Picture This

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1995 by Robert S. Rothenberg

Direct Cinema Limited / 57 minutes / $34.95

In 1970, director Peter Bogdanovich and his crew of actors and technicians descended on Archer City, Tex., the small town where author Larry McMurtry grew up and the setting for his novel, The Last Picture Show. The film version went on to receive eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, with veterans Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman winning for their supporting roles. This fascinating documentary provides an intimate behind-the-scenes look at how Hollywood's invasion impacted on the townspeople's lives and, to an even greater extent, affected those of the filmmakers.

Before the project was completed, Bogdanovich split up with his wife, Polly Platt, the movie's production designer, and began an eight-year relationship with Cybill Shepherd, the young model he had cast as the female lead despite her total lack of movie experience. Meanwhile, Timothy Bottoms, the moody co-star, developed a romantic fixation on Shepherd, which was unrequited. Add in the resentment of many of the town's citizens over what some perceived as an unfair depiction of life there and the spreading of "rumors and gossip" because of McMurtry's semi-autobiographical basing of characters on former schoolmates and acquaintances, and it is amazing that the film was made at all, much less such a successful one.

In 1989, Bogdanovich and much of the original cast returned to Archer City to film McMurtry's sequel, Texasville. The interviews made during the shooting of both pictures, combined with footage from the two movies, provide a rare inside look at the filmmaking process. Bogdanovich, Platt, Shepherd, and Bottoms are surprisingly frank and open about their feelings and actions, and comments by cast members Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, and Leachman reveal their awareness of what was going on and how it influenced the picture. The resulting story behind the story probably could serve as the basis of a screenplay in its own right.