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By Brian Willson
My dad grew up in in West Texas. I grew up in Central Texas. Somewhere in between these worlds, in time and space and generation, lies the town of Anarene, just south of Wichita Falls. A fictional North Texas town, made famous in The Last Picture Show, one of the best movies of my lifetime.
As The Last Picture Show opens, a blue norther is blowing through. I've experienced blue northers: first the north sky grows a deep slate blue, then comes an insistent wind, and the temperature drops 30 degrees in five minutes. They're omens, warnings, portents. This particular norther arrives in the fall of 1951, a month or two before I was born. The movie came 20 years later, when I was about the same age as young actors Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, Randy Quaid. It was controversial. Had full-frontal nudity. Was filmed in black-and-white. Like every other male my age, I fell in love with Jacy.
I knew girls just like Jacy (Shepherd). I knew boys like Duane (Bridges) and Sonny (Bottoms). I knew "old" folks like the coach's wife (Oscar-winner Cloris Leachman), Jacy's mom (Ellen Burstyn), and ol' boys like Sam the Lion (Oscar-winner Ben Johnson). This picture show, placed a generation behind mine, nonetheless told a story I was living at the time—squeezed in and around football season and Dr Peppers and country songs and impulsive trips to Mexico and scary foreign wars.
I watched The Last Picture Show the other night for the first time in 35 years. It felt exactly the same—but for one exception. I fell in love this time with Jacy's mom.
Brian Willson is a member of the Saltwater Film Society Program Team and owner of Three Islands Press in Rockport; he holds a Radio/TV/Film degree from The University of Texas.
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