[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Last Picture Show on Friday, February 19. The show starts at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 for Members and students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace
Touch of Evil
The Dirty Dozen
The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg

In Picture Shows, Peter Bogdanovich was asked what he had learned from making a film like The Last Picture Show. He replied:

“I found I could do it! I’d been acting like I could, but I didn’t know if I really could. You live in fear that you can’t do it, and that it’s not going to be any good. And it never really is any good for me until I see it all put together. Was there a moment of doubt, ever? Several thousand. Right up until the two weeks of pre-filming rehearsals, there were times when I wondered if I should make the picture at all. I thought it was going to t be boring and dreary. I didn’t really know I could make that kind of picture. I wasn’t sure I could work with actors or get the kind of performances I wanted. So now, what does it come to? I’m a director. It consumes my life. Directing is everything. Making movies is everything? [1]

But what is “it” and what kind of picture was Bogdanovich really making here in the context to his other work as well as the work around him?

A member of the New Hollywood movement of the ‘70s (joining the ranks of Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah and more), Bogdanovich was influenced by the French New Wave, and especially for Bogdanovich, the Cahiers Du Cinema directors like Francois Truffaut.

Years before The Last Picture Show, he spent most of his time as a film writer — an outside looking in to the system — who developed a life-long friend in Orson Welles when interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichol’s Catch 22. [I mention this because a few weeks back, Bogdanovich made an appearance at The Toby Theater to talk about and introduce the viewing of Welles’ Touch Of Evil].

But it was Roger Corman who pushed Bogdanovich into the director’s world, hiring him as a Second Unit Director for The Wild Bunch. With people like Corman and Welles, all of the articles he wrote for publications and the support of his friends and family, there were a lot of people who had faith in the aspiring filmmaker to do just that  — make a film.

And it was not just any film Bogdanovich was making. If you look at the films being made that surrounded The Last Picture Show, colorful cult sensations like The Honeymoon Killers or Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, war films like M.A.S.H. and Apocolypse Now, and other strange reactions to the Vietnam War and the Hippy Movement, Bogdonavich’s vision was a simple but effective one.

When Bogdanovich ran across Larry McMurtry’s novel, he thought he was getting a book about film. Upon reality, he tossed it aside only to actually read the book and be impressed with how it affected him. His decision to make the film in black and white stemmed from a discussion with Welles who convinced him to make the film the way we see it. It gives a unique film noir presence to pop culture and American life. Being that this is a film about Texas, we get the feeling of Howard Hawks ghost is present. Cybill Shepherd even looks similar to Lauren Bacall’s image in To Have Or Have Not.

Film noir is dead, the ‘70s was a vehicle for protest and pushing the envelope, The Last Picture Show was a simple look to the past that within itself became embedded in time. It did not influence for the future, but remains as an imprint of great filmmaking.

No longer an outsider, Bogdanovich made a name for himself as a director has he retorts in Bogdanovich’s Picture Shows: “When you have a success, ou make any number of untold enemies, so now I’ve added an untold number to the ones I deliberately made, as Fritz Lang had once said, ‘you pay for what you get.’ [2]

No longer a follower, from the ’70s on, Bogdanovich became a leader in Hollywood who never looked back.

[1] Yule, Andrew, “Picture Shows: The Life and Films of Peter Bogdanovich” (Limelight Editions: New York, 1992).

[2] Harris, Thomas J. “Bogdanovich’s Picture Shows (The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Metuchen, N.J. & London, 1990).

Additional Resources:

Girish Shambu, “Cinema Elegy: Peter Bogdanovich and The Last Picture Show:” http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/last.html