Enjoy a great script and great performances from a film nominated for a hatful of Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing.

Warning: In 1973, largely because of the skinny-dipping party scene, the film was banned in Phoenix, Arizona.

IN-BETWEEN

The Last Picture Show is a movie that is characterised by in-between time.

The characters are between adolescence and adulthood, staying and going; the era stands between the end of the Second World war and the start of the Korean war, the town Anarene stands between living and dieing, and Bogdanovitch himself stands between a career as writer and that of film director.

DIRECTOR BOGDANOVITCH

This cusp of change might be what eventually drew Bogdanovitch to the project. When he first read the book, of the same title by Larry Mc Murty, he turned it down. But an actor friend Sal Munro urged the project on him and Bogdanovitch’s wife Polly Platt produced a draft script from the text (she didn’t take a on screen credit).

ORSON WELLS

Orson Welles, who was a good friend, was staying with Bogdanovitch and suggested the film would work in black and white; so the project took shape. Welles seems to have hung about the Hollywood indies at this time because when he made King of Marvin Gardens, Bob Rafelson was paying Welles’ bill at the Exchelsior Hotel.

So Welles features as a kind of creative wraith passing through the movies of this era. Just as Welles had done with Citizen Kane, Bogdanovich chose a largely unknown cast peppered with some experienced character actors.

CYBILL (SHEPERD)

Cybill Shepherd was a model who Bogdanovich spotted on the cover of an issue of Glamour magazine (probably June 1970). Bert Schneider, the producer, found a screen test Shepherd had done with Roger Vadim about a year before in which she was playing scenes from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with no sound, and dancing silently to the Rolling Stones song Brown Sugar. After filming had finished Bogdanovich admitted to Shepherd that the only time he ever doubted his decision was when he saw her in that screen test.

TIMOTHY BOTTOMS

Bogdanovich liked Timothy Bottoms for his sad eyes, and recalls that Bottoms was being highly touted at the time by his agent who said he had the lead in a Dalton Trumbo movie Johnny Got His Gun (1971). Timothy Bottoms did indeed have the lead in Johnny Got His Gun, a part in which he played a quadriplegic and terribly mutilated World War I soldier who could not see, hear, move or speak.

JEFF BRIDGES

Bridges got the part of Duane Jackson because in the book he is not a particularly likeable character, and Bogdanovich thought that Bridges' naturally fun personality would give the character extra depth and warmth, and make him less disagreeable.

PLOT? POP

If you want to know the plot of this great movie, you should all just come down and see it. It’s one the all time great high school movies, and one of the first movies to have a pop only soundtrack (includes: Blue Velvet, You Belong to Me, and Slow Poke!)