Funny how something as routine as watching the Comedy Central soap spoof “That’s My Bush” last night brought me back to thinking about my favorite movie.

The common denominator that triggered the thought was actor Timothy Bottoms, who plays former Texas Governor and now President George Dubya Bush in the irreverent comedy TV series.

But it was 30 years ago as another sort of Texan that Bottoms made the movie of his and director Peter Bogdanovich’s careers. Then a teen, Bottoms starred in “The Last Picture Show”, produced in 1971 and based on Larry McMurtry’s slim 1966 novel of the same name.

Starkly shot in tumbleweed-strewn rural Texas, and atmospherically set in 1951, this latter-day quasi-western movie initially appears conventional by the standards of late 60s and early 70s filmmaking. But that innocent veneer is belied by a latent modernism that -- even in the anything-goes period in which it was released -- shocked audiences and critics alike.

If America was a land built on the possibilities from taming limitless frontiers, Anarene, Texas was a reminder that some of those possibilities were illusory. At the intersection of two roads to and from nowhere in this one stoplight town, its denizens and its fading old movie theater exploded the myth that America lost its innocence with the politically-charged and drug-crazed 60s; that innocence had been a facade ever since the boys came home from World War II.

QUITE THE PEDIGREE:
Director Bogdanovich received his first copy of McMurtry’s novel from actor Sal Mineo. And it was Orson Welles himself who suggested to Bogdanovich that the film be shot in black and white. No surprise, then, that film student "sans pareil" Bogdanovich borrowed so heavily from Welles when setting up his penetrating shots.

The film went on to garner the New York Critics Circle award for best screenplay as well as eight Oscar nominations, winning two for best supporting actor (Ben Johnson) and best supporting actress (Cloris Leachman). Besides Bottoms, the rest of the cast was a who’s who of up-and-comers, including Jeff Bridges, Cybill Sheperd, and Ellen Burstyn, with Bridges and Burstyn each receiving nominations of their own for best supporting actor and actress.

Notably absent from the nominations was Bottoms, the star, whose performance Bogdanovich later admitted he was less than taken with.


THE MOVIE:
This was only Bogdanovich’s second full-length feature, and he leaned heavily on Texan McMurtry for assistance with the screenplay adaptation from the book; in interviews Bogdanovich has said he had never been to Texas before. And he said McMurtry could have cared less about the period the story was set in (the novel seemed to have references from the 50s to the mid 60s), so Bogdanovich provided the early 50s detail, even picking the one-year time-frame for the story – October 1951 to October 1952.

The film itself is an intricate web of set pieces involving relationships among the town’s restless adolescents (mainly Bridges as local high school football star Duane, Sheperd as his beautiful and fickle sometime girlfriend Jacy, and Bottoms as Sonny, the movie theater’s only employee), bored adults (Burstyn as Jacy’s temptress mother and Leachman as the football coach’s unfaithful wife who seduces Sonny), and the grizzled elderly sage (Johnson as Sam “the Lion”, voice of the Golden West and the movie’s conscience).

Into this mix figures an extremely unhealthy dose of wanton sex, alcohol, what today would be called abuse, and finally, death. By its tragic end, lives are shattered and then spread to the winds, and the movie theater is shuttered after airing its last picture show.

The roles the characters have been strait-jacketed into by their geographic isolation, the social insularity of that particular period of time, and their desperate need for gratification of any kind, has condemned them to Dante’s ninth circle of hell. The only exceptions are Sonny (Bottoms) and Ruth (Leachman), who somehow through all the muck come to terms with the fact that each is the other’s only ray of sunshine in an otherwise drab existence.

THE PERFORMANCES:
Bridges and Sheperd shine as the town’s two most strong-willed protagonists. Duane and Jacy are insecure yet ego-driven strivers seeking adulthood through sexual poses as their hormones rage. Throughout his subsequent storied acting career, Bridges has never been better, whether combing his ducktail in the car rearview mirror or preening in public after a hilarious romp with Jacy in a local motel. And how perfect that Bogdanovich chose the son of a 50s acting icon – Lloyd Bridges of “Sea Hunt” fame – to represent the period’s male macho sensibility.

As Jacy, Sheperd redefined the words beautiful b*tch, probably helping stunt the rest of her career until the TV hit series “Moonlighting” because of how closely she became identified with Jacy’s persona. A series of scenes at her swimming pool party personifies everything that was "taboo" about promiscuity at the time, as well as the fantasies of millions of repressed teens.

Johnson’s Oscar-winning series of cameos and soliloquies as Sam the Lion are worthy of Robert Duvall’s best scenes in “Tender Mercies” and “The Apostle”, and Burstyn’s performance as Jacy’s lonely and dispirited mother foreshadow her top-flight roles to come in later years.

But it’s Leachman who steals the show. Her transformation from bitter housewife to excited illicit lover and then back to embittered survivor was physical as well as emotional acting at its finest; you could see it, feel, it touch it – an electrifying performance worth the movie in itself. An intense argument scene with Sonny in Ruth's kitchen ought to be included in anyone's "hit" reel of dramatic moments on film. In one flash before our eyes Leachman turns from happy, fulfilled lover into a frustrated shrew, embarrassed and humiliated.

As to Bottoms, perhaps Bogdanovich was too harsh in his post-production judgment. Sonny is the central character around whom the town and its myriad complex events swirl; all he has to do is be there and react, which he does, to my mind, very well in an understated way. There are enough type-A personalities elsewhere to go around.


WHY “MY FAVORITE” AMERICAN MOVIE?
In the movie’s 1950s setting -- when America was the savior of World War II, the economic giant of the world, and standing somewhat uncertainly toe-to-toe with the Red Menace in Korea and across the Iron Curtain -- a look under the covers of dusty old Anarene, Texas revealed that Everytown was Peyton Place. Beaver Cleaver's, Danny Thomas’ and Donna Reed’s visions of 50s perfection were pipe dreams.

In the paisley-colored, tangerine flaked, neon-lit haze of the psychedelic 60s and 70s, this brooding black-and-white masterpiece shot by cinematographer Laszlo Kovaks was a revelation to many of my generation. At a time when movie sound tracks boomed through huge theater speakers, reflecting the high fidelity and stereo sound of rock 'n roll hits, here was a movie whose period music sounded as tinny as the way it was portrayed -- playing through old radios.

It was a lot to soak in in 1971 when I was 20 years old. Bogdanovich never came close to this level of film-making again, even with the eccentric and atmospheric gem “Paper Moon” a few years later.

“The Last Picture Show” still works today – the ultimate proof of a celluloid masterpiece. Rent it, and savor it.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age