| The Last Picture Show | |
|---|---|
Richard Amsel's poster |
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| Directed by | Peter Bogdanovich |
| Produced by | Stephen J. Friedman |
| Screenplay by | Larry McMurtry Peter Bogdanovich |
| Starring | Timothy Bottoms Jeff Bridges Ellen Burstyn Ben Johnson Cloris Leachman Cybill Shepherd |
| Cinematography | Robert Surtees |
| Editing by | Donn Cambern |
| Studio | BBS Productions |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 22, 1971 |
| Running time | 118 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.3 million |
| Box office | $29,133,000 |
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 north Texas during the year November 1951 – October 1952, it is about the coming of age of Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and his friend Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges). The 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 used a contemporary popular music soundtrack, and for aesthetic and technical reasons it was shot in black and white, which was unusual for its time.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and four nominations for acting: Ben Johnson and Jeff Bridges for Best Supporting Actor, and Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman for Best Supporting Actress. It won two: Johnson and Leachman.
Contents |
Sonny Crawford (Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Bridges) are smalltown Texas 1951 high-school seniors. They are friends and co-captains of Anarene High School'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 (Shepherd), the prettiest (and wealthiest) girl in town. Sonny is sensitive and caring, with a dumpy, unpleasant girlfriend, Charlene Duggs (Sharon Taggart), whom he does not love; she shares his indifference, and they decide to call it quits.
At Christmastime, Sonny stumbles into an affair with Ruth Popper (Leachman), the depressed, middle-aged wife of his high-school coach, Coach Popper (Bill Thurman). At the sad little town Christmas dance, Jacy is invited by unsavory Lester Marlow (Quaid) to a naked indoor pool party at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette), a wealthy boy who seems to offer better prospects than Duane. The trouble is that Bobby is not 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 (Johnson), their mentor and father-figure in town, has died of a stroke, leaving a will that bequeaths the town's movie theater to the woman who ran the concession stand, the café to its waitress, Genevieve (Brennan), and the pool hall to Sonny.
Jacy invites Duane to a motel for sex, 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 (Gulager), her mother's lover. When Jacy hears of Sonny's affair with Ruth, she sets her sights on him and Ruth gets nudged out very quickly. Sonny gets injured with a broken bottle in a fight with 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 are stopped by an Oklahoma state trooper — apparently Jacy left a note telling her parents all about their plan. The couple is fetched back to Anarene by her father and mother in separate automobiles. On the trip back, Jacy's mother Lois (Burstyn) 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 is no longer a viable business. 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 has been ignoring since Jacy stole him away months earlier. Her first reaction is to show her hurt and anger, then the two slip into a haunting, beatific calm in her familiar kitchen.
At the time of filming, Orson Welles was Bogdanovich's mentor and houseguest, and just as Welles had done with Citizen Kane, Bogdanovich chose a largely unknown cast peppered with some experienced character actors.
Peter Bogdanovich was a 31-year-old stage actor, film essayist 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. One day 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 "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 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 that tells the story chronologically.
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 hired him as producer.[5]
After discussing the film with Orson Welles, his houseguest at the time, Bogdanovich decided to shoot the film in black and white.[2]
Larry McMurtry was born in the small North Texas town of Archer City. In writing about his hometown 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's 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 edit the film further, 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]
The Last Picture Show won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson) and Best Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman). It was also nominated in the categories for Best Supporting Actor (Jeff Bridges), Best Supporting Actress (Ellen Burstyn), Best Cinematography (Robert L. Surtees), Best Director (Peter Bogdanovich), Best Picture (Stephen J. Friedman), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich).
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.
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."[10]
In 1992, Boganovich re-edited the film to create a "director's cut". This version restores seven minutes of footage that Bogdanovich trimmed from the 1971 release because Columbia imposed a firm 119-minute time limit on the film.[2] With this requirement removed in the 1990s, Bogdanovich used the 127-minute cut on laserdisc, VHS and DVD releases. The original 1971 cut is not currently available on home video, though it was released on laserdisc through Columbia Tristar home video.
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 "Whoever would have 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 poolhall 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 handsome Gregg Toland-style deep focus shot in front of the Royal Theatre as everyone gets in their cars.[2]
Texasville is the 1990 sequel to The Last Picture Show, based on McMurtry's 1987 novel of the same name, 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 (nee Taggart) and Barc Doyle.
| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by West Side Story |
Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress |
Succeeded by Julia |
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