Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Cybill Shepherd
Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I have the most fleeting of memories of catching it on TCM at some point in the early `00s or late `90s. At the time, it didn’t really connect with me. That was likely because I was living through my own, twisted variation of the story at the time, in so much as I was young and so singularly obsessed with my life as it presented itself at that moment.
Did I Like It: It must have been difficult to be Peter Bogdanovich. He came to filmmaking by way of film history, and chiefly as an acolyte of Orson Welles. Here, he was viewed as a young auteur who may never outpace this early success. Toward the end of his career, he was still talking about Welles, and even committing his anecdotes to film, with The Cat’s Meow (2001). Here, too, he became so enmeshed in McMurtry’s world, that he left his wife for the ingenue he had discovered to play Jacy Farrow, the most calamitous temptress in southern literature since Scarlett O’Hara. He’s always been a filmmaker dictated to by others; a passenger in his own career.
But, as with the discovery of Shepherd, Bogdanovich is swinging for the fences in every aspect of the film. Ever actor is perfectly cast (I hesitate to single any particular performer out for attention, but I will say that when I read that Cloris Leachman won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, I may have visibly nodded, even though no one was in the room at the time) The cinematography is stark, wielding the stark contrasts of black and white photography far more clearly than any color photography could ever hope to… It all brings to mind one other, young filmmaker who was able t ogive everything to a film so early in their career.
Even now, I can’t help but compare him to Orson Welles. It must have been hard to be Peter Bogdanovich.