The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from a semi-autobiographical 1966 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry.
Set in a small town in west Texas during the year November 1951 – October 1952, it is about the coming of age of two friends, Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges). The ensemble cast includes Cybill Shepherd in her film debut, Ben Johnson, Eileen Brennan, Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Clu Gulager, Randy Quaid in his film debut and John Hillerman. It was one of the first films to have a pop-only soundtrack and for aesthetic and technical reasons, was shot in black and white, unusual for its time.
Synopsis
Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) are high-school seniors, co-captains of Anarene High's football team and share a rooming house home and a battered old pickup truck. Duane is good looking, amusing and popular, and is dating Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest (and wealthiest) girl in town. Sonny is sensitive and caring, with a dumpy, unpleasant girlfriend (Sharon Taggart) he does not love; neither one seems too enthusiastic about their relationship, and they decide to call it quits.
At Christmastime, Sonny stumbles into an affair with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the depressed middle-aged wife of his high-school basketball coach. At the sad little town Christmas dance, Jacy is invited by unsavory Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) to a naked indoor pool party at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette), a boy with rich parents, who seems to offer better prospects than Duane. The trouble is that Bobby isn't interested in her as long as she is a virgin, so she has to get someone to deflower her first. Duane and Sonny go on a road trip to Mexico — which happens entirely off-screen — and return to discover that Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), their mentor and father-figure in town, has died, leaving a will that bequeaths the town's movie theater to the woman who ran the concession stand, the cafe to its waitress Genevieve (Eileen Brennan) and the pool hall to Sonny.
Jacy invites Duane to a motel for what he imagines is some lovemaking, but he is unable to perform; it takes a second attempt to alter her virginity status. Having got what she wants from Duane, she breaks up with him by phone, and he eventually joins the Army. When Bobby elopes with another girl, Jacy is alone again, and out of boredom has sex with Abilene (Clu Gulager), her mother's lover. When Jacy hears of Sonny's affair with Ruth, she sets her sights on him and Ruth gets cut out right quick. Sonny gets the bad end of a broken bottle from Duane, who still considers Jacy "his" girl. Jacy pretends to be impressed that Sonny would fight over her and suggests they elope. On their way to their honeymoon, they're stopped by Oklahoma state troopers — turns out, Jacy left a note telling her parents all about their plan. The couple is fetched back to Anarene by her father and mother (Ellen Burstyn) — in separate automobiles. On the trip back Lois Farrow admits to Sonny she was Sam the Lion's erstwhile paramour and tells him he was much better off with Ruth Popper than with Jacy.
Duane returns to town for a visit before shipping out for Korea. He and Sonny are among the meager group attending the final screening at Sam's old moviehouse, which can no longer make a go of it. The next morning, after Sonny sees Duane off on the Trailways bus, young Billy (Sam Bottoms), another of the town's innocents protected over the years by Sam the Lion, is run over and killed as he sweeps the street. Sonny flees back to Ruth, whom he ignored since Jacy stole him away months before. Her first reaction is to show her hurt and anger, then the two slip into a haunting, beatific calm in her familiar kitchen.
Cast of characters
At the time of filming, Bogdanovich was good friends with Orson Welles, who lived with Bogdanovich for a time in the seventies, and just as Welles had done with Citizen Kane, Bogdanovich chose a largely unknown cast peppered with some experienced character actors.
- Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, the owner of the town's cafe, movie theater, and pool hall. According to Bogdanovich, Tex Ritter was almost cast in the role (he was introduced to Bogdanovich by John Ritter, who was being considered for the part of Sonny. However, Bogdanovich had his heart set on Ben Johnson. Johnson wasn't keen on the part due to the wordiness of the script; Eileen Brennan recalled that he hated to talk, saying he would rather ride his horse a "thousand miles than say any of these God damn words." Since Johnson had been discovered by the director John Ford, Bogdanovich called Ford, whom he knew well, having previously completed a documentary on him. Ford persuaded Johnson into the role by asking him "Do you want to be John Wayne's sidekick forever?"[1] When Johnson continued to find excuses against doing the film, so finally Bogdanovich told him, "You, in this role, are going to get an Academy Award," and finally Johnson accepted, "all right, I'll do the damn thing."[2] Johnson did indeed win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
- Jeff Bridges as Duane Jackson, one of the popular kids in the school, and who dates Jacy at the beginning of the picture. Bridges got the role because in the book he is not a particularly likeable character; Bogdanovich thought that Bridges' naturally fun personality would give the character extra depth and warmth, and make him less disagreeable.[2]
- Timothy Bottoms as Sonny Crawford, Duane's buddy, who begins the picture with a girlfriend he doesn't like and ends up in an affair with Ruth. Bogdanovich liked Bottoms for his sad eyes, and recalled that he was convinced to cast him when he learned that he was being highly touted at the time by his agent who said he had been given the lead in a Dalton Trumbo movie Johnny Got His Gun (1971); "I guess that's what convinced me" he said.[2] Bottoms did indeed have the lead in Johnny Got His Gun, although he was playing a quadriplegic and terribly mutilated World War I soldier who could not see, hear, move or speak.
- Cybill Shepherd as Jacy Farrow, a pretty and popular girl who learns about life through her experiments with sexual attraction. Shepherd was a model whom Bogdanovich spotted on the cover of an issue of Glamour magazine (probably June 1970). "There was something about her expression that was very piquant," he later said. He arranged to meet her with her agent in a hotel in New York. She was, Bogdanovich says, interested in going through college and not particularly interested in being in movies, but she liked the script and thought it was an interesting part. She was playing with a rose on the table, and Bogdanovich kept expecting the rose to keel over and collapse; he recognised in that gesture the way Jacy Farrow plays with guys in the movie, and this convinced him that he had found Jacy. Bert Schneider, the producer, found a screen test Shepherd had done with Roger Vadim about a year before in which she was playing scenes from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with no sound, and dancing silently to a Rolling Stones song. After filming had finished Bogdanovich admitted to Shepherd that the only time he ever doubted his decision was when he saw that screen test.[2] Shepherd went to Los Angeles and read with John Ritter, and with Robert Mitchum's son as well as Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms.
- Ellen Burstyn as Lois Farrow, Jacy's mother, dated Sam in her younger days and has an off-and-on love affair with Abilene. Burstyn was asked to read for the part of the waitress but she liked the part of Lois Farrow and asked if she could read for that and ended up reading for all three parts, including Coach Popper's wife. Bogdanovich thought she would be good as any one of them and decided he wanted her in the picture for any role she selected. She chose to be Jacy's mother because she thought the part interesting.[2]
- Randy Quaid as Lester Marlowe, an unsavory character. Quaid was asked to read for the part of Bobby, the rich kid from Wichita Falls, but Bogdanovich thought he would be better as Marlowe, so that was Quaid's debut role.[2]
- Clu Gulager as Abilene, a man the same age as Sam, who sleeps with both Jacy and Lois. Bogdanovich's first choice was the country singer Jimmy Dean, but his producers didn't like that idea so his next choice was Gulager, whom he had seen give a great performance in Don Siegel's The Killers (1964). Gulager played hitman Lee with what Bogdanovich described as, "good regional quality."[2]*Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper, Coach Popper's wife, who has a romantic affair with Sonny. Leachman wanted the role and Bogdanovich was impressed enough with her read-through to offer the part she wanted for a performance that ultimately earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
- Bill Thurman as Coach Popper, the high school's athletic coach, implied to be homosexual, and confirmed to be in the director's commentary.
- Frank Marshall as Tommy Logan, a football player seen near the end of the film. Marshall had been a production manager on Bogdanovich's earlier film, Targets, and they had such fun working together that Bogdanovich had promised him something on his next film. He came along as assistant production manager working with Polly Platt on location scouting and played a small part as a football player in a scene near the end.[2]*Eilenn Brennan as Genevieve, the cafe waitress, who inherits the cafe after Sam dies. Bogdanovich had seen Brennan on the stage in a play called Little Mary Sunshine in the 1960s and thought she had the perfect face for the waitress, Genevieve. When she read the script, Brennan thought it so powerful she wanted very much to be a part of the film and gladly accepted the role.[2]
- Sam Bottoms as Billy the street-sweeper. Timothy Bottoms' younger brother Sam came along to stay with his brother for a few days as rehearsals started in Archer City. Seeing Sam sitting on some stairs, Bogdanovich asked him if he could act. Sam, who had appeared in productions of Santa Barbara Youth Theater since he was 10 years old, shrugged, and despite having previously cast the part to an actor from Dallas, Bogdanovich asked Sam to play Billy in the movie.[2][3]
Production
Peter Bogdanovich was a 31-year-old stage actor, film writer (by which is meant he wrote about film rather than writing films) and critic with two small films — Targets (1968) (also known as Before I Die) and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) — to his directorial credit when one day while waiting in line in a drugstore buying some toothpaste he happened to look at the rack of paperbacks and browsed the novels on display and picked up the one with what seemed to him to be an interesting title, "The Last Picture Show". Reading the back of the book he learned it was "kids growing up in Texas," and decided that it didn't interest him and put it back. A few weeks later the actor Sal Mineo handed Bogdanovich a copy of the book, "I always wanted to be in this", he said, "but I'm a little too old now," and recommended that Bogdanovich make it into a film. At the time Bogdanovich was married to Polly Platt and he asked her to read it, and her response was, "I don't know how you make it into a picture, but it's a good book."[2] Bogdanovich, McMurtry and some sources suggest[4] an uncredited Polly Platt went through the book and wrote a script which tells the story in linear fashion, always moving forward through time with no flashbacks or time slips, though there is one notable reminiscence.
Stephen Friedman was a lawyer with Columbia Pictures, but keen to break into film production and he had bought the film rights to the book, so Bogdanovich brought him on board as producer.[5]
After discussing some scenes in the film with Orson Welles, who was staying with Bogdanovich at the time, a decision was made to shoot the film in black and white.[2]
Larry McMurtry was born in a small North Texas town called Archer City. In writing about his home town he renamed it "Thalia" and in order to film "Thalia" Bogdanovich went back to Archer City. But for the film he renamed it Anarene, a name chosen to provide correspondence to the cow-town of Abilene in Howard Hawks' Red River (1948)[6].
After shooting the film, Bogdanovich went back to Los Angeles to edit the film on a Moviola. Bogdanovich has said[2] he edited the entire film himself, but refused to credit himself as editor, reasoning that director and co-writer was enough. When informed that the Motion Picture Editors Guild required an editor credit, he suggested Donn Cambern who had been editing another film, Drive, He Said (1971) in the next office and had helped Bogdanovich with some purchasing paperwork concerning the film's opticals.[2] Cambern disputes this, stating that Bogdanovich did do an edit of the film, which he screened for a selection of guests, including Jack Nicholson, Bob Rafelson and himself. The consensus was the film was going to be great but needed further editing to achieve its full potential. Bogdanovich invited Cambern to further edit the film, and Cambern made significant contributions to the film's final form.
In 1973, largely because of the skinny-dipping party scene, the film was banned in Phoenix, Arizona when the city attorney notified a drive-in theater manager that the film violated a state obscenity statute. Eventually, a federal court decided that the film was not obscene.[7][8]
Awards and acclaim
The Last Picture Show won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ben Johnson) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Leachman). It was also nominated in the categories for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Bridges), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Burstyn), Best Cinematography (Surtees), Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
In 1998, The Last Picture Show was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It also ranked number 19 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[9] In 2007, the film was ranked #95 on the American Film Institute's 10th Anniversary Edition of the 100 greatest American films of all time.
Director's cut
In the 1990s, Boganovich re-edited the movie, to create a version known as the "Director's Cut". This version includes 7 minutes of additional footage. The longest addition is a sex scene between Jacy and Abilene. Bogdanovich had removed this scene from the original cut at the last minute because he thought it unnecessary, but later decided that it was worth including.[10]
Sequel
Texasville (1990) is the sequel to The Last Picture Show, based on McMurtry's 1987 novel of the same name. The film was also directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who also wrote the screenplay without McMurtry this time). The film reunites actors Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Timothy Bottoms and much of the original cast.
References
Book: McMurtry, Larry. The Last Picture Show: A Novel. New York, Dial Press, 1966. (Simon and Schuster reprint) ISBN 0-684-85386-8
External links
