In tiny Anarene, Texas, in the lull between World War Two and the Korean Conflict, Sonny and Duane are best friends. Enduring that awkward period of life between boyhood and manhood, the two pass their time the best way they know how -- with the movie house, football, and girls. Jacey is Duane's steady, wanted by every boy in school, and she knows it. Her daddy is rich and her mom is good looking and loose. It's the general consensus that whoever wins Jacey's heart will be set for life. But Anarene is dying a quiet death as folks head for the big cities to make their livings and raise their kids. The boys are torn between a future somewhere out there beyond the borders of town or making do with their inheritance of a run-down pool hall and a decrepit movie house -- the legacy of their friend and mentor, Sam the Lion. As high school graduation approaches, they learn some difficult lessons about love, loneliness, and jealousy. Then folks stop attending the second-run features at the ... Written by

Plot Synopsis:
-------------------

Spanning one year from 1951 to 1952 in the small town of Anarene, Texas, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) are high-school seniors, co-captains of Anarene High's football team and share a rooming house home and a battered old pickup truck which they take to and from school. Duane is good looking, amusing and popular, and is dating Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest (and wealthiest) girl in town. Sonny is sensitive and caring, with a dumpy, unpleasant girlfriend (Sharon Taggart) he does not love. She shares his indifference, and they decide to call it quits.

At Christmas, Sonny stumbles into an affair with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the depressed middle-aged wife of his high school basketball coach. At the sad little town's Christmas dance, Jacy is invited by unsavory Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) to a naked indoor pool party at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette), a boy with rich parents, who seems to offer better prospects than Duane. The trouble is that Bobby isn't 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 the day after New Years Day in 1952, to discover that Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), their mentor and a wealthy father-figure in town, has died, leaving a will that bequeaths his property which includes the town's movie theater to the woman who ran the concession stand, the cafe to its waitress Genevieve (Eileen Brennan) and the pool hall to Sonny.

Jacy invites Duane to a motel for what he imagines is some lovemaking, but he is unable to perform. It takes a second attempt to alter her virginity status. Having got what she wanted 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 (Clu Gulager), her mother's lover. When Jacy hears of Sonny's affair with Ruth, she sets her sights on him and Ruth gets cut out right quick.

A few days later, Sonny gets the bad end of a broken bottle from Duane, who still considers Jacy "his" girl when he learns of their affair. Jacy pretends to be impressed that Sonny would fight over her and suggests they elope.

On their way to their honeymoon, they're stopped by Oklahoma state troopers. It turns out that Jacy left a note telling her parents all about their plan. The couple are forcibly taken back to Anarene by Jacy's father and mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn) in separate automobiles. On the trip back, Lois Farrow 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.

A few months later, 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 can no longer make a go of it. The next morning, after Sonny sees Duane off on the Trailways bus, young Billy (Sam Bottoms), another of the town's innocents and local simpleton whom was protected over the years by Sam the Lion, is run over and killed in a hit-and-run as he sweeps the deserted street.

Distraught over the loss of his friends, Sonny flees back to Ruth, whom he ignored since Jacy stole him away months before. Her first reaction is to show her hurt and anger, then the two slip into a haunting, beatific calm in her familiar kitchen. She tells him, "Never you mind, honey, never you mind."

----------------------------------------
Eric Habegger from San Mateo, CA, USA
----------------------------------------

One of my favorite films is The Last Picture Show. It is a film that was directed by Peter Bogdanovitch in 1971, yet almost 30 years later it still seems fresh and alive to me. There is a desolate, spare quality to the 1950's small west Texas town we are invited into and its desolation is apparent to us from the opening scenes. It was filmed in black and white, which enhances the dramatic quality of the town and takes us back to a simpler time. Just as our lives are discontinuous, with jarring scene changes and ridiculous episodes of embarrassing events, so is life presented to us in this small town. The film's purposely jarring editing is transformed in our minds, as we watch, from a disjointed amalgam to a stream of consciousness effect that is very lifelike. One knows, then, that you are entering an alternative world just as real in its way as your own. This movie pulls you in.

There is no musical score in this film in the normal sense. The only time you hear music is when a radio is on or a phonograph is playing in the background. This lack of a musical score dubbed over the film enhances the illusion of reality. Another aspect of this sound editing is the choice of music that is being played by the different characters. Bogdonavitch uses song and artist selection to subtly comment on the character of the person or people who are listening to it. In the case of Sonny the music he selects is always Hank Williams and it alludes to the hardscrabble life and down to earth quality of his character. In contrast at JC's home, the manipulative teenager played by Cybil Sheppard, you hear a cover of a Hank William's song that has all of the life sucked out of it, similar to a Pat Boone cover of an Elvis Presley song. It is a direct comment on JC and her family; her family has grown wealthy by owning oil wells and they pretend they are still the same people as before. It is obvious they are not just by this simple musical selection. It is eloquent in its simplicity.

The center of the film and the major theme – should you listen to your heart or your libido if the two don't combine in the same person? Perhaps the saddest comment in this film is that too often these two halves to a whole do not come together as a package and people are forced to chose. None of the characters are particularly happy with their mates. Everyone is on the prowl for that perfect person they know they will be happy with. Time and again they think that they've found the perfect person based on their sexual attraction but when they begin to show their authentic selves are then rejected. Those in long term relationships with an emotionally compatible mate but with no sexual interest face an equal dilemma – a lack of excitement and joy – and are destined to be the ones that reject. It exposes both sides of this human dilemma, a duality that can become split and non-integrated, and does it in a sophisticated and lyrical way. Most people experience this split at some time and in this film, as in life, there are no easy answers. That's why I love this film.

And there is Billy, the boy who continually sweeps the street in a hopeless gesture to turn back the inevitable, representing that demented and futile longing for a past that was never quite as good as you remember it. He represents that longing for an illusion that disappears just as we are about to grasp it and the sadness of that. The broom that is never fast enough for the blowing dust of time.



----------------------------------------
Lechuguilla from Dallas, Texas
----------------------------------------

This is a character study wherein the main character is a small West Texas town, circa 1951. In the U.S., the early 1950s symbolized a transition from nineteenth century agrarian values to twentieth century urbanism. In the film, various people who live in the town must confront the reality that time moves on. Things change. Assumptions of previous generations give way to the untested assumptions of the future. The film's theme is thus American cultural change, and the personal disillusionment that such change can bring. It is a powerful theme, and the film imparts that theme with logical clarity and emotional frankness.

In the hands of lesser talents, the subject matter of unimportant people doing unimportant things might have yielded a tiresome soap opera. But the film's script is poetic, the direction is skillful, the B&W cinematography is artistic, the casting is perfect, and the performances are superlative.

The story draws heavily from early American individualism. Life here is mostly physical, not mental. Human relationships are direct, immediate, one-on-one. Except for schools, which are given some prominence, cultural institutions exist in the film only vaguely or not at all. For entertainment, people listen to radio, which features the mournful country-western music of Hank Williams. Or, they go to the town's decrepit picture show, where an elderly Miss Mosey kindly returns money to the kids who got there too late to see the cartoons.

If the film has a weakness it is in the presentation of a realism that is incomplete. We see mostly stifling bleakness, though that is ameliorated somewhat by humor. What we don't see are the uplifting influences and the optimism that sustained agrarian generations through hardships and rough times.

Nevertheless, within the film's story parameters, the film does convey an accurate account of what life was like for ordinary folks in West Texas in the early 1950s. I doubt that this film could be made today. Contemporary audiences have been conditioned to expect non-stop action, loudness, glitz, and overblown special effects, all of which are absent, mercifully, from this film.

Low-key, perceptive, bleak, and melancholy, "The Last Picture Show" easily makes my list of Top Ten favorite films of all time.

----------------------------------------
jiminyglick from santa monica, ca
----------------------------------------

Perhaps the greatest tragedy to befall any artist is to have their life become more compelling than their work; such is the sad case with Peter Bogdanovich whose meteoric rise to fame was matched only by a truly famous fall from favor and a bewildering journey through tabloid hell. (Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers mined the not inconsiderable drama of the first act of his life to sporadically great comic effect in 1984's Irreconcilable Differences. And his tragic love affair with Playboy model turned actress Dorothy Stratten is fictionalized in Bob Fosse's astonishing, horrifying Star 80 (1983). How many directors become characters in films?)

Bogdanovich's love affair with film is undeniable, though it has, in the past three decades, yielded far more perplexing misfires (The Cat's Meow, At Long Last Love, Nickelodeon) than unqualified successes. That said, The Last Picture Show is an extraordinary accomplishment and worthy of its place in the list of great films of the 1970s.

1971's other important films (Friedkin's The French Connection, Pakula's Klute, Kubrick's Clockwork Orange) are loud, angry, violent and contemporary – in-your-face reflections of a society in which rage and nihilism, engendered by Vietnam and the growing discontent over government corruption, is the currency of communication. The uncertainty coursing through the veins of American pop culture also begat in equal, if not equally graphic, measure a palpable sense of sorrow at the destruction of a simpler way of life (no matter how "true" that memory may be).

Like Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof and Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show is a powerful and poignant evocation of the death of a community and a way of life. Thematically rich and imbued with Bogdanovich's remarkable knowledge and passion for film, the movie works on a dazzling number of levels; and Bogdanovich's use of nostalgia and traditional, archetypal genre conventions both enriches the movie and compounds the heartbreaking loss at the heart of the story.

His deft handling of a cast comprised of then (largely) unknowns (Bridges, Bottoms, Shepherd) is first-rate and he draws forth superb, often sublime performances from everyone (in particular, Johnson, Burstyn and Leachman). There isn't a false note or a misstep in the movie and there is a naturalness here that is not easily achieved or earned. The great production design (by Bogdanovich's then wife and partner Polly Platt whose contributions to his work and her subsequent involvement in the best works of James L. Brooks should not go underestimated) and the achingly beautiful cinematography by the late Robert Surtees are vital to the success (emotionally, intellectually, thematically) of the film.

The Last Picture Show is a truly rare work of surprising depth and emotional resonance; and the heartache for a time and place forever gone and the desperate and quiet struggles of its very real, very human denizens is matched only by the sorrow found in contemplation of Bogdanovich's Icarus-like fall from such exalted heights.

----------------------------------------
Jasper Sharp from London, England
----------------------------------------

Adapted with director Bogdanovich by Larry McMurtry from his own novel, this film remains true to its source. A modern adaptation would no doubt have adopted the voice-over approach of narrative, but here each scene is played out from a more objective point of view. The book consists of a series of events played out over a protracted period of time, with McMurtry's sparse but effective prose acting as a bridging device between scenes. The translation to the screen loses these links, giving the film a slightly episodic feel which runs counter to modern Hollywood film making practice. This is no bad thing, and in every other aspect the film follows the book almost literally, but watching it now does highlight the difference between the formulaic approach we are now accustomed to, with mise en scene, plot turning points and climaxes crudely and obviously spelt out, as opposed to that of Hollywood's final golden age, where the director was given more of a free reign to stamp his own identity on the film, and audiences were more receptive to different styles. Here the spirit of the novel is captured perfectly; that of the desperation and claustrophobia of small town life, where generation after generation undergo the same rites of passage, living out the same lives of frustration and unrealised dreams. The films strength is that it never forces us to identify with any one character, evenly distributing the amount of screen time over the different generations and, almost like a fly on the wall documentary (though heavily stylised in its powerfully expressive monochrome cinematography). Coupled with some sturdy performances from all of the members of the cast, and some memorable images, ‘The Last Picture' comes across as an enchanting, evocative and accessible portrayal of a lifestyle most of us have never and will never experience. Now surely this is what the art of cinema is all about?

----------------------------------------
bandw from Boulder, CO
----------------------------------------

Here is a movie that perfectly captures a time and place. The time is the year between November, 1951 and November, 1952 and the place is Anarene, Texas, a small town in north central Texas. The screenplay was written by Larry McMurtry, in collaboration with director Bogdanovich, based on McMurtry's novel of the same name. Anarene is just south of Archer City, McMurtry's home town where the movie was filmed. McMurtry knows whereof he speaks, the movie has the feeling of total authenticity.

The story centers around two best friends, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges), as they pass from being high school seniors into adult life. Given their backgrounds, coming from broken homes and living in boarding houses, there is little idea that they will go to college. The movie details how the two handle this pivotal and bewildering time from being on the high school football team one year to being on their own without much of a safety net the next. In a wider context the movie is about larger transitions: from youth to adulthood for the young people, from a frustrated and bored middle age to an even less promising future for the older folks, and from a town with some social cohesiveness to a town dealing with the isolating effects of a bankrupt economy and the advent of television. The rather bleak prospects that Sonny and Duane face parallel the prospects of the town. You are made to think about transitions in your own life.

The movie is populated with many finely drawn characters, all acted with supreme skill. There is not a false note struck in the entire movie. By the end we know the characters so well that they seem real. Jeff Bridges was nominated for an Oscar, and I don't understand why Timothy Bottoms was not nominated as well, since his performance is of equal quality. Bottoms plays Sonny with such genuine good-natured charm and honest sincerity that it is hard to believe he is acting. And Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman both won well-deserved Oscars. Kudos all round to the entire cast.

The movie is beautifully filmed in black and white befitting the stark settings and story, and the time period. It is filmed as if it were made in the period portrayed.

If you have ever lived in a small town or if you grew up in the American heartland in the 1950s, this movie will evoke overwhelming nostalgia. But the story is so powerfully told that I think that for everyone it will evoke nostalgia for a time and place, even for that which they may never have known.

The town, as well as the movie, is held together by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) who owns the movie theater, the cafe, and the pool hall. In fact he owns just about everything there is to do in Anarene, except for watching the hapless Anarene High football team ... and sex. It is no wonder then that sex, in its many faceted varieties, plays a big role in this town, and in this movie.

There are so many wonderful and memorable scenes that it would simply require a small volume to recount them. One scene that grabbed me was when Sam and Sonny are at a lake outside of town, ostensibly fishing, and Sam reminiscences about old times, about when he came to the lake twenty years earlier with a lover. Sam makes the comment, "You wouldn't believe how this land has changed." The camera pans the surroundings and it is hard to see how this area could have changed much in the last thousand years, but Sam is clearly attuned to the subtle changes, since memories were impressed on him in a time of strong emotion. We all have clear memories from when and where we have been happy, even if it is a small lake in a desolate flat land. And Sam's specific comment can be taken to apply more generally to the basic theme of the movie. This incredible scene ends with Sam's saying, "Being a decrepit old bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous," and anyone who is not close to tears at that point will never truly appreciate the beauty of this movie.

Seemingly this movie should be depressing, but the effect is more of a melancholic look into the lives of ordinary people who are just trying to play the hands they have been dealt in life.

It wasn't until the movie was over and I was reading the credits that I realized how cleverly the music had been woven into the film. All of the music is from the time period and is a part of the action and not background music. It is played on home radios, car radios, truck radios, 45 rpm players, jukeboxes, and at a community Christmas dance. The Hank Williams song, heard on the radio in Sonny's old truck in the opening scene, "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do?" sets the tone for the music as well as the movie. There are great songs taken from over a dozen country and western classics from the era. Ruth (Cloris Leachman) is listening to Johnny Standley's quirky, "It's in the Book," (a unique and strangely satirical offering to be popular at any time, let alone reach the pop charts and sell a million records in 1952) during the final scene between her and Sonny.

Why is this movie so special? That's kind of like asking why one likes a certain piece of music or a painting. Everything comes together here in one of those magic moments - the acting, the filming, the story, the music, the editing - to create a simply-told and remarkably affecting work of art.

----------------------------------------
Jacob Rosen (bix171@comcast.net) from United States
----------------------------------------

Peter Bogdonovich's great love of film, combined with Larry McMurtry's superior storytelling (he wrote the novel and both collaborated on the script), is in glorious evidence in this elegiac study of life in a small Texas town in the early Fifties. Bogdonovich pays a heartfelt tribute to the America of John Ford and Howard Hawks but the subject matter is contemporary, anguished, appropriate for the time in which it was made. Filmed by the great Robert Surtees in a flat black and white that perfectly evokes the bleakness of rural Texas life and peppered with a fine soundtrack of the popular country hits of the time, Bogdonovich creates a mise en scene understated and keenly observant of the details. It's also filled with McMurtry's trademark mix of humor and pathos. The cast (including Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman) is letter-perfect but it's Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion who gives the film its center: in an overwhelming (yet masterfully restrained) performance, Johnson unforgettably absorbs the town's despair, loneliness and regret; his short monologue about lost love is delivered with such deceptive simplicity that its power sneaks up on you unawares. One of the great performances and one of the groundbreaking films of the Seventies.

----------------------------------------
Dennis Dullea (dennis@dennisdullea.com) from United States
----------------------------------------

A beautiful and heart wrenching movie that gets better and better as the years go by. I saw this when it came out in 1971, I knew it was good, but I didn't really understand how good or why. Over the years I have gone back and watched it again, and as my life changed I began to relate deeper each time I saw it. Bogdonovich was WAY ahead of the game on this one.

This is one of those rare movies that you can go back every five years and watch for the first time. Myself having been raised in Del Rio, Texas in the late 50's and early sixties, I can attest that this is a totally accurate picture of what coming of age in west Texas was really like for most of us.

----------------------------------------
Hitchcoc from United States
----------------------------------------

This is a really outstanding film. It is a director's movie, with every nuance strictly controlled by Bogdonavich. It's a sweaty, sad, depressing sort of film. The vitality of the town has been drained by decades of malaise. The kids feel hopeless. The adults go from person to person and have affairs and experience emptiness. There's some depressing football team that can't tackle. But mostly there is a street with dirt on it and a mentally challenged boy who likes to sweep. It is rife with symbols. This boy is trying to sweep away the dirt that is infesting the town, but he has no effect. As a matter of fact, he is victimized by the other boys in the town--part of their fun. We have the contrast of the rich family in town with the Ellen Burstyn character and, of course, her daughter played by Cybill Shepherd. The boys who are in a hopeless prison of the town's making are like a bunch of horny bulldogs. She is the queen in the town, but that's not much of an honor. These guys are going nowhere and she might just be there, like her mother, 20 years from now. The director builds a world that isn't pleasant, but it's certainly a total depiction of a place without a future. The movie theater represents a last connection with excitement and enjoyment. But nobody goes anymore.

----------------------------------------
sol- from Perth, Australia
----------------------------------------

A heartfelt, unbelievably frank film on teenage sexuality, it manages to capture the intensity and tumult of the feelings of its depicted young characters superbly well. The cast is excellent, playing each character out in a realistic and moving manner. Timothy Bottoms in particular displays one of the most earnest performances of all time, and the rest of the actors and actresses are so good in general that it is hard to single one particular one out. The film is superbly shot in black and white, which helps depict the entrapment of the characters' emotions, and to really purify the desire to express their feelings. Without doubt this is one of most honest character studies ever filmed, and it just gets better on a second viewing.

----------------------------------------
tfrizzell from United States
----------------------------------------

"The Last Picture Show" is an excellent motion picture on all levels. The film deals with the hopelessness of a small Texas town in the mid-1950s. All the people in the town are down for one reason or another. The only thing that could bring the town together, the high school football team, is an utter disappointment to all who care. And now the only shred of hope left in town, the old movie theater, is about to close its doors for good. Timothy Bottoms is a young man trying to decide what he wants in life. He has an attraction to classmate Cybill Shepherd, but she's involved with his best friend Jeff Bridges (in an Oscar-nominated part). However, Shepherd is not sure that she wants to spend her life with Bridges so she gets involved with Randy Quaid, a son of a rich landowner, and his friends. Bridges has the same thoughts about Shepherd and also struggles with his place within the town's landscape. Bottoms becomes involved with his basketball coach's wife (Cloris Leachman in her Oscar-winning role), hoping that she will fill the void he has. This does not work and he still has fixations on Shepherd, who somewhat gives in to him during the film. All in all, there is no real love in any of the characters and they all suffer due to this fact. Ellen Burstyn (also Oscar-nominated) plays Shepherd's mother, a woman that Shepherd does not want to be like when she's her age. Eileen Brennan is also on hand as the insightful waitress at the town diner. Perhaps the greatest connection within the town is the old wise cowboy who owns the theater and the diner. Ben Johnson (in a well-deserved Oscar-winning turn) shines and when he passes away it seems that the last real glimmer of hope within the town died with him. Everything in this film is almost perfect. It shows how the lives of people in a small community can overlap and intertwine. The fact that leaving the town is not a legitimate option to any of the characters only makes the story-line more heartbreaking and realistic. People who have lived in a small town should be able to relate to this film. To me this film was very accurate because I have lived in small Texas towns that are eerily similar to the town in this movie. Larry McMurtry's screenplay and Peter Bogdanovich's direction keep the film engrossing and intriguing throughout. However, it is the actors that make the film the true American classic that it is. 5 out of 5 stars

At 9 minutes and 54 seconds, Ben Johnson's performance in this movie is the shortest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
------------------------

Cybill Shepherd was cast with the option of backing out of her nude scenes if she so desired. She only agreed to do them after asking the opinions of three female costars - Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn and Eileen Brennan - who all thought she should do them.
------------------------

All the film's music (except for the closing credits and the live band at the Christmas party) is played in the background on radios, jukeboxes, or on a portable record player (the two Wichita Falls party scenes).
------------------------

All but one of the shots are at eye-level.
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich's introduction to this story was through actor Sal Mineo who had given him the novel to read by then little-known Texas writer Larry McMurtry. Mineo had longed to play a part in the film adaptation but felt he was by then a little too old for any of the principal roles.
------------------------

This film was one of the first to use already popular recordings by original artists to score a film. Featured here are songs by Frankie Laine, Hank Williams, Jo Stafford and others..
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich had originally offered the role of "Sam the Lion" to James Stewart, who liked the part but had already committed to a TV series and couldn't get out of it. The role was then offered to Ben Johnson, who took it eventually won an Academy Award for it.
------------------------

Cloris Leachman's last scene in the movie was printed on the first take without any previous rehearsals. She wanted to rehearse the scene but director Peter Bogdanovich thought it would ruin the scene if it was rehearsed. Ultimately his sense of direction paid off, as Leachman won the Academy Award for her performance.
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich left the location because of the death of his father and after he returned to the set, the first scene he shot was the funeral of Sam the Lion.
------------------------

The "last picture" shown in the movie theater was Red River (1948). In the original novel it was an Audie Murphy B-Western, but Peter Bogdanovich wanted something more dramatic.
------------------------

Film debut of Randy Quaid and Sam Bottoms.
------------------------

Upon selecting the town of Archer City, Texas, as a filming location, production designer Polly Platt and director Peter Bogdanovich decided that the town should have a bleak, colorless look about it. After considering several options, such as painting all the buildings gray, Platt and Bogdanovich consulted close friend Orson Welles about the viability of shooting the film in black and white. Welles simply said, "Of COURSE you'll shoot it in black and white!"
------------------------

Cybill Shepherd's film debut.
------------------------

According to Cloris Leachman the cause of her dysfunctional marriage was that her husband was gay. She claims a scene between her coach husband and the team's quarterback would have revealed that implicitly, but because of budgetary reasons was never shot.
------------------------

The film "Wagonmaster," whose poster is seen at the theater stars and pictures a young Ben Johnson.
------------------------

The movie is prominently featured in Stephen King's 2006 novel, Lisey's Story.
------------------------

The location was Archer City, Texas, hometown of Larry McMurtry, the author of the novel "The Last Picture Show". McMurtry and Director Peter Bogdanovich scouted several locations for the movie and Bogdonovich chose Archer City when McMurtry stopped there during the trip. The town remains much as it was during the filming. The Royal Theater was rebuilt after the filming of Texasville (1990), sequel to The Last Picture Show. The Royal no longer screens films but currently hosts The Texasville Opry, the Late Week Lazy Boy Supper Club and numerous plays and performances.
------------------------

Ellen Burstyn was originally considered for the role of Genevieve, but after meeting with Bogdonavich and reading for all three of the older women characters, he asked her to play Ruth Popper. Burstyn, however, preferred the role of Lois, and Bogdonavich told her to go home, think about whatever part she wanted to play, and call him the next day. She called him the next morning, telling him she still wanted to play Lois, and he agreed.
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich claims that seeing Cybill Shepherd on a magazine cover inspired his casting her. According to Shepherd he later viewed an old silent screen test of her shot by Roger Vadim.
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich used no music except popular songs from the period all heard in a naturalistic context over radios.
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich claims the crew disliked him because he always ate with the actors on location.
------------------------

According to Peter Bogdanovich, actress Sharon Ullrick (who plays Charlene Duggs) went through a lot of trouble with her parents and her husband because of her semi nude scene with Timothy Bottoms, which ended up in a divorce.
------------------------

Timothy Bottoms is the only male actor in the movie to have scenes with all of the four main actresses. Cybill Shepherd, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan.
------------------------

Tex Ritter auditioned for the role of Sam the Lion as his son John was considered for the role of Sonny.
------------------------

Peter Bogdanovich claims he edited the finished film almost entirely by himself, but had Donn Cambern do some minor work simply so they would have an editor's name on the credits.
------------------------

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #95 Greatest Movie of All Time. It was the first inclusion of this film on the list.
------------------------

'Ben Johnson was persuaded to accept the role of Sam the Lion by his friend John Ford. The taciturn Johnson had turned the part down three times because, according to Peter Bogdanovich, the part had "too many words."
------------------------

Jimmy Dean, the singer, was suggested by Peter Bogdanovich for the role of Abilene, but the studio turned him down.
------------------------

Location manager Frank Marshall doubled in the role of the football team's quarterback.
------------------------

Filmed mostly on location in Archer City, Texas, the city upon which the fictional town of Anarene was based. The swimming pool scene (the site of 'Cybill Shephard''s nude scene) was filmed at the Burns estate in Wichita Falls. Ironically, the inside shots of the Royal theater were filmed at the still-active theater in nearby Olney, Texas. At the time of the filming, the actual Royal theater was nothing more than a shell. Likewise, the Cloris Leachman character's house was located in Holliday, Texas. Anarene was a once a real town, just a few miles from Archer City.
------------------------

According to Cybill Shepherd's autobiography, both John Ritter and Christopher Mitchum were considered for the role of Sonny.
------------------------

Morgan Fairchild and Sissy Spacek were both considered for the role of Jacy Farrow.
------------------------

The film cast includes four Oscar winners: Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn; and four Oscar nominees: Randy Quaid, Peter Bogdanovich, Frank Marshall and Eileen Brennan'.
------------------------

child molester|high school|friend|texas|high school football|pool hall|father figure|movie theater|love|high school graduation|anarene texas|mentor|death|basketball|1950s|small town|coach|jealousy|graduation|breasts|subjective camera|character's point of view camera shot|femme fatale|raised middle finger|flatbed truck|depression|tumbleweed|whiskey flask|quarterback|broom|nude swimming|impotence|popcorn machine|english teacher|poetry quote|year 1952|convertible|sex in a car|undressing|year 1951|towel snapping|wallpaper|marital infidelity|sex on a billiard table|military enlistment|wristwatch|wichita falls texas|western music|watching tv|virgin|unfaithfulness|underage drinking|u.s. soldier|tryst|trailways bus|texan|teenage girl|teenage boy|swimming party|stop sign|stepfather stepdaughter relationship|stadium|song|sombrero|singing|singer|sheriff|secret|school song|school band|santa claus|rolling a cigarette|rodeo|rifle|retardation|restaurant|reference to sid caesar|reference to john keats|reference to imogene coca|reference to adlai stevenson|recording|record player|present|preacher|poem|playing pool|pill|pickup truck|piano player|physical education|perfume|peer pressure|party|older woman younger man relationship|older man younger woman relationship|oklahoma|oil truck|oil company|nostalgia|necking|naivety|mother son relationship|motel|money|mexico|mexican|mesquite|mercury the car|mentally handicapped person|marriage|male frontal nudity|making out|lord|listening to a radio|lake|kiss|kidnapping|jukebox|jail|illness|husband wife relationship|homosexual|hit by a truck|highway patrol|hard hat|hangover|gymnasium|gym class|gun|guilt|graveyard|graduation present|going steady|gay|garter belt|forty something|football team|football tackle|flirting|flask|fishing|fishing tank|fight|female frontal nudity|father son relationship|father daughter relationship|family relationships|employer employee relationship|ejaculation|drive in restaurant|doctor|doctor's office|doctor's bill|diving board|debt|death of brother|dancing|dancer|dam|crying|cowboy|cook|college|coffin|coffee|class|classroom|cigarette smoking|christmas present|christmas decoration|christian|chewing gum|cheerleader|chase|cemetery|cattle|cattle truck|bus|brother brother relationship|boyfriend girlfriend relationship|bourbon|book|bloody nose|blonde|billfold|bet|beer|breaking a bottle over someone's head|bank|apology|anniversary|alma mater|45rpm record|first time sex|wealth|ward|waitress|virginity|teenager|teacher|sexual awakening|self discovery|prostitution|oilman|neglected wife|mute|mother daughter relationship|maturation|infidelity|high school student|hero worship|football player|extramarital affair|ensemble film|disillusionment|cafe|athletic coach|americana|american dream|alcoholic|adolescent|female nudity|male nudity|bare butt|american football|friendship|coming of age|funeral|christmas|adultery|abandoned theatre|skinny dipping|elopement|korean war|eye patch|death of son|based on novel|

AKAs Titles:


Certifications:
Argentina:Atp / Australia:M / Brazil:14 / Canada:PA (Manitoba) / Canada:R (Ontario) / Canada:18+ (Quebec) / Finland:K-16 / Iceland:L / Italy:T / Netherlands:18 (orginal rating) / New Zealand:M / Peru:14 / Portugal:M/12 / Singapore:M18 / Spain:18 / Sweden:11 / UK:X (original rating) / UK:15 (video rating) (1992) / USA:R / West Germany:16 (f)