PICTURE THIS: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, TX
(1992; w/d George Hickenlooper)

Aerial shot of subtitle city (overview afforded by time) where LAST PICTURE SHOW author Larry McMurtry lived (godlike omniscient narrator of book, documentary dir GH hailing from similarly humble bkgd) + dir PB made film (earthly agent making characters flesh) w/ voiceover about city having figuratively seceded from Union (dreamlike removal from temporal world; divorces, also, which ravaged cast + crew at time) by assumed-hick townie Sean Alsup (failure to appreciate characters/impulses for what they are filmmakers’ mistake) followed by travelogue footage of Town That Time Forgot (lost, "simple" life of all involved) + text scroll on return to scene of 1st film (1970, beginning of new film maturity) to make Texasville sequel (1989, well into Film's decline, according to Hic’s co-featurette on Dennis Hopper).

THE FIRST PICTURE SHOW PB admits qualms about facing 20-yrs-ago self/others (sequel revisiting past à la defenses-down dream) + recounts scouting drive into AC "looking for the town" (its essence: myth of own lost innocence in Eden impure to begin w/; cf Mom McM confessing she hid book over salacious content) + villagers’ scandalized reaction (Hollywood corruption only reflecting own "hidden" [Jacy/Cybill Shepherd admitting nudity itself humiliating]) – those who didn’t make screen test (excepting Lester/Randy Quaid, driving big vintage sedan: same values, only flashier – amp’ed reflection, again, of Town as It Was); PB cast Jacy/CS off cover of fashion mag (GLAMOURized version of real JC, latter now seeming serene + worldy-wise in contempo interview), imagines rose in hotel room wilting under her pall (later question whether in love w/ her or JC answered by former's disavowal of similarities to character: both town + crew in love/hate w/ movie-reflection; intuition, also, that PB’s infatuation wd ruin him).

Visibly damaged Sonny/Tim Bottoms (exec pro of documentary: voice his, evaluating conditions/circumstances which brought him here) admits to strained relationship w/ dir (as God [his mistake]: saw film as collaborative effort, vs dir’s Control; cfs experience w/ PB to previous + then-only-other dir Dalton Trumbo, latter blacklisted Hollywood legend vs young tyro for 19-yr-old perhaps ready to let loose + explore rather’n have character/self guided [PB conversely using Old-HW influence John Ford to get own way hiring Ford regular Ben Johnson as benevolent patriarch Sam the Lion]), resenting his affair w/ CS because own parents divorcing (filming again amplifying real life, yielding offense, his interview amazingly conflating film + reality) + he not so secretly in love w/ her himself (interviewed by lake where shot 1st scene kissing her: stuck in jealous Eden where Adam never gets Eve; not, apparently, resolved when Bottoms romances + wins threatening Prof’s daughter in ’73 Paper Chase), similarly distracted Ruth Popper/Cloris Leachman (herself going thru divorce, along w/ co-star Lois Farrow/Ellen Burstyn) accusing PB-wife Polly Platt of "engineering" affair (production designer more-like "dressing sets" to keep things looking good).

THE NEXT PICTURE SHOW 19 yrs later (film having since reached age of majority), Bottoms (19 at time of 1st film – ½way point of life, docu reevaluation in similar middle age) paranoid of PB’s casting offer (sexual resentment coloring world-view: stuck in oedipal jealousy over father’s primal-hording of object of desire, his career petering out to PB’s flameout), his continued jones for CS (as for professional/artistic achievement) affecting current shoot (not speaking: he unable to attain to highest potential), losing train of thot when she comes up from behind (out of past/back of mind: more than physical reality) to kiss him on cheek (his flummoxing – as whole psychodrama – so naked one wonders if fiction, docu on other hand his obsessive anti-valentine to her; dir Hic’s own relation to material resolved w/ his virtual LPS remake Dogtown, where Hollywood failure returns home to finally win dreamgirl-who-belongs-to-another [Hic making own claim on filmmaking legacy]).

Townie Alsup renders startlingly astute comment (veracity o/t "primitive" – point Tinseltowners came to discover + apparently never realized; cf, again, Hopper short, where he expounds on action painting) that 1st book true to life, 2nd "written like a screenplay" (remove from reality consequence/essence of Dream Machine, crew Fools missing point of own Comedy) while fellow Good Old Boys (on horseback to cf his living room w/ child: stuck, themselves, in Wild West myth, vs Alsup’s domesticated, grounded perspective) piss + moan about too-big-for-britches stars (cf earlier screen tests: resentment, again, over own unrealized potential – admitting they’d like to’ve taken part – à la TB/CS).

Producer Barry Spikings comments on PB’s downfall (as tho part of T’ville text, oddly selling film on history of participants’ failure; cf Hic’s next docu, Hearts of Darkness, on fellow 70s film icon FFCoppola’s similar meltdown - that one, at least, yielding masterpiece Apocalypse Now [gig gotten partway thru auspices of Now + LPS whateverhappenedto Sam Bottoms]) as result of personal problems (cut to PB "Tonight Show" co-hosting still another 70s trainwreck, Burt Reynolds, self-aggrandizingly blaming dir’s troubles on others’ resentment), ie choices of lovers (show presumably PB/Reynolds/Shepherd At Long Last Love vintage, PB’s devotion to alleged acting mediocrity CS blind spot: focus on movie GLAMOUR clouding directorial sense), including murdered girlfriend Dorothy Stratten (while she married to psycho hubby, classical Greek incest-drama continually played out by gods not recognizing own roles in play); daughter Antoinette Bogdanovich thinks dad blamed picture (sophisticated comedy They All Laughed) for tragedy (real problem in PB’s attempts to revisit 1st Golden Age formulas [Paper Moon’s dustbowl drama, What’s Up, Doc’s screwball, At LLL’s musical comedy…], as w/ present film) + so lost love for form (eroticized in Shepherd/Stratten, subsequent marriage to Stratten’s sister reduplicating pathology), T’ville attempt to reinvigorate self: coming to terms w/ problem by theatricalizing it, resolved perhaps by McMurtry threatening Part III in 15 yrs, more-than-a-few-regrets PB exasperating, "Some people just won’t give up" (ie, he has).