The Last Picture Show (1971) on Netflix
Anarene, Texas, 1951. Sonny Crawford and Duane Jackson are best friends finishing high school. Duane dates Jacy Farrow, while Sonny drifts into an affair with Ruth Popper, his coach's wife.
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- Rotten Tomatoes98%
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Plot summary
Sam the Lion owns the café, the pool hall and the movie theater in Anarene, Texas, the only places to go in a small oil town that is dying. Among the high school seniors there are Sonny Crawford and Duane Jackson, whose friendship has lasted for years. Duane is seeing Jacy Farrow, whose rich parents dislike him; Jacy's mother Lois Farrow urges her daughter to find a boy who can get her out of Anarene, and Duane is not that boy. Sonny, who recently split from Charlene, begins an affair with Ruth Popper, the unhappy wife of his coach. Their friend Billy, a mentally disabled young man, sweeps the main street.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Last Picture Show (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After discussing the proposed film with Orson Welles, his houseguest at the time, Bogdanovich agreed with him that shooting the film in black and white would work aesthetically, which by then was an unusual choice.
- Bogdanovich decided the book did not interest him and put it back. A few weeks later actor Sal Mineo handed Platt a copy, saying "I always wanted to be in this, but I'm a little too old now", and recommended that Platt and Bogdanovich make it into a film.
- Bogdanovich edited the entire film himself but refused to credit himself as editor, reasoning that director and co-writer were enough. Told that the Motion Picture Editors Guild required an editor credit, he suggested Donn Cambern, who had been editing Drive, He Said in the next office.
- Bogdanovich obtained a rare waiver from the Directors Guild of America to have his name appear only at the end of the film, after the actors' credits, as he felt it was more meaningful for the audience to see their names after their performances.
- Irish musician CMAT addressed the breakdown of Bogdanovich's marriage with his wife and collaborator Polly Platt, which he ended for the film's lead actress during production, in the song "Peter Bogdanovich" on her 2022 debut album.
- Bogdanovich trimmed seven minutes from the 1971 release because Columbia had imposed a firm 119-minute limit. With that requirement removed in the 1990s, he used the fuller 127-minute cut on LaserDisc, VHS and DVD releases.
