The Last Picture Show (film) at Tampa Theatre
Hosted by The Tampa Bay Movie Fans Meetup Group
Details
High school seniors and best friends, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges), live in Anarene, a dying Texas oil town. The handsome Duane is dating local beauty, Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), and Sonny is having an affair with the coach’s wife, Ruth (Cloris Leachman). As graduation nears, both boys contemplate their futures. While Duane considers the army and Sonny takes over a pool hall, they both struggle to plan their escape from this dead-end town and take in the last screening at the local cinema.
Many critics have commented that Bogdanovich’s direction was informed by his intense study of and admiration for classic American film directors, especially John Ford, Orson Welles and Howard Hawks. He was editing a documentary about John Ford while filming, and the connections in setting and shot selection are clear. But The Last Picture Show is as critical as it is worshipful; Bogdanovich wants to use the visceral, sensual pull of the movies as a glimpse of a different (better) life as the frame through which we observe the devastating collapse of his characters’ lives, but he recognizes the part that the fundamental dishonesty of the fantasy of film plays in that collapse, the mutually assured destruction of following your dreams.
The film is 118 minutes and starts at 7:30pm.
PLEASE arrive early and meet in the lobby to say Hi.