One of the key films of the American seventies cinema renaissance, The Last Picture Show is set in the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen. This aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybill Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds, including Cloris Leachman’s lonely housewife and Ben Johnson’s grizzled movie-house proprietor. Featuring evocative black-and-white imagery and profoundly felt performances, this hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal work in the career of invaluable film historian and director Peter Bogdanovich.
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Supplements
- Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show, presented in both the original theatrical version and a black-and-white version of Peter Bogdanovich’s director’s cut, produced in collaboration with cinematographer Nicholas von Sternberg
- Audio commentary from 1991, featuring Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybil Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall
- Audio commentary from 2009 featuring Peter Bogdanovich
- “The Last Picture Show”: A Look Back, (1999) and Picture This (1990), documentaries about the making of the film
- A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a 2009 Q&A
- Screen tests and location footage
- Introduction to Texasville featuring Peter Bogdanovich, Cybil Shepherd, and actor Jeff Bridges
- Excerpts from a 1972 television interview with director François Truffaut about the New Hollywood
- An essay by film critic Graham Fuller and excerpts from an interview with Peter Bogdanovich about Texasville, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich biographer Peter Tonguette