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The Last Picture Show, Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Columbia Pictures,
October 3, 1971 (US)
Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich
Starring: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, and Randy Quaid
Time is the sneakiest of thieves, especially adept at stealing the best years of our lives. It taunts us, leaving behind a dirty old pile of used up memories, constant reminders of what is gone, reminders of the way things were. When we were not so old. When memories didn’t mean so much. When we were young. When memories didn’t mean anything at all.
Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson): You don’t even care if it was your last game. You ain’t ever gonna get stomped for your own high school ball team again. Where’s your school spirit?
What the hell are we supposed to do with all these damn memories anyway? Pack ’em away in a trunk for winter just so we can dust them off in the spring? Sure, sure, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Lois Farrow (Ellen Burstyn): I guess if it wasn’t for Sam, I’d have missed it, whatever it is. I’d have been one of them amity types that thinks that playin’ bridge is about the best thing that life has to offer.
But nostalgia is a wicked game, luring us to greener pastures with absolutely no regard to the cost. It laughs at our inability to bridge the gap. Yearning to relive the moment, we’re left wounded, bullet holes in bleeding hearts. We can’t be the face in the picture. Not now. Memories are snapshots made of invisible ink, portraying nothing more than allusions of a lost life. They are mere reflections of truth. We aren’t as alive now either. We’re no longer there and we are no longer here. We are merely silhouettes on a timeline: the nervous virgin, the scorned lover, the cheery schoolgirl, the jaded mother, a boy in the yard, a grizzled old man in the mirror. It is the story of our lives, a tale of experiences that lands us on shores from which we can never return.
Sam: If she was here I’d be just as crazy as I was then in about five minutes. Isn’t that ridiculous? …
No, it ain’t really. Being crazy about a woman her is always the right thing to do. Being a decrepit old bag of bones, that’s what’s ridiculous. Getting old.
The real kicker: transitions come without warning. Our naivety renders us helpless as we make the most important decisions of our lives. Our innocence was only on loan. It is ripped away in a flash and returned to the great unknown. It all happens so fast. There is no time to brace ourselves. No time to grasp significance.
Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman): When I was twenty years old, I thought hairy-chested football coaches were about it.
It can be cold, this trip down memory lane. A film’s title, The Last Picture Show, flashes quickly, unexpectedly. A panoramic shot of a seemingly empty town surfaces. The old movie theater is front and center. It is closed now, vacant except for a burst of whispering wind that blows over the emptiness. The stories of our lives fade to black.
Teacher (John Hillerman), quoting Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-G
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