Picture Perfect
Almost thirty years ago, tiny Archer City was invaded by Hollywood: Peter Bogdanovich and company came to town to film Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. Here, Bogdanovich, Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and others in the cast and crew look back at the moviemaking experience that changed them—and us—forever.
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Scenes
Bogdanovich: We were ready to shoot [the scene where Duane and Sonny are about to drive down to Mexico], and there was this line Ben’s supposed to say—after [Sonny says,] “Oh, we’re just gonna drink beer and tequila”—and he says, “Well, you catch the clap, you’ll wish you hadn’t drunk nothin’.” And he says, “You, you, you— catch the miseries, you’ll wish you hadn’t drunk nothin’.” And I said, “Cut. You catch the miseries—what the f— is that?” And he said, “I don’t wanna say that other word.” And I said, “Come on, Ben. What’s miseries?” He said, “You know, like diarrhea.” I said, “I don’t know that anybody’s gonna get that. Plus, it’s not as funny as clap.” And he said, “My mother might wanna see this picture, and I’m not gonna speak those dirty words.” He wouldn’t do it for about two takes, and I said, “Come on, say it with clap.” And he said, “All right, goddammit.” So he said it.…
There were a lot of things we didn’t plan. The most famous example for me was the scene by the tank dam when Ben has his big scene about the past, during which the sun came in and out about five times, really almost on cue. I mean, if somebody had asked me, “Where would you like the sun to come out and where would you like it to go back in again?”—it was absolutely extraordinary. It was the first take, which was a long piece of film. It was three or four minutes; there are some cuts in it now. And right toward the end of the scene, when the sun had done all these extraordinary things, the clouds and the sun, Tim Bottoms forgot one of his lines, and it was a long, like, twenty-five-, thirty-second pause, which effectively screwed up my notion that we wouldn’t have a cut in it. And, well, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, we got it, we printed that, and I said, “Let’s do one more, to be safe.” We did one more, and of course there was no pause but there were also no pirouettes from the sun, and anyway, there was no contest. I think Ben won the Oscar for that scene.
Chason: It fell to my department to find a photo double for Cybill [for the nude swimming party scene], somebody that was shaped like she was, and Peter wanted the actress, the photo double, to have tits that looked as much like Cybill’s as possible. But Cybill would not allow a photograph or anything and wouldn’t let me see them, so then she tries to describe to me in words what her tits look like. And they took a tape measure and measured and everything, and I went out looking for girls to double her. And I have to say it was not that unpleasant a task. I went to the talent agencies in Dallas, and they didn’t blink an eye. They brought girls in and, you know, the girls would take off their tops and show their breasts. I wouldn’t do the tape measuring myself. We had a woman there, like a nurse. But ultimately, if you look at how that scene was shot, it would have been extremely difficult to pull it off. Peter was able to talk Cybill into actually showing her breasts in the film and stripping down entirely, although you don’t see anything below the waist.
Bogdanovich: The nude scenes were nervous-making. All of them. I didn’t really want to shoot it that way, and the producers really wanted it that way, and I reluctantly did it. I was uncomfortable with it, but we did it. We had a lot of trouble finding an indoor swimming pool for that one scene; we just couldn’t find one anywhere in Archer City or Wichita Falls. Finally somebody found one of those little kind of health spas in Wichita Falls, and we rented that. And we needed some kids who wouldn’t mind getting stripped for the scene. And so we found some who agreed to do it, and I thought, you know, that I was going to be very delicate. All these kids, they came out buck naked; they didn’t give a shit. And I was just looking up at the sky, saying, “Oh, shit.” I was embarrassed; they weren’t. Cybill and I were the only two who really didn’t enjoy it. And those are the scenes that I’m still not that thrilled with.
Shepherd: I just recently looked at the movie, at his long version where he put the footage back in and he cut out one shot of my breasts. It’s a funny, moving film that was very shocking and has more sex in it and more nudity than film today—you hardly see it anymore. And actually I ended up preferring, you know, like more nude scenes with me. You know, if you’d asked me—well, up until this last year, I would’ve probably said, “Oh, doing those nude scenes was so uncomfortable.” But God, I look great. I—I would leave it all in there.
Leachman: (on the scene in which her character first sleeps with Sonny): So the three of us got in the room together, this tiny little bedroom, Peter and Timothy and I, and the first thing out of anybody’s mouth was Timothy saying, “I ain’t taking off my clothes for this scene.” So starting with that, we began to figure out how to do it. Each of us would go to a separate corner and undress down to our underwear, and then we would get into bed, but we wouldn’t take off our underwear; another set of underwear was planted there. So Peter says, “Action,” and we start taking off our clothes and we get into bed and he throws out his underwear, the plant, and I take off my bra and panties and throw them out. Completely. My character did it, I didn’t. Of course we had to do it again; we couldn’t stop laughing.
T. Bottoms: She was my mom’s age. Sort of like being intimate with your mother. Very weird. And you know that Cybill Shepherd is just outside.
Bogdanovich: When I met Marlene Die-trich about a year and a half later—we were flying to Denver, and she was on the same plane with us, with Ryan O’Neal and me, and Ryan was bragging about me. And so he says, you know, “He directed The Last Picture Show. Didya see that?” And Marlene says, “Yes,” and Ryan says, “What’d ya think?” And she says, “I thought if one more person strips slowly I vill scream.” I must say I kind of understood what she meant, because that did make me a bit nervous; I thought there was an awful lot of sex in the picture.
Shepherd: Well, the first scene was very tough for me because of two reasons. I couldn’t keep my eyes open ’cause it was very glary out by the lake. It was a love scene in the convertible with Tim Bottoms. Now, the first time I ever acted on-screen, I had to let this guy feel me up. He’s very attractive, Timothy Bottoms, but frankly, I mean, I was not an experienced actress. The close-up—I think probably I look as good there as I ever looked on-screen. But it was kind of wild to be making out and have this guy feeling up my breasts, and of course we rehearsed quite a bit. And I tell you, we rehearsed. It was a very sexy thing, I mean, because Jeff Bridges is very attractive and very kind and very fun and Timothy Bottoms was, you know, very attractive and Peter Bogdanovich was very attractive. It was wild! It was just like—you didn’t have to do drugs; the sexual thing of it was so, it was so exciting. I think I was aroused the whole entire shooting schedule, but don’t let my mother read this article, ’cause she says, “All you do is talk about sex.” Well, I don’t care. I think that talkin’ about sex is fun.
Bogdanovich (on the restored scene in which Jacy and Abilene, the oil-field foreman memorably played by Clu Gulager, have sex on the pool table): I had actually taken it out myself. Even now I’m not sure about it, but it’s in there. It’s an interesting scene, and it does help to explain Jacy’s character a bit. It shows that she had an orgasm, and all that. At the time, I just thought it was too much about sex.
Chason: (on the classroom scene in which the teacher is trying to interest the students in Keats’s poetry): [Bogdanovich] wanted Sonny to look out the window and see some dogs screwing in the school yard. Well, the propman just threw his hands up in despair and refused even to try, said it couldn’t be done, forget it. And that’s what led Bogdanovich to say, “Well, I’ll bet Gary Chason can do it.” So I went to one of these old rancher guys and laid out my problem, and you know, it didn’t take me any time, I was amazed. This ol’ boy said, “Yeah, I got a bitch who’s gonna be in heat next Saturday”—totally mysterious to me. But he knew. I mean, that’s a man who really knew his dog. I said, “Okay, good. Do you have a male that she will mate with?” “Oh, yeah, a buddy of mine’s got one.” Those dogs cost me $25 a day; I mean, they were expensive. But then of course we weren’t asking any of the other extras to do anything near like what we were asking the dogs to do.
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