautiful, ornate, old-fashioned first-run theater (until they split it into two), but as it was considered the neighborhood sister-theater to the ritzier, high-end Regency Theater on Sutter, it was the custom for the Alhambra to be assigned the low-budget and independent first-run films. Thus, it was something of a fluke when the Alhambra was chosen as the site of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore's exclusive San Francisco engagement in February of 1975 (the post-Christmas "dog days" of movie exhibition) and proved to be the breakout hit of the new year.

Ellen Burstyn was popular after her Oscar-nominated turn in The Exorcist (1973), but female-driven narratives were still so rare in the male-centric '70s that Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was given a limited release in urban markets to test its appeal (it played in Los Angles a full month before opening in San Francisco). Neither Martin Scorsese nor rock-star-turned-actor Kris Kristofferson had what you'd call marquee names at the time, so expectations for the film were modest, and advance publicity minimal.

Ellen Burstyn as Alice Hyatt

Kris Kristofferson as David

Diane Ladd as Flo

Alfred Lutter as Tommy Hyatt

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore—the story of a newly widowed housewife (Burstyn) who sets off on the road with her 12-year-old son to become a singer in Monterey, California—from a marketing angle, didn't have much in the way of publicity bait (no hookers, no gunplay, no nudity, no car chases), yet I recall it as being the biggest film to play the Alhambra during my time there. As one of those films that opens slowly, only to boom practically overnight, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore had sold-out screenings and lines stretching around the corner for nearly the entirety of its exclusive engagement. Patrons came back to see the film two and three times, almost always with someone new in tow to whom they'd recommended it. I had never seen anything like it. A true word-of-mouth hit. And what amazed me even more was the high volume of elderly people this film attracted. For some reason (the film's nostalgic tone, perhaps), older audiences—a market largely ignored by the youth films of the day—absolutely flocked to this movie! Sunday matinees looked like an AARP convention.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow...with a really foul mouth
Mia Bendixson portrays 8-year-old Alice in the Wizard of Oz-inspired opening sequence

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There are several books, online articles, and even a DVD commentary detailing the significant role Ellen Burstyn played in getting Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore made. Aside from the almost mythic appeal of the story (a feminist collaborates with a famously male-centric director to make a film considered by many to be the quintessential cinematic articulation of the '70s women’s movement), what comes through strongest is the passion and commitment of everyone involved.

The family that prays together is still pretty screwed up
In an effort to move the plot forward and get Alice on the road as quickly as possible, several scenes that would have fleshed out the character of Alice's husband, Donald (Billy Green Bush) had to be cut. 

Martin Scorsese speaks of having the foreknowledge of the studio expecting him to turn out a genre film—a romantic comedy with a happy ending—yet he and Burstyn turn in a film of such unexpected freshness, I still find myself dazzled by it. Its characters, settings, dialogue, and character-based humor felt so refreshingly personal, so original, and so surprising. Scorsese succeeds in creating a '70s revisionist take on the '40s woman's picture, something he endeavored (with considerably less success) with the '40s musical genre when he made New York, New York in 1977. Now there's a film that could have benefited from Ellen Burstyn's level-headed feminine perspective. 

I'd never seen an onscreen mother/son relationship like the one Alice and Tommy share

Scorsese’s fluid visual style gives the film a gritty kind of grace, while his laser-sharp editing has a way of turning simple cuts into clever visual punchlines. The performances are uniformly first-rate (I have a particular fondness for the sweetly oddball waitress, Vera. I always wanted to know more about her character's life), and the very funny screenplay never scarifies character or theme for an easy laugh. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is one of my enduring favorites from the 1970s. 

As Alice's best friend Bea, actress Lelia Goldoni (so memorable in John Cassavetes' 1959 film Shadows) doesn't have a lot of screen time, but I always remember how touchingly real her character's relationship with Alice felt. Only in later years did I learn of Burstyn's and Goldoni's lengthy real-life friendship.

PERFORMANCES 

True to the axiom that comedy never gets any respect, whenever I think about my favorite film performances by an actress in the '70s, my mind goes straight to Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses,Don’t They? and Klute, Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, Karen Black in The Day of the Locust, or Glenda Jackson in anything. I always overlook the absolutely astonishing job Ellen Burstyn does in bringing the character of Alice Hyatt to life. I thought so in 1974, and looking at the film again after so many years, it still stands out as such a thoroughly realized performance. And by that, I mean Burstyn makes Alice Hyatt so authentic an individual, you honestly feel as though you have been observing a real person, not a fictional character. She is no male fantasy construct. She's not even a Women's Lib figurehead; she only seemed so when compared to the type of degrading roles being offered women during the '70s.

Smart Women / Foolish Choices
As  Ben Eberhart, Scorsese stalwart Harvey Keitel gives a chilling portrait of the kind of courtly gentility that often masks a dominating nature. One of the many things I like about Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is how, in presenting a woman's point of view, it doesn't take the easy route of vilifying men. Instead, it explores why some women are drawn to a kind of archaic definition of masculinity that can lead to abusive relationships. I love the scene where Alice tells David how she was drawn to her husband's bossiness ("Yes, master!" she says, mocking her own passivity) and how she initially liked that he forbade her to have a career, admitting that his oppressiveness was, "My idea of a man...strong and dominating."

The depth of Burstyn's performance has the effect of fulfilling what the premise of the film promises: an ordinary woman is revealed to be remarkable by sheer force of her humanity. Alice goes from being someone's wife and mother to being the standout heroine of her own life. And it's the talent of Ellen Burstyn, giving an Academy Award-winning performance, that makes it happen.

The Academy got it right in awarding Burstyn the Best Actress Oscar, but seriously dropped the ball with the terrific Diane Ladd. Her folksy waitress, Flo, is one of the screen's great character performances. By the way, back when I was a movie usher, Flo's frustrated outburst: "She went to shit and the hogs ate her!" got the longest, loudest laugh I'd ever heard in a movie theater, yet it was also the single moment in the film I was most questioned about by departing patrons. It seemed like every third person came up to me after a screening asking, "What did that waitress say?" Apparently, folks were only able to make out the word "shit" and that (along with Ladd's explosive tone and body language) was sufficient for the scene to work.
When I told them what she'd actually said, their faces almost always registered bewilderment. Like me, not a single individual was familiar with the old saying (referring to someone who should be working but keeps disappearing), plus, I think most people's imaginations had conjured up something far funnier and vulgar, so finding out what was really said inevitably came as something of a letdown. 

11-year-old Jodie Foster, two years before her explosive Oscar-nominated performance in Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Another question I was often asked by patrons was whether Jodie Foster was a boy or a girl. This despite the fact that her character's name is Audrey and is shown wearing a dress in her last scene.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In spite of it being a somewhat troublesome film genre with a built-in anecdotal construct that frequently leads to directors being unable to arrive at or maintain a consistent tone, I like road movies a great deal (a personal unsung favorite being the quirky Rafferty & the Gold Dust Twins – 1974). Like most road movies, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore has a literal road trip serve as a “journey of life/path of growth” metaphor, but in this instance, the cliché feels fresh because Alice’s story—a woman approaching middle age forced to confront life as a single mother—isn't the kind Hollywood has been falling over itself in an effort to tell.

Uncharted Territory
Stars Wars wouldn't premiere until some three years later, but to 1974 audiences, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore - a movie about a 35-year-old woman, told from her perspective - was a visit to a world as remote as any galaxy far, far away.

Scorsese, Burstyn, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert Getchell (one of the many writers involved in wresting Mommie Dearest to the screen) fashion an engagingly contemporary Alice in Wonderland liberation allegory out of Alice Hyatt’s automobile pilgrimage to, as one writer astutely put it, the Monterey of her mind. Whereas most road films tend to run out of steam somewhere around the midpoint, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore grows increasingly funnier and more emotionally substantial as it goes along. I love the opening scenes in Socorro, New Mexico; the hilarious moments on the road that delineate Alice's unique relationship with her son; and the scenes highlighting Alice's early employment efforts or the ones that show her navigating the choppy waters of dating. But my favorite section—where the film fully hits its comedic stride—are the latter scenes of the film that take place in Tucson, Arizona. Specifically those within Mel & Ruby's Diner.

Being at turns funny, gritty, touching, dramatic, and very sweet, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is a movie that covers a great deal of ground. But throughout, the film somehow sustains that amazingly delicate balance of being true to its genre conventions while still being a solid character drama focusing on people we come to really know and care a great deal about. Best of all, it gives us a story of an individual's journey of self-discovery that is also one of the most well-rounded, dimensional portraits of a woman ever committed to film.

The depiction of the friendship that develops between the superficially dissimilar Alice and Flo is one of the best things in the film

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

A lot has been written about Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’s somewhat problematic ending. An ending (two, actually, if you count the brief coda after the diner scene) suggesting Alice, after finding the love of a good man (a ranch-owning, dreamboat of an eligible bachelor who also happens to be the only guy for miles around who doesn't look like an extra from Hee Haw) is going to table her dream of going to Monterey. This Warner Bros-mandated ending proved a real crowd-pleaser with '70s audiences growing weary of all that New Hollywood nihilism, thus making Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore one of the top-grossing films of 1974. And while many welcomed the change of pace that an old-fashioned Hollywood happy ending presented, others were dismayed by the extent to which the chosen ending conflicted with—if not outright contradicted—much of what preceded it. 

Had Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore been just one of many films made during the '70s that told a story from a woman’s point of view, audiences would likely have accepted the ending as being merely a choice suitable for this particular character (after all, as the honey-tones of the opening sequence imply, Alice’s memories of her life in Monterey are likely as idealized as the scope of her early singing career). But being that the vast majority of roles available to women in the '70s could be typified by Karen Black’s catalog of supportively deferential, frequently-abandoned trollops, a disproportionate amount of feminist significance was therefore placed on Alice Hyatt and her personal journey of self-discovery.

That's 6-year-old Laura Dern (daughter of Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern) listening in on Alice and David's conversation

As is my wont, I’m of several minds about the ending.

a) From a movie buff’s perspective, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore’s ending feels like a perfect full circle for a film that begins with a title sequence (cursive lettering on satin) that references the tropes and clichés of the women’s film genre of the '40s. Happy endings were a big part of what many of those 1940's films were about, so thematically, it makes a lot of sense for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore to end with what could be described as an updated take on the standard Hollywood happy ending. 

b) From a character-based perspective, I think it’s possible to look upon Alice’s dream of returning to Monterey as a romanticized fantasy…a retreat to childhood, if you will…that she clings to in the midst of an unhappy marriage. In this light, her ultimate decision to be with Donald and remain in Tucson (“If I’m gonna be a singer I can be a singer anywhere, right?”) indicates a newfound maturity and personal growth on her part. She’s gained the ability to find happiness in her life as it is lived in the present, not by trying to return to an idealized happier time in her past.

c) It’s only when I look at the film from an ideological or sociological perspective that I have a problem with the ending. And that’s largely the film’s fault for establishing such a compelling narrative trajectory. One that takes us from the words of Alice’s friend Bea at the start of the film: “Well, I sure couldn’t live without some kind of man around the house, and neither could you.”; to Alice’s declaration near the end: “It’s my life! It’s not some man’s life I’m here to help him out with!”

So many '70s films ended with the male protagonist leaving behind a girlfriend or wife in order to find themselves (think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces), that it virtually became a cliché. In each instance, the ending is presented as a happy and necessary step toward independence and self-growth. Given how Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore sets itself up as a challenge to the long-held belief that a woman’s life has little to no value without a man, who can be blamed for wishing this brilliant film had ended with a repudiation of that persistent myth?

In an early draft of the screenplay, the diner sequence was to be followed by (and the film end with) a close-up of Alice's hands playing the piano. The tight framing of the shot providing an ambiguous coda, as it is not apparent whether she's playing piano in a bar in Monterey, or in the living room of David's house—we just know that Alice didn't stop singing. Since this footage is used in the sidebar of the film's closing credits, I'd like to think that Alice did indeed become a professional singer...perhaps somewhere in Tucson where she made a happy life for herself with Tommy and David. (Best of all, this allows Flo to remain her new best friend. Now, that's what I would call a happy ending.)

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

THE EXORCIST 1973

I remember first becoming aware of William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist in 1971 when I saw an actress talking about it on The Merv Griffin Show. As hard as it is to imagine now, the average person in the '70s didn't know what an exorcist was, so Griffin initially (and perhaps intentionally) misheard the title and thought the actress was talking about a fitness book. Upon hearing what a terrifying read it was, coupled with the inevitable comparisons to that longtime fave of mine, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby – the most high-profile Devil vs. Catholicism novel to date – I went to the library and was put on a long waiting list to get The Exorcist.

Before the shot of Father Merrin standing under the streetlamp became an iconic touchstone, the image of an open bedroom window with the drapes blowing outward was the primary advertising image for The Exorcist

In 1971 I was just a freshman at Saint Mary’s Catholic High School in Berkeley, California. And while devout at the time, I wasn't quite the same religiously impressionable Catholic School kid who was traumatized by Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. As a novel, I thought The Exorcist revelled a little too much in detailing the grotesqueries of demonic possession for me to take it as the serious discourse on the eternal battle between Christian faith and evil its author purported it to be, but it did grab me as one of the singularly most gripping and harrowing horror novels I'd ever read. What a page-turner! It was scary, emotionally credible, and rooted in a theological world I was familiar with. I'd never read anything quite like it, and I couldn't put it down.
When the film adaptation of The Exorcist came out on the day after Christmas (!) in 1973—with much advance fanfare but very little in the way of actual "How are they going to make a movie of THAT book?" details—I was somehow successful in persuading my entire family to go to San Francisco's Northpoint Theater (where it played for six months...an unheard-of run today) to see it before news and reviews gave too much info away. After waiting in a reasonable-sized line to get in (the very last time lines would ever be that small for most of the film's run), my family and I all had the supreme pleasure of having the holy crap scared out of us in stereophonic sound. Seasons Greetings!

Ellen Bursty as Chris MacNeil

Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil

Max von Sydow as Father Lankester Merrin

Jason Miller as Damian Karras

Lee J. Cobb as Lt. William Kinderman

When we saw The Exorcist, Mike Oldfield’s eerie “Tubular Bells” theme was in heavy rotation on the radio under the title: The Theme from ‘The Exorcist, and advance word had it that people were passing out, vomiting, and being carried out of theaters in hysterics in reaction to the unprecedented horror of what transpired onscreen. Anticipation was so high and lines for the movie were so long that people were even passing out before getting into the theater. 

Where we lucked out is that we saw The Exorcist right away, while people were still away on Christmas holiday, before the film went into wide release, and before word-of-mouth spread and mass hysteria set in. Few people remember it, but The Exorcist was really the dark horse release of 1973. The really heavily anticipated films that Christmas season were Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in the prison escape film Papillon; Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force, the sequel to the hugely popular Dirty Harry (1971); and The Sting - a comedy (and thus the most holiday-friendly release of those listed) which marked the much-anticipated re-teaming of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid’s Paul Newman and Robert Redford. 

Jack MacGowran as Burke Dennings
The character actor, familiar to fans of Roman Polanski by his appearances in the films Cul-De-Sac and The Fearless Vampire Killers, died not long after completing work on The Exorcist. His death at age 54 (from flu-related complications) is often cited as part of the so-called The Exorcist Curse. Details about which can be found throughout the internet.

All the smart holiday boxoffice money was riding on the above three films. Each movie was a major release boasting the absolute top-ranking stars of their day, promoted with massive publicity campaigns and pre-sold audience interest. In addition, each film had a significant release date jump on The Exorcist (December 16th for Papillon, Christmas Day for The Sting and Magnum Force). The Sting, in particular, was blessed with the added advantage of having received largely positive reviews from the critics, and was shored up promotionally by the growing popularity of its theme music: Marvin Hamlisch’s jaunty adaptation of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” which became an instant MOR favorite on radio.
By way of contrast, The Exorcist was based on a popular and controversial bestseller, but featured a cast of actors whose names (if known at all) meant absolutely nothing at the boxoffice. In fact, author William Peter Blatty and Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin (The French Connection) were initially The Exorcist’s most exploitable commodities.

Kitty Winn as Sharon Spencer

The Exorcist was such a talked-about book that a great deal of interest surrounded its film release, but advance reviews of the film were poor to mixed, and few Hollywood oddsmakers had any confidence that holiday audiences would be in the mood to see a dark-themed horror film the day after Christmas. So, while most of San Francisco was lining up to swoon over Paul Newman’s blue eyes or see Clint Eastwood blowing bad guys away with his .45; my family and I got in to see The Exorcist with comparative ease. Lucky for us that we did. The Exorcist opened on a Wednesday, and by the weekend, it had grown into the must-see film of the season. Lines wound around the block and crowd control tactics had to be employed to deal with the overflow numbers. In the course of a few days, The Exorcist had become a cultural phenomenon.

Site of Where I Had the Holy Hell Scared Out of Me
The Exorcist opened at San Francisco's Northpoint Theater, located on the corner of Bay and Powell. Click HERE to see great documentary footage of theater patrons from 1973 reacting to seeing The Exorcist for the first time.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Looking back on that first time seeing The Exorcist,  the memory that stands out the strongest is of the entire experience being so thrilling and emotional. There was just a feeling in the air that gave me the sense I was seeing something really special. A feeling more exciting than mere anticipation of the unknown; something deeper than being frightened, something more electric than my response to the film's ability to shock, unsettle, repulse, or take me by surprise.  It was the sense that I was being treated to a really different kind of film and being drawn into a reality calculated to get me to respond on a visceral level.
It was a thrilling, one-of-a-kind experience seeing The Exorcist for the first time. It generated for me the kind of excitement that makes you shiver in your seat and pull your coat up around your chin. You sit there with your eyes wide open, not wanting to miss a thing, and then every once in a while something would happen that would make your jaw fly open or cause you to cover your eyes. As one grows older, this type of total emotional immersion becomes harder to come by, but at age 16, I was just mature enough and just naïve enough for The Exorcist to give me the thrill ride of my life.

Home & Family and the Illusion of Safety
When I saw The Exorcist, I was still at the age where one still feels home and family is sufficient a blanket of security to keep harm at bay. The Exorcist, in detailing the banal normalcy of the lives of Chris and her daughter (juxtaposed with the barely-acknowledged tension of familial discord and divorce), shattered the illusion of home as sanctuary.

Religious Imagery
Even though, at age 16, I was starting to question all  I had been taught in years of Catholic School, the traditions of religion; its mythology and iconography, could still prove unsettling to me in a context as violent and anarchic as The Exorcist. 

Adult as Protector
In a teenager's world, adults are still the figures one looks to for strength and the reestablishment of order when things go wrong. The Exorcist, in showing a mother helpless to save her child in the face of an unnamed evil, hit a raw nerve with me. This cutaway shot of Chris reacting to the horror of Regan's possession just blew me away as a kid. Even today, this brief shot still stands as one of the most powerful images in the film for me.

Rev. William O'Malley as Father Joseph Dyer
Most of the teachers at my school were either priests or Catholic Brothers. A great many of them looked exactly like real-life priest William O'Malley. A fact that only went to further cement the disturbing verisimilitude within the fantasy that was The Exorcist.

Good vs Evil
I daresay that the disheartening state of the contemporary world is enough to challenge anyone's faith. But to be raised Catholic is to feel acutely the disparity between what one is taught to believe and what one encounters in the world. The visual excesses of The Exorcist have always felt like such a perfect dramatization of the inexplicable ugliness in the world that exists side-by-side with all that is beautiful. Though I'd hasten to label it poetic, I wouldn't hesitate for a minute to call it powerful (and occasionally moving).

Science vs. Religion
Today, I find the willful disavowal of science in favor of myth and ignorance to be fairly absurd, but in my youth, both Rosemary's Baby and (most explicitly) The Exorcist provocatively held forth on the possibility that science was perhaps no match for that which could not be explained. This point was driven agonizingly home when The Exorcist's scenes of medical science at work proved far more shocking and inhumane than anything the Devil was able to cook up.

PERFORMANCES

One benefit afforded me back in 1973 that’s denied most viewers of The Exorcist today, was my wholesale unfamiliarity with the film’s cast. Linda Blair and Jason Miller were, of course, making their film debuts, but outside of Lee J. Cobb, The Exorcist was the first time I’d ever seen Ellen Burstyn and Max von Sydow on the screen. The removal of that extra layer of subliminal artificiality—born of watching actors one knows from earlier films portraying entirely different characters—immeasurably enhanced The Exorcist’s verisimilitude and heightened its intensity for me. The actors were the characters they played. It's something you can't always count on or anticipate, but when a film asks an audience to accept fantastic events as realistic, it helps to eliminate as many reminders as possible that one is "watching a movie." In this instance, my ignorance contributed to my bliss.

Ellen Burstyn’s Oscar-nominated performance is a good example of why, even when making cheap horror films, it’s worth the expense and trouble to get good actors. Neither Damien Karras' crisis of faith nor Father Merrin's preordained encounter with the forces of evil engaged me as much as the gradual emotional disintegration of Chris MacNeil and her mounting desperation. Burstyn's incredibly committed performance has always been The Exorcist's emotional center for me, and it's precisely the kind of grounded realism she brings to her role that draws me into the film's events and gets me to believe in it. Even as the film's special effects begin to look quaint in this age of CGI, Burstyn's performance never gets old. Everyone in The Exorcist is terrific, but I have total confidence in my belief that the film wouldn't have worked at all without her. 

I've come to look kindlier upon Lee J. Cobb's ramshackle Lt. Kinderman over the years. When The Exorcist first came out, Peter Falk's Columbo was still on the air and Cobb's takes-forever-to-get-to-the-point detective seemed then like an imitation. 

When it comes to genre films, the most elaborate special effects in the world don’t amount to much when there is nothing human at the center of all that carnage and melodrama. Many a well-made horror film has been ruined by actors incapable of registering even the most rudimentary signs of fear, despair, anguish, or trauma…recognizable human reactions that raise the emotional stakes of the drama, helping the audience to become invested in the outcome.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

No point in going on about The Exorcist's then-unprecedented shocks. Suffice it to say that I spent a great deal of the latter part of the film with my coat at the ready to shield my eyes; my little sister was reduced to tears, and a sizable portion of my popcorn went uneaten. There's been much written about what an emotional roller-coaster ride The Exorcist is, but few mention what a physical toll this movie takes. I remember my body being wound tighter than a mainspring every time a character approached that bedroom door. The sense of apprehension and dread I felt at every reveal of the degree of Linda Blair's possession was almost unbearable. And the sound! Was there ever a film with a more active and jarring soundtrack? Even when your eyes were closed the movie terrified you.

No one fainted or passed out during the screening I attended, but such screaming and yelping you never heard in your life. People leaving the theater had the look of folks who had just been rescued off of a sinking ship or something. Some were giddy and pleased with themselves for having survived, others looked drained and in need of physical support, and many were just stumbling out as if a daze. Me? I recall wobbly knees and teary eyes (It always makes me cry when Linda Blair kisses the clerical collar of Father Dyer). Was I grossed out? Yes! Was I entertained? Oh, but yes...it was wonderful!

The Exorcist author and screenwriter William Peter Blatty (r.) makes a cameo appearance.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The enduring legacy of The Exorcist disproves the popular belief held in 1973 among the film’s detractors who claimed that once the shock value of the gross-out effects were experienced, there was little of substance in the film for audiences to enjoy. On the contrary, my familiarity with the film’s shock effects has allowed me, over the ears, to grow ever more appreciative of what a superior example of filmmaking as storytelling The Exorcist really is. Whether one takes it seriously as the “theological thriller” it was intended to be, or, like me, merely enjoy it as one of the best horror movies ever made, The Exorcist is a bona fide, gold-plated classic of the first order. And I’m thrilled to have been around to experience The Exorcist cultural phenomenon first-hand. I’ll never forget it.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES: 

Linda Blair
Met her in a L.A. supermarket and she was such a sweetie when I asked for an autograph. I commented on how she is one of my favorite screen criers, to which she replied "You've seen those movies,..believe me, it's heartfelt!" 

Copyright © Ken Anderson

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW 1971

It's been my experience that certain films adapted from novels play much better if you've read the book first: Doctor Zhivago, The Great Gatsby, and The Day of the Locust. Conversely, some screen adaptations are such vast improvements on their source material that reading the book after seeing the film can feel, at best, a recessive experience: The Godfather, That Cold Day in The Park. Then there are those films so faithful to their origins that both book and motion picture complement 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 and 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 of a place and time that resonates with subtle details of dialogue and character only possible from first-hand experience. McMurtry wrote about his hometown of Archer, Texas (fictionalized and renamed Thalia, Texas in the book), the very location Bogdanovich uses in the film. The town of Archer—whose largest export seems to be dust—is called Anarene in the movie.
McMurtry's characters and dialog are vivid, even for someone like myself who never spent much time ins mall towns. And Bogdanovich's contributions (technically and in the deft handling of his cast of newcomers and veterans) are assured and perceptive. Small wonder, then, that when I saw The Last Picture Show 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 a Black 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 1970s, 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 inclusion onscreen, the evolving role of women in society, the increasing visibility of gays, and the touchy topic of America and the Vietnam War.

The Royal Theater in desolate Anarene, Texas

Finding little of what I consider to be 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 which, for me, symbolized hatred and ignorance 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 look at the film in a context unrelated to the year it was made. No longer an impatient youngster annoyed at the idea of a film looking at yesterday when there were so many "today" stories that needed telling, I had a better perspective on what might be called the subjectivity of the nostalgic experience. It didn't matter that I couldn't specifically relate to the era or the small-town life depicted; the film had something significant to say about small, everyday, human things like loneliness and the risk of allowing oneself to be emotionally vulnerable. 

A coupla good ol' boys and their gal

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 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 restlessly dissatisfied elder populace (town father-figure Sam the Lion and neglected housewives Lois and Ruth), nostalgia figures in the narrative chiefly as expressed heartache and regret. Not necessarily a longing for how things used to be, but more a sense of loss related to the illusory dreams of youth. 

In many gently insightful ways, The Last Picture Show actually contrasts the idealized images we hold of '50s life with a realistic 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 assumed 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 elicited from his remarkable ensemble cast. Each player brings such a wealth of genuine 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 giving even a passing glance to this dusty little burg.

Cybill Shepherd, whom I found to be a near-insufferable presence during the 1970s in everything save for 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 the avenues of expression made available to the young males of the town, Jacy channels her youthful restlessness into exerting control over the only realm of power afforded women at the time: her physical appeal. Though not always successful in her efforts, Jacy comes to learn that her beauty is her only source of power and the only hope she has to change her life.
The clumsy wielding of this power turns her into a more hurtful being than even she is aware of, 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. Looking at the film, I have a hunch that every move, gesture, and intonation was 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 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 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) role of the "sensitive youth" in a coming-of-age film, his performance is something of a revelation. How Bottoms manages to so movingly portray a not particularly articulate character...one who is at once searching, naïve, perceptive, and unsure...while never once leaving the intensity of his inner struggle in doubt is pretty miraculous. Especially when one considers that he was just nineteen at the time. I like his performance so much that I assumed and took for granted Bottoms was among the eight Oscar nominations the film garnered. I was shocked to find out he was overlooked, and Bridges (good, but less impressive to me) was nominated instead.

Bill Thurman as Coach Popper, Cloris Leachman's neglectful husband who struggles
with his homosexuality

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 mean grown-up and mature. Although there's a considerable amount of nudity, sex, and profanity in The Last Picture Show (and, banned in Arizona in 1973, it's a movie that had its share of censorship battles), what's 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 a welcome bluntness to the way sex is presented and spoken of in the film. A tone I can only assume is intentionally presented in contrast to the film's nostalgia-evoking cinematography. As a film that dares expose the sexual hypocrisy of America's Bible-thumping "Traditional Family Values" set, The Last Picture Show is a winner in my book from the get-go. But Peter Bogdanovich's straightforward, matter-of-fact approach really wins me over with its nonjudgmental (yet subtly moral) point of view. Something that feels truly trail-blazing looking at it today.  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

What inspired me to revisit The Last Picture Show was finally reading Larry McMurtry'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 eye how extraordinarily the film succeeds in meeting McMurtry'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 teen with a speech disability who's been 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 from the '70s reveals him to be a well-spoken, charming young man with almost intolerable arrogance and self-assuredness. Yet, he can be so engaging and personable when discussing films and directors he admires. And like his idol Orson Welles, Bogdanovich can be fascinating as an actor. Bogdanovich's life is tailor-made for the kind of hubris-haunted, fall-from-grace, true-story Hollywood cautionary tale that plays like cheap fiction. He symbolizes the best and worst of those glorious "New Hollywood" years. 

My Own Private Last Picture Show
This photo of me was taken in 1997 in front of The Sierra Theater in my partner's hometown of Chowchilla, California. The last standing of two of the town's only movie houses, The Sierra was built in 1941 and seated approximately 495 people. My partner's father worked there as a teen in 1he late-'40s. Shuttered since the mid-'70s, The Sierra was ultimately demolished in 2006.

Jan. 6, 2013 Addendum
I loved Larry McMurtry'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 dedicated his to Cybil Shepherd).
What the hell happened??? Not only did I find it an interminable and self-consciously archness (not to mention repetitive), but its focus is Duane, the character even Peter Bogdanovich said was difficult to cast because he was essentially so unlikeable. All the unpleasant characters are the main focus of the drama, while all the sympathetic ones (like Sonny and Ruth) have been shunted to the sidelines. 

That Bogdanovich made a film from it that I loathed with equal vehemence is perhaps a testament to its faithfulness to the source material. 

Unfortunately, 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   2009 - 2012