The Last Picture Show

1971 coming-of-age drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Teens in a tiny, tired Texas town pass time.

Perhaps I was too young at 20-something to appreciate this when I saw it mumble-mumble years ago. Not enough life had passed since I was young and aimless to when I was slightly older and aimless.

It opens with a tumbleweed, an apparently non-functioning stoplight, dilapidated buildings that can only belong in a world of black and white, and this thick wind that is somehow visible, and these characters are lucky if they're inhabiting a ghost town and probably a little less lucky if they're in some sort of dusty purgatory. Old people are feisty about their high school football, teenagers are perpetually horny and not interested at all in the poetry of John Keats, and we're back to a time when America was great and gym teachers could call their students pissants, accuse them of running like a goddamned goose, or give words of wisdom like, "If you all didn't jack off so much, you'd be in shape." A truck struggles to life, and Hank Williams haunts the air with his voice.

The adults are clinging to memories; the kids are creating memories that they will be the only things they can cling to in thirty years. The adults pine for lost times and loves; the kids are reaching for a something they don't even understand because they don't seem to have any role models who have shown it to them. Just watch that nearly heartbreaking silver dollar story of Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion, that zoom in and then out as he shares it. It's almost a warning to the kid, isn't it? Like, you'd better watch it or all you're going to have when you're my age are a handful of grubby stories.

Most of this movie is made up of snippets of memories. A collective urging Billy Boy on as he prematurely ejaculates over portly Jimmie Sue, a bra hung on a rearview mirror, two dogs going at it outside the window of your classroom while your teacher prattles on about Keats or whatever the hell he's talking about, another dog chasing down your car, a hand against a garter belt and ensuing blue balls, diving board stripping, greasy burgers, a nap in a sombrero, your shadows on a white coffin. Snippets of moments.

Man, Jeff Bridges really hasn't changed all that much. He almost grumbled in his youth, didn't he? A young Randy Quaid is also in this. His "I did it last Easter" in reference to that aforementioned diving board is positively nightmare enducing. And look at Cybill Shephard, speaking of diving boards! The way she is lit in this movie makes her look almost otherworldly, and it's obvious this purgatory isn't holding her.

This is gritty in a glitzy Hollywood way, and it manages to be entirely realistic melodrama with the exception of a moment when a kid doesn't want to sleep with a virginal Cybill Shephard.

Anyway, I'm older than I was when I first saw this. And I'm older than I was when I first started writing this. And my window of opportunity for showing off my goods on a diving board is likely closed.