Well into reading "The Last Picture Show" I thought to myself, "I must see that movie" and was just about to press the Buy-It-Now button on ebay when I (again) thought, I had better look for it in my DVD library first"
Sure enough, I already had a copy of this movie of almost cult status in my DVD library and I shall watch it tonight. Watch the trailer here.
It's a coming-of-age story set in Archer City in Texas where the author was born in 1936, grew up in the 30s and 40s, and died in 2021. It's called Thalia in the 1966 novel and Anarene in the 1971 movie. The real Anarene, eight miles from Archer City, is now a ghost town but Archer City, population 1,848, still exists, with its diner, the pool hall, and the Royal theatre without which there is no place to go except to bed.
What I didn't know was that Larry McMurtrey was a prolific writer and had written, amongst many others, the epic Wild West frontier tale, "Lonesome Dove", which was also made into a movie. Thanks to YouTube, it is now in the public domain:
And there is a sequel to "The Last Picture Show", also filmed by Peter Bogdanovich (who, incidentally, made another one of my favourites, "Saint Jack") called "Texasville" which was a unqualified bomb upon its release. I looked up the trailer and the DVD on ebay, and I am tempted!
