I Don’t Understand the Point of The Last Picture Show

[quote] but who could blame her. Her son was Billy Mumy, serr8ng fire to dogs, turning men into jacks in the box & wishing them way into the the cornfield.

OP, you’re a bad man! A very bad man!

[quote]Billy Mumy

It is Billie Mummy.

As a kid I watched this film get all sorts of attention at the Oscars.

I watched it recently for the first time and was underwhelmed.

Oh for fuck's sake! The point is, it's the LAST PICTURE SHOW.

The LAST one. No more after that!

"The Last Picture Show" is an elegaic coming-of-age story set in a dying Texas town. Like many New Hollywood films, it didn't follow the old Hollywood formula where everything is wrapped up in tidy, happy endings. Instead, it follows a European storytelling sensiblity where things happen and then it ends ambivalently, with no real sense of closure, and life just moving on. TLPS was revelatory at the time, but today's audience would probably not get the appeal.

I guess the point or moral of the story is simply to relish those small, fleeting moments in our lives.

Virtually every scene in the book and movie is about sex. Most of it unsatisfactory save perhaps for Sonny and Ruth Popper. The film is bleak and rather flat and humorless.

Seeing Gary Brockette's dong.

It’s an absolutely great movie.

Cloris Leachman is brilliant in it. Her last scene is as good as acting gets. One of the best Best Supporting Actress winners ever.

You just KNOW those people would have been Trumpers.

I just recorded it on PBS, channel 13 in New York, but before it started it was a warning that it had been edited for content, so I guess I'm not gonna get to see that dick shot

nah r10. Most seem like the type who'd be too depressed and detached from the world to vote at all.

Brockette's member doesn't show up on certain DVDs -- the frame sometimes cuts it off (ouch!).

Ben Johnson's monologue by the water is really incredibly beautiful. Leachman is great, but then so is Burstyn and Eileen Brennan, and the whole cast frankly.

OP, this might help...

Or, maybe this, especially the comments.

It is one of most perfectly cast and incredibly well-acted movies ever filmed. Even Cybil Shepherd, who is not a great actress, is perfect. The film captures what it was like to grow up in a small, dying town better than any movie ever made. it was a break from old Hollywood’s usual unrealistic, sanitized treatment of life in small town America - an anti-Andy Hardy sanitized version of life. Also, it was produced a few years before Hollywood was forever changed because of Star Wars. Post-Star Wars, the emphasis was on cranking out science fiction sequels, mindless car chasing, action hero crap.

Or, I could just try and explain....

Title 'The Last Picture Show" is a metaphor for the end of an era, place or something, In this case you have two high school seniors Sonny Crawford and Duane Jackson entering young manhood and leaving their adolescence behind, period. It is their "last picture show" because now each is sorting out what they are going to do with rest of their lives, in particular to get the fuck out of that small town.

It isn't just the heroes, but all the young men and women in their graduating high school class are mostly sorting out the same issues. The gorgeous and luminously beautiful Jacy Farrow surely was destined for something better than being a barefoot and constantly pregnant wife in that hick town.

Suggest you read the book which is also brilliant.

It was made so that I could someday watch CYBILL on Tubi.

OP, it’s no Age of Ultron or Thor Ragnarock! Films I’m sure nobody gives a shit about now.

R19 = trite, clichéd

Sorry R20, did you require something? Maybe a dictionary?

[quote] Virtually every scene in the book and movie is about sex. Most of it unsatisfactory

Ah so a slice of life film.

Not liking the movie doesn't mean you're in the thrall of superhero garbage.

I agreed OP - until this time, my third viewing. Maybe I was in the mood because it was a rainy cold night - but it finally struck me as a great movie. Actors were spot on - every one of them. Especially for that time, it’s brutal honesty - sexual and emotional - was impressive. Felt very real by bursting stereotypes of the holier than thou Texan small town people. Really enjoyed it.

One of the great films of the 70s. If you want to understand the postwar era in rural America and the transition to the new urban world, this is it. A masterwork. Don't like it? You'll always have Miss Congenitaly or whatever shit you normally watch.

The American pseudo-new wave films were always pale imitators of their French and Italian cousins.

I’ve never seen Miss Congeniality R25, or Thor movies. My sister & I took my 4 year old nephew to the drive in movies to see Star Wars. He fell asleep. My sister & I were so bored we left before the end. That was the last space movie I ever saw. The only 2 sci-fi movies I’ve ever seen are Terminator & Terminator 2. I liked Terminator but Terminator 2 left me unimpressed wit( the genre.

And I don’t do cartoons.

OP, DON’T enter that movie theater! That movie - it’s ... it’s a COOKBOOK!!

You obviously didn't grow up in a small town, one dying due to lack of industry or motivation or money. Sex and other peoples' business is all there is for them, and if you don't get out while you're young, you don't get out at all.

I don't get what you missed about it, OP, given your compassionate, empathetic summary of it. I can't imagine your lack of understanding or appreciation for it has anything to do with you. It must be that it's a terrible film and for 5 whole decades since its release, everyone else must've mistakenly thought this was a good film. Maybe a few night courses at a community college might help you to understand things like art and literature.

Saw it at the movies. HATE HATE HATED IT.

Critics were easily impressed in those days by black and white movies without John Wayne in them.

Last Picture Show is a rich, layered film. Lots going on. Notice how the films at the picture show are classics- Father of the Bride, and Red River. What we see on the television screens, which are putting the picture show out of business are lame sitcoms and an awful game show called Strike it Rich.

Many examples of greatness in this movie- Sam the Lion defending the Sam Bottoms character- banning Sonny from his restaurant, and lifting the ban. Sonny and Duane going down to Mexico for a debauched night, and inviting Sam- who so badly wants to go, but knows his turn is over. It's Sonny and Duane's time now. And he dies later that night.

But the masterpiece of LPS is the final scene. The one where Sonny returns to Ruth Popper. I don't know how any gay man born before 1970 couldn't love and relate to that scene. My GOD- look at the PAIN etched on Cloris Leachman's face- then, a moment of hope- followed by a final realization that Sonny is just a child who has no idea about the world, and the pain and turmoil he has caused Ruth. "Never you mind, honey. Never you mind." Devastatingly sad, haunting, and in it's way, beautiful.

Go ahead and call me pretentious for loving this movie. I love it anyway.

The dong was not in the movie as originally released. A dick was too much in an American film at that time. He was cut off at the waist. The guy's girlfriend was full frontal however. It was noted at the time. You saw her lustrous pubic twat but not his manhood. By the way Gary came to a very unhappy end

Oh, you can see Randy Quaid's sitting by the side of pool at one point from a bit of distance. He was kind of cute back then. That's still in the frame.

I have always wanted to see this and just have never gotten around to it. I remember Pauline Kael thinking it was a brilliant film.

To those who have read the book, should I do that first?

Gary Brockette died of cancer in 2010 IIRC.

He had a nice backside as young man though....

I'd start with the prequel, Billy Mumy starring in The Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life."

Another shot of nude Gary Brockette

I read the book but was NOT ALLOWED to go see the movie because it was rated R.

The book made it clear that the football coach was a pervy pedo on the road with his players, and that his wife was horny.

Also that Texas farm boys had lots of sex with the cows and sheep. Lots.

I woulda gladly sucked off Tard Bridges.

Variety sums it up best, Cloris Leachman's performance in Last Picture Show is a master class in acting.

Largely known by younger generation for her comedy roles in film and on television many don't know that Ms. Leachman had some pretty credible serious drama acting chops.

Ruth Popper at first in angry (and rightfully so) with Sonny, but then she changes after realizing what a poor broken inside and hurting young man he is after all. It would have been easy and very satisfying for Ruth Popper to allow things to pick up again where they left off, but someone had to be the adult in that kitchen.

Anarene, Texas is a prison that's got both Sonny and Ruth doing hard time. Their only chance at any happiness is to get the fuck out of that place, but that's just not possible for host of reasons at the moment. So Mrs. Pooper will go back to being a lonely frustrated (and childless) wife of a closeted gay man. Sonny will run his newly inherited business eking out a living from a town that is slowly dying around him.

R32, Also, for the final picture show screening, Bogdanovich chose the scene in "Red River" where the tyrannical John Wayne character hands over the reigns to Montgomery Clift, telling him to take the cattle to Missouri (from Texas). Some have said this was a subtle nod to Old Hollywood passing the baton to New Hollywood. Most of Bogdanovich's film are homages to filmdom's past but done with a modern, auteurial style.

I believe the first movie they go to see in the film is Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride at her most radiant.

R40

Abortion was still illegal, and birth control such as it was not very reliable. In a small town like Anarene a boy got a girl pregnant he married her, period and end of story. Also there just weren't enough girls around ready, willing and able.

Even poor Ruth Popper had to be careful fooling around with Sonny. If she suddenly became pregnant the women of Anarene would have put two and two together and turned on her like *that*.

Like every town there was always a whore or two, but that cost money.

Tidbit:

"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."

Op’s parents are related.

[quote]Largely known by younger generation for her comedy roles in film and on television many don't know that Ms. Leachman had some pretty credible serious drama acting chops.

After [italic]The Facts of Life[/italic] went off the air she aged out of Phyllis Lindstrom-type roles and aged into Mother Dexter-type roles.

R47

First you're another sloe-eyed vamp. Then someone's mother, then you're camp.

And of course you [italic]Follies[/italic] queens find a way to tie it in since that was the same year.

Suzanne Somers was very beautiful and perfectly cast as the most bored and pretty girl in town. She won a supporting Oscar for her role as Stacey. TV stardom and Broadway soon called her away. It's a shame that she made only a few films after the Last Picture Show.

I have "The Last Picture Show" DVD signed by Miss Cloris Leachman.

I haven't seen it but intend to get around to it. I have seen several other Peter Bogdanovich films and didn't get into them much.

The Podcast "You Must Remember This" did a multi episode series on the career and personal life of Polly Platt. Peter really sounded like a pompous, needy asshole whose most successful films were the ones where Polly had great artistic influence and that his career was lackluster after she quit working with him.

And Cybill Shepherd was a major gash for flagrantly fucking Peter during the filming of Picture Show without caring about the effect it had on Polly, who was directly working with her.

^^yeah that was all HER fault ^^

Has anyone commenting here watched Texasville? If not the original version for release, the extended version that Bogdonovich put together?

OP, if you don't understand the point of this movie, then wait'll you see [italic]The Point[/italic], also from 1971.

[quote] I read the book but was NOT ALLOWED to go see the movie because it was rated R.

Off topic, but when West Side Story came out, my mother wouldn't let me go see it because the ladies at her beauty parlor told her there were drug addicts and juvenile delinquents in it.

A seminal film, made at just the right time. Love it.

[quote]Off topic, but when West Side Story came out, my mother wouldn't let me go see it because the ladies at her beauty parlor told her there were drug addicts and juvenile delinquents in it.

You must be from Utah. They consider Coca-Cola a controlled substance there.

Rural NC, r58. Parents were fundie Baptists. Teetotalers too. Just as bad.

That I understand.

[quote]Go ahead and call me pretentious for loving this movie. I love it anyway.

R32 It was a popular hit (in the Top 10 box office hits of 1971) plus it won 2 Oscars and was nominated for 8. Not an obscure art film. So why would you be called pretentious for liking it?

I grew up in a small town and much of the film is very relatable. The world revolves around high school football games and local social events. The smart, talented, and ambitious young people move away to find better lives. The less smart, less talented, less ambitious people -- the complacent ones -- stick around and look for love, sex, and companionship, because that's all there is left to do out in a rural area.

My own hometown is slowly dying just like the town depicted in the movie. What you are watching in The Last Picture Show is people in a state of desperation.

What you should do when watching The Last Picture Show is have a nap.

R50 - What are you talking about?

This is one of my all-time favorite films, for reasons already listed above. I love a great melancholy film about the passage of time. And I desperately want to fuck Timothy Bottoms circa the making of this movie.

Ben Johnson was terrific and deserved that Oscar.

Bogdanovich was only 31 when he made this film.

Well before 17 my friends and I were going to R rated movies. We weren't telling our parents what we were going to see just going to the movies or going bowling. They didn't ask a whole lot of questions and the theaters just wanted to sell tickets so there were no questions about age and this was before multi-plexes were common everywhere so the R rated movie was the one you were going to see..

[quote]Bogdanovich was only 31 when he made this film.

Bogdanovich stopped making good movies when he was 33

He made a comeback with "Mask" later on. Cybil and the tragedy around Dorothy Stratten and bad movies stopped his career for a number of years after some brilliant movies at the start.

Mask is not a good movie. Just okay. Cher is good at changing her hair and nose and teeth and she has a basic elemental kind of truth in her talent. But she always plays herself. I'm sure she chose the role for the wig and leathuh mini skirts. She unveiled her new BIG teeth in that movie? The cheek implants came in Mermaids. Which film premiered her not bad, but not great nose job? Before my time.

Quite aside from Cher, Mask is not a successful movie. A movie of the week on the teevee is more like it. The blind girl falls in love with the "boy" with all the obvious plastic prosthetics stuck to his face? And Cher gets to swear at the 25 year old kid's principal. She's so rebellious! That's her brand.

[quote] Cloris Leachman is brilliant in it. Her last scene is as good as acting gets

I thought she overdid it.

You thought wrong.

[quote] Virtually every scene in the book and movie is about sex

Exactly. There is more to life than sex. I could understand if just the teenaged boys in the film were all about sex ...... but it’s the whole town. No family scenes, no talk of current events like the Cold War or TV/radio shows or real relationships or people connecting with each other about anything but sex. Only 5 people in the town. There’s a high school with plenty of kids in it, but none of them or their families ever go anywhere near the town. Just the same dank losers.

So...people who have empty sex for empty reasons are...empty. Got it.

No wonder the town is dying. Why did that guy deserve the Oscar? For telling a story about an affair he had years ago. It wasn’t all that. He had an affair with a young woman when he was a young man. Ok. Got it.

Nobody seemed real in the film. They seemed like a college writing exercise about characters. Like they were so into their characters that they couldn’t relate to anyone as else anything other than a character written by someone else who pops in and spends a few minutes. Like they all had autism & the only thing they knew how to do was have sex or talk about sec.

Suzanne Somers was great as Stacey though, R73. There's life if that one.

R73 OurTown would be more your speed.

My father was born in the early 1930s in rural Oklahoma. He said TLPS was very realistic.

It's exactly like the book, except one chapter about the boys having sex with cows. McMurtry is a great writer, and the movie is an amazing adaptation.

Joyce DeWitt would've killed as Jacy. And imagine the nude scene....

Joyce is Jacy's MOTHER!

Suzanne as Sammi the Lioness!

The magic of Suzanne Somers is her old soul but innocent presence. She is a natural beauty but her intelligence shines through in everything she does. Films, stage and prestige televisions loss is medical science's gain! What a breadth of achievements that woman has. With her beauty undiminished. She could still play Stacey today! Cybill Shepherd was only briefly considered.

Bogdanovich is a pretentious dick. So self obsessed.

R73 The film is about how sex is used as an escape from boredom and for Jacy a way to improve her social standing. I agree with you that you get no sense of the town as a community; how various people interact. We never see Sonny or Duane's family and Sam the Lion is lionized too much and the effect the closing of the movie theater will have is not felt. The novel was better and Hud (1963) also based on a novel by Larry McMurtry was more effective.

R82 Bogdanovich has basically followed the pathway of his mentor Orson Welles. Brilliant first act. But never able to follow it up, really.

I think he and Dorothy Stratten's sister struggle financially these days. I remember something about Quentin Tarantino putting him up in his guest house, for a time.

He's really come to quite a sad end.

R84 Wan't it rumored that his wife had a huge input into his films. the wife he cheated repeatedly on.

To go from this and [italic]What's Up Doc?[/italic] to [italic]At Long Last Love[/italic] in less than five years. That had to hurt.

Doesn't anyone remember the interview he gave about 2 years ago? He was entertaining but vicious. Spilled the tea, he did. Yes he's broke and hideous and hates everyone but Audrey Hepburn.

Come on, the fact that he starred Cybil, Dorothy Stratten and her made to order sisterwife in his "films" tells you the man is no artist or auteur. His blind spots are lethal.

Paper Moon is a pretty good film though. His best.

[quote]Yes he's broke and hideous and hates everyone but Audrey Hepburn.

Whom that bitch Emma Thompson hates, so that covers pretty much the entire human species.

[quote]Wan't it rumored that his wife had a huge input into his films. the wife he cheated repeatedly on.

RUMORED? Bogdanovich's wife Polly Platt was his right arm - credited or not. She was a production designer and writer, and continued to work with him after he left her. Once that ended, his work, shall we say, declined

Polly Platt:

Her films for him as a production designer include “The Last Picture Show” (1971), in which she conjured a dust-bitten Texas town in the 1950s; “What’s Up, Doc?” (1972), starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal; and “Paper Moon” (1973), starring Mr. O’Neal and his daughter, Tatum, in which Ms. Platt brought the Depression-era Midwest to life. She also collaborated with Mr. Bogdanovich on “Targets” (1968), the first film he directed.

Ms. Platt was nominated for an Academy Award for art direction for her work on “Terms of Endearment” (1983), directed by James L. Brooks. She wrote the screenplay for “Pretty Baby” (1978).

She was also known for her long professional association with Brooks. She was executive vice president of his production company, Gracie Films, from 1985 to 1995. The company’s pictures on which she was a producer or executive producer include “Broadcast News” (1987), “The War of the Roses” (1989) and “Bottle Rocket” (1996).

It's one of those films that I can appreciate for being well-made, but I can't love. Like the "Godfather" films, I don't identify with anyone on the screen, I don't particularly like any of the characters, and it's like nothing in my own life. There's just nothing personal there for me.

Peter B is a nasty egoist who no one should care about. Ugly cruel man deserves to be left broke.

Timothy Bottoms also turned into a surprisingly bitter guy. Wanted to only do high end stuff. “Above” so much. But he came from money and bought a ranch in Big Sur - so he did ok financially. But still sounds bitter that he didn’t make it big like Bridges - mainly because he was an arrogant, pretentious p, spoiled kid.

Can we get back to the cow fucking? I’ll never get this, but I suppose any excuse for horny boys to get their dicks out can’t be completely overlooked.

R93

Males of all ages doing it with cows, sheep, horses, and god only knows what other animals goes back ages. People used to say venereal disease was introduced to Europe by sailors who fucked cows or whatever in the new world or maybe while on ship.

When there isn't access to women men have only limited options. Go with another man or boy, their right (or left hand), or simply go without round up the top three choices.

R93 It was heifers in the novel.

R95, which are cows.

Bogdanovich was having problems getting locations with right feel for TLPS. He began by painting everything grey or equally drab colors to get the effect he was going after, but that wasn't working out so well. PB rang up his mentor and idol Orson Welles to sound out possibility of filming TLPS in b&w. Welles enthusiastically agreed and that was how it was done which proved a success.

Keep in mind this was some ten years after Hollywood mostly abandoned black and white for mainstream films, so Bogdanovich doing so in early 1970's for TLBS was a big risk.

Jeff Bridges was a wonderful movie actor from the start of his career; Timothy Bottoms was OK and never really improved.

It might make a good musical, something with a country twang.

The camera loved a young Cybill Shepherd.

r58 No they don't. They are not allowed tobacco and alcohol but they can drink caffeine but a lot of them don't. There is no rule against drinking coke

[quote] Come on, the fact that he starred Cybil, Dorothy Stratten and her made to order sisterwife in his "films" tells you the man is no artist or auteur. His blind spots are lethal.

He sure seems like something of an artist to me, having directed Targets, TLPS, and Paper Moon within such a short period.

Lots of bitter weirdos on this site come out of the woodwork when there’s a thread about a person from the 60s or 70s. What is it about you old queens that makes you hate everything? Is anything ever good enough? Are there directors around today who are better than PB was in his heyday?

Last Picture Show and What's Up Doc? are FANTASTIC. Paper Moon is solid.

Maybe some people only have 3 movies in them. I remember at one point, he directed the made-for-television sequel to To Sir, with Love. I mean, how low can one fall? I guess it's not as bad as Orson Welles doing that Pia Zadora movie, but it's pretty bad.

He sunk himself. He's something of a tragic figure. Nowhere near as respected as Welles in the '80s, it seems like PB is going to die basically penniless.

But, he's going knowing he contributed one work of art, and two solid comedies.

"What is it about you old queens that makes you hate everything?"

Three guesses R102 which word above answers that query.....

[quote] But he came from money and bought a ranch in Big Sur

Two ranches in Big Sur.

The TCM Bogdanovitch podcast with Ben Mankowitz is worth a listen. PB credits Polly Platt's role in the movies they made together, and owns up to how shittily he treated her when he took up with for Cybill.

[quote] Like the "Godfather" films, I don't identify with anyone on the screen, I don't particularly like any of the characters, and it's like nothing in my own life. There's just nothing personal there for me.

The thing that got me about The Godfather was Diane Keaton & Al Pacino as young lovers. Kay is from a totally different background and thinks the mafia stuff is funny....both she & Michale laugh & make fun of Luca Brasi, the “old country” way of doing things. We’re like Kay & Michael, looking in at this strange culture from the outside. They’re safe. They’re sane and normal and are going to have a good life. Michael will be a successful lawyer with a pretty wife....

But Luca Brasi will soon be murdered and Vito Corleone will be the target of an assassination. It’s real knife-in-the-boot stuff, not some silly bunch of old fashioned guys playing bocci ball & honoring their ancestors. They’re criminals and we watch as Michael gets drawn in and becomes the worst man of them all. Sonny will be murdered. Fredo will put the family in danger and Michael will decide what to do about it.

Then you look back & realize he could never have been on the outside of the Corleone family because he was going to be their lawyer. He was going to be representing them (along with Tom), which means he was always going to be involved in criminal activity. Those happy young lovers ... didn’t they know? In the back of their minds, couldn’t they reason it out? He was going to be a mob lawyer and she was going to be a mob lawyer’s wife. Michael was going to make the mob businesses legitimate. Turn them into legal businesses, like “sanitation” and construction. But didn’t he know that he would have to be corrupt to do that? Deal with politicians in order to legalize graft, bribery, theft?

So at the end, when we see what Michael & Kay have become .... at first we’re shocked, looking back on the two happy innocents. How did those two people turn into this?

But it had to end that way because they weren’t innocent. They were both embarking on a life of corruption . So in that sense, The Godfather had meaning for me. You can’t fool yourself. You can’t pretend you’re not part of the criminal crowd. You can’t laugh at these murderous men. It will all come back at you.

The Sopranos had that aspect. The psychiatrist tells Tony — you can’t continue this. You can’t pretend you’re just a construction union guy in the burbs with regular guy problems. Tony’s panic attacks and fears for his family are based in his family’s business of crime and immorality. You can’t pretend you’re not part of it and get away with it.

So I like the moral message. It wasn’t obvious to me at first that Michael & Kay couldn’t have a good life. Other people can have a corrupt influence on you, but you do have a choice. At the end I realized they chose their lives. They suffered because of the suffering they caused in others.

R106, Ben Mankowitz is a horse's ass. I've heard some of the podcast, he really sucks up.

[quote]Nowhere near as respected as Welles in the '80s

Welles was not respected in the 1980s. He was doing card tricks on Merv Griffin and bad TV commercials. Two of his movies were respected, not him.

And that's how you discuss a movie R107. Excellent post. Bravo!

I fell asleep, R107.

R96 Just being specific. They're young females that have not had offspring.

R103, Polly had more films in her than just those three.

I know that people have been saying that Polly was what made those films. But when you listen to the You Must Remember This series on Platt uses a lot more interviews than is usual for that podcast (as well as generous excerpts from Platt own unpublished memoir) so you get a much more specific idea about what she did on those films, Pretty Baby, Say Anything, Witches of Eastwick,etc as well as her role in introducing James Brooks to Matt Groening's work.

Loved Bogdanovic in my twenties, now in middle age he comes off as maudlin. The commentary track on They All Laughed is great, if only for the anecdotes about the Audrey Hepburn Ben Gazarra affair.

[italic]Noises Off…[/italic] was a good movie and it’s a shame that Touchstone buried it in theaters with little promotion to spite Steven Spielberg (Amblin produced it). I didn’t even know it existed until it came out on video!

Maybe Spielberg can bail him out again with one last chance at another movie. Or did they have a falling out, too?

R112 see R90

R108: At least Orson Welles got to be in [italic]The Muppet Movie[/italic].

Orson Welles, broke and obese, lived in a wing of Bogdanovich's Bel Air mansion for a time; the article below describes how he ate four quarts of ice cream, along with a lot of other juicy anecdotes. Ironically enough, it seems that Bogdanovich, now broke, has lived with Quentin Tarantino and Brett Ratner.

He really had a long, long fall. Attributes a lot of it to PTSD.

Bogdanovitch is over 80 years old now...how many does he have left?

Bogdanovich on himself and Cybill Shepherd in the 1970s:

"I’ve seen pictures of us; I look like an arrogant, attractive guy, and she looks like a sexy girl."

Now get a load of the attractive guy

Am I the only one who thinks that Cybil Shepard was never that pretty?

I mean she's blonde/blue and slim and generally acts like an idiot, so I understand why straight men like her, but really, the face isn't all that. Big blue eyes, yes, but a blobby nose and thin lips and heavy jaw aren't all that.

Cybil Shepard never was that pretty. She was styled as if she were, but her face was completely unmemorable.

And her hardness worked for some roles, but it meant she could never play a character that the audience identified with. She was always the object desired, never the person doing the desiring.

That made it hard to put her in the lead. When they tried on TV, the audience chose instead to identify with Bruce Willis or Christine Baranski instead.

Cybill was okay in the looks dept, even pretty in her youth, a certain type. But compared to fat fug Bogdanovich, she was GORGEOUS.

These days I constantly confuse Cybil S. with Jessica Lange.

Whoa, read between the lines of that interview. Bogdonavitch was a sexual harasser. All of his pretty, unknown female leads had to sleep with him. Cher probably refused to fuck him and it irked him that he couldn’t assert his dominance over her. I wonder if he fucked Cloris? She wasn’t a young, pretty unknown model, so probably not. He was a predator.

Bogdonovitch....Sees pretty model on magazine cover in supermarket checkout line.....tells someone to find her for him. Like procuring a hooker from a pimp. “Find me this girl. I wanna fuck her...and maybe put her in my movie.” Think of all the fucked models who didn’t make it into his movies.

He’s gross, refusing to let his dead ex-wife take credit for anything even though she was a co-creator because he sucked without her. And claiming he gave a few thousand dollars to Thai girls and made them promise not to be prostitutes anymore after he fucked them....how magnanimous of him.

Platt co-wrote Bogdanovich's first feature, "Targets", and also did the costume and production design. It's one of his best movies, in spite of some truly terrible performances (including his own).

Cybil is a very elegant milkmaid.

I loved the extensive podcast, so interesting. And while I find PB to be a wretched person, he was excellent in The Sopranos.

[quote]Bogdonavitch was a sexual harasser. All of his pretty, unknown female leads had to sleep with him. Cher probably refused to fuck him and it irked him that he couldn’t assert his dominance over her.

This is perfunctory behavior for film directors, exposed in a NYT article a couple of years ago after the Me Too era started. I mentioned it in a Woody Allen thread and somebody freaked out with "there's no evidence!" bullshit. For Woody, for Bogdanovich, for all movie directors, it was (is?) customary.

What no mention of the hot Timothy Bottoms?

I am a huge fan of the MCU films.

I also love this movie.

For me, Cybill Shepherd proves that you can be remarkably beautiful yet boringly bland at the same time.

For a supposed heterosexual he sure looks like a bitchy queen in R117's thumbnail.

Fuck Bogdanovic, his ascots, and his shitty Howard Hawkes impression. The man is vile, and should not be tolerated! There, I said it!

[quote]Bogdanovic

[quote]Howard Hawkes

Oh, dear!

R123, Well, both were dishy blonde model-actresses who hooked up with their directors, so I can see the confusion. However, one is more exalted than the other, acting-wise.

I'm so glad someone above mentioned Friedkin. I confused them for years.

Timothy Bottoms showed full-frontal a few years ago, along with one of Patti Duke-John Astin kids and Robert Culp's son, in "Welcome to the Men's Group", currently on Amazon Prime. Long nude scene of the group.

R137, Yes, he sure did.

R137, and also in "Pound of Flesh." Mr. Bottoms is not shy about exposing his bits for the camera.

I wish he had done that in The Last Picture Show.

yuck

OP's summation amounts to an absurdist reduction, or reductive absurdism. Take your pick. Anyway, it's something one can do (and that HAS been done) to the best films ever produced, of which "The Last Picture Show" is one of the most recent examples.

[quote]Fuck Bogdanovic, his ascots, and his shitty Howard Hawkes impression. The man is vile, and should not be tolerated! There, I said it!

He wears bandanas, not ascots, he has an h on the end of his name, and Howard Hawks doesn't have an e in his name.

And all of that is meaningless R143. Do you have anything more than pedantic corrections to contribute?

R144 Bandana

By the way, in talking about Bogdanovich's films, I don't think anyone has mentioned Directed By John Ford. One of the best documentaries about a Hollywood director (see next post).

Directed By John Ford:

For a man of his age Bottoms pubes are awfully thick and dark like he was 17.

NOW he goes full frontal not when he looked like this....

Middle age to early senior Timothy Bottoms was one sexy daddy.

^ He looks like a rabbit.

Timothy Bottoms? Yeah I heard he does.

Let's not forget the daddy Timothy turned into.

Someone is mentioning Peter Bogdanovich in the same breath and John Ford? I’ve heard it all now. Jesus, get a hold of yourselves.

(And I like some of PB’s stuff, he’s a good actor and I liked The Cat’s Meow and some of his smaller works.)

[quote] My father was born in the early 1930s in rural Oklahoma. He said TLPS was very realistic.

What did your father say about having sex with cows?

[quote]Someone is mentioning Peter Bogdanovich in the same breath and John Ford? I’ve heard it all now. Jesus, get a hold of yourselves.

Bogdanovich directed the documentary "Directed by John Ford", that was mentioned/linked. It was done in the 70s, was narrated by Orson Welles, and included interviews with Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and James Stewart. It was revised in the 2000s to include interviews with Maureen O'Hara, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Walter Hill, Martin Scorcese, and Harry Carey Jr.

*and an interview with Ford himself.