Saturday, April 4, 2009

AFI Dallas special presentation: Texasville, hosted by Peter Bogdanovich

By John P. Meyer

I arrived about an hour early at the Magnolia on Friday (April 3) to make sure I could secure a decent seat for the special screening of the first-ever, public-invited director's cut look at Texasville. With director/screenwriter Peter Bogdanovich in attendance, no less.

Photo by John P. Meyer

Peter Bogdanovich and Michael Cain

I guess due to the mid-afternoon screening time, coupled with the fact that most folks were either slaving away at the office or recovering from a week of constant film festival activity, the house was not packed as I'd expected it to be. People continued to trickle in, though, and by the time the movie started most of the seats were filled.

Shortly after settling into what I considered to be the best seat in the house, I found myself waving and saying "howdy" to Fort Worth resident Barry Corbin as he strolled by, resplendent in western duds and cowboy hat, and took a seat with his lovely escort a couple rows forward. (Being a gentleman, he naturally removed his hat.)

Michael Cain, CEO and artistic director of AFI Dallas, arrived up front to introduce guest of honor Peter Bogdanovich, who briefly explained the story behind the original release of Texasville (1990) and told us why he thinks it was mishandled by studio execs at the time.

Seems the original plan was to schedule a wide re-release of The Last Picture Show ('71) to set up the opening run of Texasville, which is a true sequel to that book/movie in terms of both characters and dramatic content. But - in their infinite wisdom (or purse-strings-based churlishness) - the powers-that-used-to-be decided to just eliminate a bunch of the references to the previous film and characters from the Texasville movie and release it as a stand-alone.

As a result, Bogdanovich says, the tone of the released version - sans melancholic references to the original story - is too light-hearted, lacking the thematic weight that it was intended to carry.

And thus this special screening, which employed the use of laserdiscs (the only format on which the complete film is currently available) translated through the Magnolia's state-of-art electronic projection equipment. The resulting product - while not crystal clear - proved nevertheless serviceable, and offered a true look at what the original motion picture was supposed to be like.

Texasville opens with one of the most effective establishing sequences ever: we find ourselves gazing out at the sere, ragged landscape of West Texas as the camera does a slow pan past oil pumpers and a seeming infinity of sun-baked sagebrush.

As the camera creeps around its axis, we hear a radio news broadcast playing in the background that sets the time as effectively as the visuals have set the place: Reagan is president, OPEC is cranking up to corner the world market on petroleum products, etc. - it's 1984, and George Orwell's imagined repressive totalitarian government is nowhere in sight (though the dystopia he envisioned - at least on a small-town level - may not be far off; stay tuned).

Suddenly, we hear the boom of a high-powered firearm (hard to tell what kind at first, because it's a Hollywood Foley artist-created report, and thus totally removed from real-world analogue) - followed by another, and another, as the camera finally settles on the most elaborate two-story dog house we've ever set eyes upon. Which is clearly the target of the reporting firearm, as pieces of the superstructure fly off it at each blast like toothpick shrapnel.

Nice touch: a dog can be heard howling plaintively following each concussion.

Cloris Leachman and Jeff Bridges in Texasville

Cut to Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges), laid back in a hot tub, sighting down the ridiculously long barrel of a Model 29 "Dirty Harry" .44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world" (though not anymore - in fact, it never was to begin with, but it makes for a great line of dialogue). Behind Duane we see the expansive brick facade of his country manse, from which emerges his wife, Karla (Annie Potts). Karla expresses only mild concern over the doghouse-decimating target session, which tells us a good bit about a) her innate level of forbearance and b) the established routines of the household.

The rest of this jury-rigged (Bogdanovich's words) director's cut version of Texasville - all two hours and 45-some-odd minutes of it, by my best estimation - proves to be more of a multi-character incidental than any sort of coherent narrative presentation with a carefully-orchestrated beginning, middle and end. The story centers on the character of Duane, who has established himself as a successful oil man in the small town of Anarene (filmed - as was The Last Picture Show - in and around Archer City), only to have a string of dry wells and the declining price of oil threatening to drag him into financial ruin, as banker Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) tries to call in his $12 million note.

Cybill Shepherd in Texasville

Other characters making 30-years-later return appearances (20 years later, in terms of actual non-movie real time), include Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper (who now serves as Duane's office manager) and Timothy Bottoms as the troubled Sonny Crawford - whose troubles are growing steadily more profound, given that he sees movies in the sky and pines for the companionship of folks long deceased (notably Sam the Lion, Ben Johnson's character from Picture Show).

Most significantly, we witness the return to Anarene of high school homecoming queen-turned-movie-actress Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd, fresh from her five-year stint on Moonlighting and bringing a dollop of that Maddie Hayes off-kilter goofiness to her role here). Between Jacy's reacquainting herself with the Anarene-ians (and more or less seducing away Duane's entire household); Duane's attempt to salvage his finances (and his declining self-image); and Anarene's elaborate celebration of its centennial (complete with rodeo, parade, staged dramatics (Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, for cripe's sake!), you've got the major story elements in a rather voluminous, if not downright unwieldy, nutshell.

On the story line outskirts, Duane's son Dickie (played by Dallas native William McNamara) threatens to de-throne his ex-football-hero dad as the local Lothario, courting with youthful vigor the same batch of bored, attractive, middle-aged married women that his father is attempting to keep a handle (or something) on. As the son outpaces his father, we can see it as a bit of the old McMurtry fatalism emerging from the cinematic cracks.

Photo by John P. Meyer

Peter Bogdanovich: thoughtful

As Bogdanovich noted in the Q/A after the movie, all of the dialogue comes from the McMurtry novel on which the film is based - and this may be one of the weaknesses of the film, it turns out. No slight intended to McMurty's dialogue - it is, indeed, poetic and revelatory of character - but there's just SO DANG MUCH OF IT included in the movie, lending it more the feel of a series of filmed conversations than a solid motion picture entertainment.

Still, the cleaned-up widescreen release of the film would be well worth seeing were it ever to become available, primarily due to the incredibly accurate depiction of small town Texas life and ethos, where the Dairy Queen serves as the center of social interaction. It don't get no truer than that.

Photo by John P. Meyer

Michael Cain

Following the film, Bogdanovich stated the following in response to questions from first Cain and then members of the audience:

* It was an amazing experience getting back together with the actors from the original film, 20 years later: Cybill Shepherd, with whom Bogdanovich had been romantically involved for a time after Picture Show, had moved on to other significant others; the situation was similar for Jeff Bridges (and unnamed others). In response to the question about how hard it was to reunite the major players, Bogdanovich said "it was hard as Hell."

* Larry McMurtry did not participate in the screenwriting duties this go-round, as he had done on Picture Show - but he did review the script after Bogdanovich completed it and expressed his approval.

* On the audience question involving a contemporary review of Picture Show that compared Bogdanovich's accomplishment to that of Orson Welles' with Citizen Kane, Welles told Bogdanovich that each new review to come out was like receiving a bouquet of flowers.

* Quentin Tarantino once hosted a back-to-back showing of Picture Show and Texasville (uncut version), and reported to Bogdanovich that it was an extremely moving experience for all participants.

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