Book To Film - THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

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November 8 The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich USA 1971 118 mins)
After making a promising debut with the Roger Corman-produced Targets (1968), film critic and historian Peter Bogdanovich found his true voice with this adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s elegiac novel about teenagers coming of age in a dying Texas town in the early fifties. Co-scripted by Bogdanovich and McMurtry, The Last Picture Show became an instant classic of the American cinema, featuring an ensemble of veteran character actors and emerging new talents. It was a star-making vehicle for Jeff Bridges, Cybil Shepherd and Timothy Bottoms while Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Best Supporting Actor and Actress Oscars, and Ellen Burstyn, at the age of 39 (and 12 years into her career) became an ‘overnight sensation’, soon to star with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974).

The director made many bold choices which all paid off handsomely. Firstly, to shoot in luminous black and white with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Robert Surtees and then to film in McMurtry's small hometown of Archer City located in north-central Texas near the Oklahoma state line. The last picture show watched by friends Duane (Bridges) and Sonny (Bottoms) at the end of the film, is Howard Hawks’ Red River, a hugely influential film - and director - for Bogdanovich. But the unsung heroine of this achingly beautiful…