Bogdanovich directed a 1990 sequel, Texasville, based on McMurtry's 1987 novel of the same name and featuring much of the original film's cast reprising their roles; Texasville failed to match the critical or commercial success of its predecessor. In 1998, the Library of Congress selected The Last Picture Show for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."[2][3]
Plot
In 1951, Sonny Crawford and Duane Jackson are high-school seniors and friends in tiny Anarene, a declining oil town in northern Texas. Duane is dating Jacy Farrow, the richest and prettiest girl in town. Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs. He is secretly in love with Jacy.
At a Christmas dance, Jacy is invited by Lester Marlow to a skinny-dipping party at the home of Bobby Sheen, a wealthy young man who seems to be a better prospect than Duane. At the same party, Sonny kisses Ruth Popper, the depressed middle-aged wife of his high-school coach. Jacy lies to Duane and ends up going to the skinny-dipping party, doing a striptease on top of the diving board. Bobby later makes an advance on her, but then says he will not have sex with girls who are still virgins.
A group of boys including Duane and Sonny take their young, mentally disabled friend, Billy, to a prostitute to lose his virginity. The woman complains heavily, and when Billy leaves the car, his nose is bleeding. When the group takes Billy back home, local businessman Sam "The Lion" is angered by the group’s treatment of Billy. They try to explain their actions, but Sam forbids the group from entering any of his businesses, the only entertainment sources of Anarene: the pool hall, the movie theater, and the café. Later, Sam notices that Sonny actually takes good care of Billy, and accepts Sonny back into the cafeteria for a cheeseburger.
During the weekend of New Year's Eve, Duane and Sonny go on a road trip to Mexico. Before they drive off, Sam wistfully wishes he still had the stamina to join them, and gives them some extra money so they can enjoy themselves. The boys return two days later, hung over and tired, and learn that Sam has died suddenly of a stroke. Sam’s will left the movie theater to the lady who ran the concession stand, the café to Genevieve, $1,000 to the preacher's son Joe Bob Blanton; and the pool hall to Sonny.
Jacy finally invites Duane to a motel room to have sex, because she wants Bobby to accept her into his libertine circle, but Duane is unable to get an erection. She gets angry at Duane but they try again. She then breaks up with Duane by telephone. Soon after, Jacy learns that Bobby has already married another girl. Out of boredom and a sense of rejection, Jacy has sex with Abilene, a roughneck foreman who works for her father and is also her mother's lover. After the act, Abilene leaves Jacy at home and is brutally cold towards her. After entering the house, Jacy is caught by her mother, and starts crying. They both complain about the brutality of men and mention how nice Jacy's father is.
Still sad and angry because of the breakup, Duane leaves town and starts working as a roughneck on an oil well in Odessa, a town in Texas just far away enough to not conveniently return home on a whim. Jacy then sets her sights on Sonny, who drops Ruth without a word and starts dreaming of marrying his true love. Duane returns home on leave, driving a brand-new Mercury, but quarrels and has a scuffle with Sonny over Jacy, smashing a beer bottle into Sonny's left eyebrow as the friends fall fighting in the street. The fracas is broken up by the locals and Sonny is hospitalized. During Sonny’s recovery, Ruth tries to visit him, but he pretends to be asleep.
Jacy suggests to Sonny that they should run away to get married in Oklahoma. While they are driving to their honeymoon in Lake Texacoma, Jacy reveals that she left a note to her parents explaining the entire plan. They are soon stopped by an Oklahoma state trooper who takes them to the nearest police station where Jacy's parents await. Jacy's father dismisses Sonny completely, taking Jacy home in his car. Sonny rides back with Jacy's mother, and upon arrival back home, reveals that Sam the Lion was Jacy’s mother’s one true love when she was young, confirming a story that Sam had told the boys while on a previous fishing trip. Jacy’s mother tells Sonny that he would be much better off with Ruth than with Jacy. The marriage is annulled and a short time passes.
On Duane's last night of leave, Sonny goes to Duane's house for a last chance of reconciliation. The two friends make amends and Sonny reveals that Jacy went to college in Dallas and never returned to Anarene. They go to the movies, because the theater is going to close due to lack of customers. The new owner blames television and her own lack of business acumen for the closing. The last picture show is the John WayneWesternRed River, set in Texas.
The next morning, Sonny sees Duane off on the bus. Duane gives Sonny the keys to his Mercury and asks Sonny to take care of the car for him after Sonny reveals that he and Jacy "never made it to the motel." Sonny opens the pool hall when he hears a truck braking in the street nearby. He sees Billy's broom in the middle of the street and some people stopping their cars. He approaches the local townsmen surrounding Billy's corpse; they blame the dead boy for being stupid and careless. Sonny berates the men for their behavior and carefully carries Billy's body to the top of a staircase, covering Billy’s face with Sonny’s letterman jacket.
Angry and depressed with his current life, Sonny hops on his old battered truck and drives to the city limits. But he slowly changes his mind and drives back, parking his truck near Ruth's home and asking her if she could have a cup of coffee with him. She looks depressed and has shuttered herself in her house. After Ruth explodes in hurt and anger, breaking the coffee cup, she notices that Sonny is completely devastated. She demands that he look at her. He does, and gently touches her hand. Still spent, she seems to forget her anger, takes pity on the boy and starts to comfort him.
Going into The Last Picture Show Peter Bogdanovich was a 31-year-old stage actor, film essayist, and critic. Bogdanovich had directed one film, Targets (also known as Before I Die), working with his wife and collaborator, Polly Platt. As Bogdanovich later explained to The Hollywood Reporter, while waiting in a cashier's line in a drugstore, he happened to look at the rack of paperbacks and his eye fell on an interesting title, The Last Picture Show. The back of the book said it was about "kids growing up in Texas" and Bogdanovich decided that it did not interest him and put it back. A few weeks later, actor Sal Mineo handed Platt a copy of the book.[4] "I always wanted to be in this", he said, "but I'm a little too old now", said Mineo, who recommended that Platt and Bogdanovich make it into a film.[4] According to Bogdanovich, Platt said, "I don't know how you make it into a picture, but it's a good book."[5] Bogdanovich, McMurtry, and Platt adapted the novel into the film of the same name.[6]
Stephen Friedman was a lawyer with Columbia Pictures but keen to break into film production as he had bought the film rights to the book, so Bogdanovich hired him as producer.[7]
After discussing the proposed film with Orson Welles, his houseguest at the time, Bogdanovich agreed with him that shooting the film in black and white would work aesthetically, which by then was an unusual choice.[5]
The film was shot in Larry McMurtry's small hometown of Archer City located in north-central Texas near the Oklahoma state line. McMurtry had renamed the town Thalia in his book; Bogdanovich dubbed it Anarene (for a ghost town eight miles (13 km) south of Archer City). The similarity to famed cowtownAbilene, Kansas, in Howard Hawks' Red River (1948) was intentional.[8]Red River again is tied in as "the last picture show", which Sonny and Duane watch at the end of the film.[9]
After shooting wrapped, Bogdanovich went back to Los Angeles to edit the film footage on a Moviola. Bogdanovich has said that he edited the entire film himself but refused to credit himself as editor, reasoning that director and co-writer were enough.[5] 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.[5] 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.[who?] The consensus was the film was going to be great, but needed further editing to achieve its full potential. Cambern claims Bogdanovich invited him to do so, during which he made significant contributions to the film's final form.
Bogdanovich obtained a rare waiver from the Directors Guild of America to have his name appear only at the end of the film, after the actors' credits, as he felt it was more meaningful for the audience to see their names after their performances.[10][11][who?]
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars in his original review and named it the best film of 1971. He later added it to his "Great Movies" list, writing that "the film is above all an evocation of mood. It is about a town with no reason to exist, and people with no reason to live there. The only hope is in transgression."[13]Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it a "lovely film" that "rediscovers a time, a place, a film form—and a small but important part of the American experience."[14]Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "Like few films in recent years, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show ends with us wanting to see more of the people who occupy the small town world that is Anarene, Tex. in 1951. This emotion is not easily achieved. It is a result of a thoro [sic] Peyton Place investigation into Anarene's bedrooms, parked cars, football games, movie theater, restaurant, and pool hall."[15]Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "the most considered, craftsmanlike and elaborate tribute we have yet had to what the movies were and how they figured in our lives."[16] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "an exceedingly well-made and involving narrative film with decent aims, encouraging us to understand and care about its characters, though not to emulate them."[17]
As of October 2023[update], review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes displays an approval rating of 98% based on 114 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Making excellent use of its period and setting, Peter Bogdanovich's small town coming-of-age story is a sad but moving classic filled with impressive performances."[18] According to Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 93 out of 100 based on 15 critics, the film received "universal acclaim".[19]
In April 2011, The Last Picture Show was re-released in UK and Irish cinemas, distributed by Park Circus. Total Film magazine gave the film a five-star review, stating: "Peter Bogdanovich's desolate Texan drama is still as stunning now as it was in 1971."[21]
Home media
The film was released by The Criterion Collection in November 2010 as part of its box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. It included a high-definition digital transfer of Peter Bogdanovich's director's cut, two audio commentaries, one from 1991, featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall; the other from 2009, featuring Bogdanovich "The Last Picture Show": A Look Back, (1999) and Picture This (1990), documentaries about the making of the film, A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a 2009 Q&A, screen tests and location footage, and excerpts from a 1972 television interview with director François Truffaut about the New Hollywood.[22]
Director's cut
Bogdanovich re-edited the film in 1992 to create a "director's cut". This version restores seven minutes of footage that Bogdanovich trimmed from the 1971 release because Columbia had imposed a firm 119-minute limit.[5][clarification needed] With this requirement removed in the 1990s, Bogdanovich used the 127-minute cut on laserdisc, VHS and DVD releases. The original 1971 cut was never released on DVD or blu-ray for years, though it was released on VHS and laserdisc through Columbia Tristar Home Video. The 4K UHD release however, has the theatrical cut along with the more known director's cut. It's included as a part of Sony's Columbia Classics 4K Volume 3 set. [23]
There are two substantial scenes restored in the director's cut. The first is a sex scene between Jacy and Abilene that plays in the poolhall after it has closed for the night; it precedes the exterior scene where he drops her off home and she says "What a night. I never thought this would happen." The other major insertion is a scene that plays in Sam's café, where Genevieve watches while an amiable Sonny and a revved-up Duane decide to take their road trip to Mexico; it precedes the exterior scene outside the pool hall when they tell Sam of their plans, the last time they will ever see him.
Several shorter scenes were also restored. One comes between basketball practice in the gym and the exterior at The Rig-Wam drive-in; it has Jacy, Duane and Sonny riding along in her convertible (and being chased by an enthusiastic little dog), singing an uptempo rendition of the more solemn school song sung later at the football game. Another finds Sonny cruising the town streets in the pick-up, gazing longingly into Sam's poolhall, café and theater, from which he has been banished. Finally, there is an exterior scene of the auto caravan on its way to the Senior Picnic; as it passes the fishing tank where he had fished with Sam and Billy, Sonny sheds a tear for his departed friend and his lost youth.
Two scenes got slightly longer treatments: Ruth's and Sonny's return from the doctor, and the boys' returning Billy to Sam after his encounter with Jemmie Sue—both had added dialogue. Also, a number of individual shots were put back in, most notably a Gregg Toland-style deep focus shot in front of the Royal Theatre as everyone gets in their cars.[5]
Sequel
Texasville, the 1990 sequel to The Last Picture Show, based on McMurtry's 1987 novel of the same name, was also directed by Bogdanovich, from his own screenplay, without McMurtry this time. The film reunites actors Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Cloris Leachman, Eileen Brennan, Randy Quaid, Sharon Ullrick (née Taggart) and Barc Doyle.
The Last Picture Show essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 672–4.
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