Sunday Brunch @ Japhyjunket: The Last Picture Show Ed. Note: Starting today, Japhyjunket will be featuring a "Sunday Brunch" each week. In the spirit of the Sunday Brunch, Japhyjunket will serve up some of life's little pleasures for you to enjoy over some eggs benedict and mimosas. As a major snowstorm threatens to hit the NYC area, this week's brunch is designed to be enjoyed from the comfort of your home. Only a trip to your local non-Blockbuster video store is required. In 1971, a little known director took a cast of unknowns to the unknown town of Wichita City to film "The Last Picture Show", a film that, while it was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two, has become once again, unknown after years of being unavailable on video. The film is now on video and DVD, and it's easy to see why at the time it was released, it was called "the most important work by a young American director since Citizen Kane". Set in Texas in the fifties, "The Last Picture Show" is an honest and sexually frank depiction of one year in the life of town that is barely alive when we first meet it, and is on life support by the time the picture ends. In stark contrast to the town's poverty and desolation, the people who inhabit Abilienne, Texas are full of passion and desire, even if it is boiling under the surface. The story focuses on two friends, Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges), both the stars of a losing football team, and both with eyes for the innocent, yet withering Jacy Farrow (Cybil Shepard, in her screen debut). Sonny works for Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) who owns the local pool hall, diner and movie house, which are the only sources of entertainment in the town. Along with Sam, three older women: Jacy's comfortably bored mother (Ellen Burstyn), a wise and bitter waitress (Eileen Brennan) and the sexually frustrated coach's wife (Cloris Leachman) mirror the younger sets lives and seem to point to their own future. This, of course, is all the stuff of soap opera potboilers, but the way it is handled by director Peter Bogdanovich, is stunning. Sonny finds himself in a clandestine relationship with the coach's wife, awkwardly getting undressed on separate sides of the bed. Sonny then drops her when Jacy takes an interest in him, even though he seems to know that Jacy's interest in him is out of boredom. There is a scene where Jacy's mother is in her home and she hears a car coming into the driveway. Recognizing the engine's sound as belonging to the car of her own lover, she races to the door in excitement, only to see her daughter in the doorway. Without saying a word, we see Jacy's mother register confusion, realization, jealousy, disappointment and then maternal concern. Jacy makes out with Duane, who she is going steady with, only to appease him before she announces she's going to a pool party with a rich kid (Randy Quaid). He gives her a watch that he has spent months saving up for and then, when she gets to the pool party, she jumps into the pool with the watch on. She shakes it to see if it's still working, but catching the eye of a boy, she abandons the effort and smiles at him. These moments are so beautifully realized, so abundant and so cohesive, that you find yourself becoming intimately aware of the rhythms and limits of these characters' lives. They are all bound to the town, even though it can barely sustain them and really, it's one of the most involving things you'll ever see on film. In stark black & white, the film is shot and lit in a way that is at once luminous and gritty. If Ansel Adams were to have photographed people instead of landscapes, I imagine it would have looked something like this. The film made its cast into stars, but it in some way, by virtue of being so perfect, also set them up for failure. Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepard have had moderate success, while Timothy Bottoms, who is the heart and soul of this picture and who's every glance from his sad puppy dog eyes is pitch perfect, has spent the past few years impersonating George W. Bush in things like the cancelled Comedy Central sitcom "That's My Bush!"and "The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course". Director Peter Bogdanovich even went so far as to create a sequel to the film called "Texasville", which was universally panned. It seems that the film, like the town in the film, has made them who they are, but refuses to let them leave. Get it @ Amazon.com!

posted by Japhy at 4/06/2003 01:21:00 AM || #