The Last Picture Show (1971 Peter Bogdanovich & co-scr)

31.1.15: First saw this film one Saturday night on TV - the 21st January 1978 - and remember everyone talking about it at (boys') school the next week - being 14 we were of course all delighted with the nudity and sex scenes. Though for me the sense of time and place - and particularly the quiet, remote, run-down (and black-and white) location - was as equally memorable, and even then I realised the acting was good, and in my film filing card I see now that all the actors - Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cloris Leachman (AA), Ben Johnson (AA), Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn - were underlined in red, signifying notable performances - how could the kid be so smart?

Love most of Robert Surtees photography though did (and still) think that the lighting in some of the interiors is ugly. No composed music score, all diegetic, making the sense of time and place even more pronounced - closure of cinema all the more significant for this film lover / historian who became the wunderkind director - notably, Hawks' Red River is the last film played there. Considering it was only his second film, PB directs with great maturity and sensitivity: particularly loved the scene where Ben Johnson talks about his past, and camera very gently moves in, then out (like in Blimp) - the same shot works for Eileen Brennan's waitress (she's also fantastic; I forget to mention her when I was a teenager); the jump cut to the broom when Bottoms realises it's his 'brother'; editing of fight between Bridges and Bottoms*. The love-making scenes between Bottoms and Leachman (their faces) and Shepherd and Clu Gulager (on the pool table) are both extraordinary.

I was thinking as I watched it that Bogdanovich is a director who doesn't make me cry ... then he did... Like Truffaut, he fell in love with his leading lady.. He adapted Larry McMurtry's (Brokeback Mountain / Hud  - that's why the scenes with the waitress seem somehow familiar!) novel with the author - I'd call it a Masterpiece of Melancholy (so then is Daisy Miller.. interesting).

I'm going to tell Mr B that his next book - about his own career - should be called 'What the Fuck Happened?'  I guess it was his own experience as an actor (under Stella Adler) that enabled him to get such fabulous performances.

*I read afterwards that this fight was well rehearsed and then broken down and filmed in shots, so that it was in a sense edited in the camera - no additional material was shot that wasn't used. It's quite a remarkable talent in one so young and new.

26.5.19: It's a sad tale, very truthful about relationships and sex, with a wonderfully strong elegiac atmosphere, photographed by Robert Surtees (Oscar nominated). Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman were both Oscar and BAFTA winners though the Brits also gave it to Peter and Larry McMurtry's screenplay.

It was actually only the debuts of Cybill Shepherd, Sam Bottoms and Randy Quaid, although Timothy had only been in Johnny Got His Gun; Jeff had had more experience having appeared in several TV series (including Lassie),

It was in the last AFI Top 100 list, but only just. (Lists are rubbish - The Apartment  was only #80!)

30.5.20: A lot has been said about Jeff Bridges' first star part, and Cybill Shepherd's debut, but what struck me on this viewing is how good Timothy Bottoms is - his face as he's struggling with inner conflicts and picking up on those around him. That last look between 'Sam the Lion' Ben Johnson and Bottoms and Bridges as they set off for Mexico... It's fatherly, man-to-man, still annoyed with them because of Billy (Sam Bottoms), the old to the new...

Considering it was Peter's only second film, made when he was in his early thirties, it's a really mature film, very melancholic, like the work of someone much older. The fact that his dad died during filming probably contributed. I feel its sadness more and more each time I see it. 

It's very well acted by everyone. Peter ends his film like Ambersons - a film with which it has a sense of melancholy and nostalgia in common - with each cast member receiving a solo credit at the film's conclusion. Cloris Leachman's impassioned outburst to Bottoms at the end - "You didn't even have to be careful of me" - she said after the first take she could do better - "No you can't" said Bogdanovich - she won the Oscar - but still maintained she could have done it better. 

"I'm round that corner now - you've ruined it."

Written by Peter and Larry McMurty and based on the latter's novel. With: Clu Gulager, Sharon Ullrick, Randy Quaid. I must go and sob into my cereal now.

10.11.24: Loved the story that Ben Johnson felt he wasn't right for the part. "It took me three or four months to convince him. John Ford intervened."

When we interviewed Peter for our Verna Fields film he told us: "Come to The Last Picture Show, Verna wasn't available for either sound or picture - she was off somewhere doing some Government stuff, so I edited it myself - there is an editor credited, but he didn't do anything..." So you get this feeling, particularly at the beginning of the film, with all these lively quick cuts, that you're watching a French New Wave film that's finally made it to the USA.