The Last Picture Show: Classic or Dud?

Also, I just read the novel, and while it obv gets deeper into the characters (interior monologues, 280 pages) some of the emphases are off in the adaptation. The Cloris Leachman character is even more desperate and heartbreaking, a real triumph by McMurtry I think. In the film they never even specify what the medical problem she cries over is (a breast lump).

Timothy Bottoms is sweet and adequate, but somehow a bit lightweight as Sonny. Someone like John Cusack would've been great for it (12 years later).

Also, in the book they really do FUCK A BLIND HEIFER one Saturday night instead of talking about it.

Here is Cybill Shepherd in US Magazine on "dating" Elvis.

US: We have to talk about Elvis (Meaning we must discuss certain matters before we arrive at [her son’s] school.)

"Elvis has been bewitched by his fellow Memphian, and when he made love to her – well, here’s the passage from her manuscript: He nibbled down my body, virile and playful, then stopped most abruptly at my belly button. 'Is something wrong?' I asked. 'Uh, well, you see, me and the guys talk, and, well, white boys don’t….'"

Cybill: I took that line out of the book.

US: Why?

Cybill: I was thinking, "Oh, my God, this is going to be so offensive to people who love Elvis."

US: Really? A lot of men agree with Elvis; they don’t like….

Cybill: [Hooting] They’re the ones who are losing out! [A moment later, seriously] That’s the only way to achieve spiritual enlightenment.

US: You think Peter Bogdanovich is cooler than Elvis?

Cybill: Yeah.

US: [Disbelief] No!

Cybill: Well, he was a much more interesting conversationalist, for one thing.

US: But for God’s sake, it was Elvis!

Cybill: But Elvis was deep into drug addiction. I didn’t know it at the time.

US: He gave you a big diamond ring. He probably wanted to marry you.

Cybill: But he was not available. Drug addition makes you really not available on a profound level.

US: Was he beautiful to look at?

Cybill: Yes. And he was sweet. He was sweet, sweet, sweet.

In her book, Cybill adds:

"Fortunately, I was never asked to enact what I heard was one of Elvis’s favorite erotic scenarios: putting on waist high cotton panties, eating cookies and milk, and wrestling with another girl..."

ientimg.msn.com/i/150/ ce/aug/pbogdanovich_150.jpg

vs.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/f/f1/180px-Elvis_Presley.jpg

Nearly all the adult males except Sam the Lion are quite heinous.

It led me to the book, which is magnificent too. McMurtry does funny and piercingly sad at the same time better than anyone else I've ever read, and creates some of the most memorable characters I've ever read. There are two sequels to it - the first, Texasville, was made into a lousy movie - which are as good, with more emphasis on the funny. It also took me to all of his other books, which are more or less as good, and one of those turned into a TV adaptation featuring the best small-screen acting performance I've ever seen, I think: Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove. I think he's a slightly undervalued writer, in a taken-for-granted kind of way. Writers who turn out popular hits can be underrated because of that, stupidly. He's an utter joy to read, as moving a writer as I know. He writes a lot of sequels (I can think of five separate sequences of two or more without checking) - and EVERY time I've learnt of one, I've thought "Fantastic! More about [CharacterX]!"

(I honestly haven't seen the film since the time of the original post, i.e. 4 yrs ago, when I was taking a couple gender studies courses and was quite possibly oversensitive to this. I'd have to watch again. Without thinking too much about it, and not remembering that clearly, the CS character seems a little more believable in my bitter old age. If anthony didn't have problems with it, I have to assume it can't have been that bad.)

it's not all that soapy though, is it? it seems much more quietly melancholy and nostalgic than melodramatic. there are plot points that sort of remind one of soap operas (elopements, anulments, affairs) but the overall tone and the stark black-and-white kind of cut into that interpretation. when i think "intelligent soap opera" i think marriage of maria braun, or something.

Martin, it's Tim Bottoms who turns the cap around (of the kid played by his brother Joe). The broom kid's fate is one of the unfortunate things in the plot of both book and film -- a little too portentous.

btw, Bogdanovich and McMurtry planned to do Lonesome Dove as a feature circa 1974 with John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda!!! Wrote a script but Wayne killed it, not wanting to do an autumnal western (til his cancer came back and he did The Shootist, I guess).

For some reason this morning I thought of Cloris Leachman's last-scene tantrum.

Martin, it's Tim Bottoms who turns the cap around (of the kid played by his brother Joe)

bridges character does it too! it's just sonny does it several times before that

anyway this is a pretty great dang movie

anyone read the book before watching the movie?? wondering what you thought of the casting.

i gave up on the book when the main characters started raping livestock. is this retained in the film? if not, i might watch it

"I ain't no HEFFER."

when the main characters started raping livestock

This is called "Texas."

I wish Jeff Bridges was livestock.

Cybill Shepherd

That interview with Cybill on dating Elvis is great!

saw a beautiful new print of this last night for its 40th anniversary, w/ bogdanovich, and some of the cast present. pretty much every other sentence out of peter b's mouth began with "well, as my friend orson welles told me..." or "john ford said to me once..." or some variant thereof.

Peter Bogdanovich Drinking Game

he did tell a funny story about how he convinced ben johnson to be in the film: BJ didn't like the script ("too many words"), but after talking with john ford about it, JF puts the screws to him in a phone call. fifteen minutes later PB gets a call from johnson: "you sic'ed the old man on me!"

i saw him introduce grand illusion, he was in full form

actually it's MY FRIEND ORSON

actually, you can play the drinking game for yourself at home! try not to die of alcohol poisoning:

http://www.oscars.org/live/index.html

warning: eileen brennan is...not in good shape

if he does his Cary Grant impression, you have to finish the bottle.

lol he totally did

I wish Jeff Bridges was livestock.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 16, 2011

One thing I know for sure, a person can't sneeze in this town without somebody offering them a handkerchief.

memories of a past that never existed

Went to a rep screening last night. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood, but I was a little bored. Nothing wrong with it--well, it telegraphs everything, that's a problem. Best line in the film belongs to Ellen Burstyn: "Nope. I'll just go on home." I loved that.

Timothy Bottoms as this tension-free hero contributes to the easy-steady quality -- the film equivalent of a Maze + Frankie Beverly song. I love Maze and Bottoms too, but I get how they can make the eyes roll.

Bottoms' was the performance that bugged me the most--and I like him a bunch in The Paper Chase. His character is probably a cliche in that, too--Kael had a funny description of him--but at least he's a live-wire cliche, instead of a somnolent one.

The screening was at a Toronto rep house called the Royal, same name as the theatre in the film. I should have taken a picture of the marquee: seeing "The Last Picture Show" up there was kind of meta.

just rented the BR of this, sorta liked it but mostly left me cold when I was a teenager and a couple years ago. my dad's favorite movie. he talks about walking around in a daze for hours after seeing it, still in high school.

This movie really had a hold on people, felt like an event, something new, and now I think it's hard to see why. What was it?

I think perhaps it was the first mainstream US film to look back *somewhat* nostalgically at an era 20 years past while being explicit about sex.

Yup. The Black & White in this is also practically supernatural.

Everything above, plus great ensemble cast mixing old and new Hollywood. But I agree, it's held up a little less well than other key films of the era.

I think that collision of old and new is the heart of it, yeah. And it’s inarguably beautifully put together. Haven’t seen it in years, but as a younger person seeing the zeitgeist US films of the era it felt less of a “you had to be there” sorta thing than Easy Rider or Bonnie & Clyde. To throw two out.

I came around to Easy Rider later though.

When it came out people hadn't seen a beautifully shot, well made black and white film for years. By then B&W if used at all, was mostly for economic reasons and rarely an artistic choice in a mainstream film (at least in the US). Old B&W classic films on TV looked bad and were dated (though loved.) This comes along and it's a modern film but in amazing looking black and white, a continual reminder via its story and medium, of the importance of cinema to people who were young in the mid-20th century.

Great answers everyone, thank you :)

never connected to this, unlike paper moon and what's up doc

I wish someone like Natalie Wood or someone who seemed to bridge old and new Hollywood was actually IN the film but ymmv

Ben Johnson?

was in Ford films and The Wild Bunch

Cloris Leachman was in Kiss Me Deadly.

Some of that symbolism is provided by the characters watching Red River, ala Karina viewing The Passion of Joan of Arc in Vivre Sa Vie.

My dad saw it when he was 16 and talks about coming out of the theater in a daze, just walking around aimlessly for hours. Besides connecting with elements of the story, he took it as of a piece with Dylan going country and the 20 year nostalgia cycle making Hank Williams hip again. it took a moldy, uncool milieu and updated it for the times, not only in terms of explicitness (that's imo all that's going on in Easy Rider and Bonnie & Clyde even more so, as circa said). it's returning to TV of the 50s but with the disillusionment of the 70s using European existentialism. people like my dad were part of the counterculture but grew up watching Ben Johnson ride horses in John Ford movies (he always talks about how devastating his speech to the kids is, that they're no longer welcome after what they did).

TLPS is practically an Antonioni movie, but it's not showy. it's hard to articulate what's so moving about this movie. Took me 3 viewings over 10 years for it to really hit, though.

Timothy uh Bottoms sure is purty.

I prefer TLPS to Boggo's two followups; my circuity can't process Paper Moon.

I always loved the touch of all the Country songs on the soundtrack, but at the Farrow household, when you hear a Hank song, Tony Bennett is doing the singing!

The placing of the action is key: after the war, but before Rock'n'Roll. Korea is happening, but isn't quite real until a local boy ships out.

the radio playing softly in every scene, the lack of people, the bone bleach white, the wind. it's like wandering into a purgatory of Americana, vanishing with that last fade out of Bottoms & Leachman ("never you mind, honey."). evocative, dreamlike, and surreal without ever being silly. I think it moved a lot of people that wouldn't normally see or respond to more arch or oblique art films.

I always forget that Hud was also based on a McMurtry novel, set in the same fictional town.

Never realized they were set in the same town. Hud would be set about a decade later then...if there's any crossover between the two, I missed it. Not as famous, but I definitely like Hud more.

Apparently Hud was more loosely adapted from Horseman, Pass By (set in 1954, published '61) -- the Patricia Neal character is a black woman. And they "softened" Hud...

TCM had this on last night: watched a few minutes and started wondering what happened to Timothy Bottoms (wasn't even sure if he was still alive). Looking at his IMDB page, 1) he continues to work, usually making one or two films a year (he's slowed down a bit the past five years), and 2) except for the LPS sequel, I don't think I recognize even one of them in the last 40 years--nothing since Hurricane in 1979. It's really remarkable; I wonder if there's ever been another actor who had a fast start to his career, then spent the next four decades choosing one nowhere role after another.

He did give us this:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/to-hollywood-and-beyond/images/7/78/That%27s_My_Bush%21.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141006083405

https://assets.nflxext.com/us/boxshots/hd1080/70055288.jpg

"Holiday in Handcuffs" (2006) is worth a watch if you enjoy unbelievably bad movies

I don't remember him in Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but that was a prestige movie at least.

One of my favourite films, missed that--and I do remember recognizing him.