Wednesday Minute
No. 9 | January 13, 2010

At the Movies

Our theme this week
Movies set in movie theaters

Featured this week
Monday         —   Sherlock Jr.
Tuesday         —   The Purple Rose of Cairo

The Last Picture Show

The essentials
The Royal is an old movie house that sits along a dusty, wind-blown road in small-town Texas, circa 1951.  Though several shots of the exterior are seen during the film, just two scenes take place within the theater.  They’re important ones, one near the beginning of the film, another near the end.  The cinema is a key focal point, from which The Last Picture Show draws its name.

Director Peter Bogdanovich selected a couple of very different films for the movies that are playing within his 1971 period piece.  The first is Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride (1950), a story many miles from the reality of this Texas town.  High school senior Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) meets his girlfriend at the theater, and while his lips are kissing hers in the back seats, his eyes are following the glamorous Elizabeth Taylor on the big screen.  The other film is Red River, the 1948 western from Howard Hawks, with John Wayne and his men about to begin an adventurous cattle drive north to Missouri.  It’s a cowboy story, much closer to home, but hardly within reach for Sonny and his friend, Duane (Jeff Bridges).  A year has passed, and both teens have learned the damage that a pretty girl in a small town can do.  Their friend Sam is dead, a boy has been killed, and the Royal is closing.  Duane is leaving Sonny for the war in Korea.  Sonny has no one left but the older woman who he’d had an affair with, then abandoned.

The Last Picture Show is hardly the kind of happy fantasy that movies often depict.  Among other things, it’s a reminder of the great gulf between the heroic lives playing onscreen at the local cinema and hard-bitten reality of the people who watch them.

Beyond the final credits
The Last Picture Show was the third novel by Larry McMurtry, who had many books adapted for movies.  In 1987 McMurtry wrote a sequel called Texasville, picking up the stories of the characters a couple of decades later.  Bogdanovich directed the screen version in 1990, reuniting much of the cast, including Bottoms, Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Cloris Leachman, Randy Quaid, and Eileen Brennan.

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MAD Announcement:
MAD Puzzle No. 2 has arrived.  If you like crosswords (and even if you don’t), you can find it at the Puzzles page.

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The Last Picture Show (1971)
Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Red River

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MAD FilmFest 101 Hint:
Two movies released 30 years apart share the same title, each featuring a different Our Gang actor.  (There’s one other film title with an Our Gang actor.)

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Quote of Note
“You fathers will understand.  You have a little girl.  An adorable little girl who looks up to you and adores you in a way you could never have imagined.  I remember how her little hand used to fit inside mine.  Then comes the day when she wants to get her ears pierced, and wants you to drop her off a block before the movie theater.  From that moment on you’re in a constant panic.  You worry about her meeting the wrong kind of guy, the kind of guy who only wants one thing, and you know exactly what that one thing is, because it’s the same thing you wanted when you were their age.”
— George Banks (Steve Martin), Father of the Bride (1991)

…58…59…60.