544-550 America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, etc.)

[swo17]

4K standalone release of The Last Picture Show coming Nov 14, including two cuts of Texasville (presumably BD-only)

[therewillbeblus]

Wow, Criterion release of the year

[aox]

I think The Last Picture Show is one of the best American films of the 1970s, but I have always been apprehensive to give Texasville my time. Is it really as bad as its reputation?

[domino harvey]

No, it’s just far different in tone

[therewillbeblus]

I think The Last Picture Show is one of the best American films of the 1970s, but I have always been apprehensive to give Texasville my time. Is it really as bad as its reputation?

It's great, I gave brief impressions as part of my longer writeup on Bogdanovich's filmography as a reflection of his mood and worldview pre and post-traumatic incident:

Texasville was the right kind of sequel to make, completely at odds with the original in style, tone, and even character, much like how people, places, and the world changes throughout life. The film takes risks to hold onto its own kind of authenticity and simultaneously reflects Bogdanovich’s disillusionment with the world around him, a fitting decision and the first directing choice post-Stratten that feels like it comes from a place of acceptance.

I also watched the longer DC (from the laserdisc, in color*) last year, and wrote this on LB:

The longer runtime allows these fragmented doses of insanity-shielding-pathos to breathe. This is a film demanding to be as loose, chaotic, and mysteriously confounding in its ineffectively observational approach to the human condition as a shaky hand attempting to grasp a dream and closing in on sandy air. Thankfully, the dust has grains of gold though.

[jazzo]

I’ve been wish-quarantine guessing this set for so long, I feel like I just won a fantasy football league!

[jazzo]

Now all I need is my dream Demme box set: Handle With Care/Melvin & Howard/Swing Shift (dc)/Who Am I This Time?/Trying Times: A Family Tree

[aox]

Yeah, Dom and TWBB, I pulled this from Wikipedia:

In 1992 Bogdanovich recut the film for the Movie Channel so it ran 28 minutes longer. "This is the way Texasville should have been seen when it was originally released," he said. "We had to take out a lot of the dramatic scenes between Jeff (Bridges) and Cybill and between Jeff and Timothy Bottoms. There was also a wonderful scene at the Centennial when Cybill sings a hymn. The balance between comedy and drama was off, so when the movie turned out to be a drama, people were thrown. Whereas the correct version, the longer version, has a better balance." Bogdanovoch said the film was originally cut "under a lot of pressure. It didn't turn out like we wanted -- at all. It was rather sad. So now we're glad to have this second chance."

I had no idea Bogdanovoch didn't initially have final cut, but did get the opportunity to release his vision later. Seems like that would clean up some of the disjointed tone and pacing issues, no? That makes this far more interesting to me. Good on CC for academic completion to include both cuts. This looks like a nice set, and I will probably watch the longer version of Texasville someday since that appears to be what the director wished.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

This is great. This film really means a lot to me. I was exactly in the right melancholic place, just moving from one phase to the next of my life. Don't think I could ever relate better to it than at that specific time. It was a 35mm projection, and I especially remember it because the projectionist made a mistake and swopped two rolls/acts midway in the film which gave the screening a slight surreal touch, but I didn't love it less.

The big question for me about this release, though, is: Will this be a direct port of the transfer from the Columbia Classics box or will they have Pixelogic potentially mess of the master?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

One issue with the Texasville director's cut is that the available evidence suggests it was cut on video—it doesn't seem to have ever been screened on 35mm and there's no prior HD releases. But then the original director's cut wasn't in black and white, so maybe they've reconstructed it in HD.

[colinr0380]

I think The Last Picture Show is one of the best American films of the 1970s, but I have always been apprehensive to give Texasville my time. Is it really as bad as its reputation?

Its sort of the equivalent that The Evening Star is to Terms of Endearment. Long belated but nice to catch up with the characters again after such a long time away from them.

[barryconvex]

Wow, Criterion release of the year

Sconded. I literally finished a rewatch of Texasville two days ago, my first viewing since the early 90s. I'll go to the mat any day of the week for the sequel which contains (outside of Moonlighting) the best work Shepherd ever did. It has its issues, and it's no Picture Show but spending time with those characters again did my soul a world of good.

[Rupert Pupkin]

So far the 4K upgrade when a Criterion blu-ray already exists implies : they will put the original blu-ray (the picture quality was not that bad to say the least - with Walkabout this is the Criterion blu-ray that I have seen more than 20 times) so we will still have the "time-line" feature since they will put the "old" disk. (I suppose that for Walkabout we will have a slightly different color grading between the UHD and the (old) blu-ray (I think that the restoration for the blu-ray is still excellent) : a color grading for the UHD more like the Second Sight movie (which was only a blu-ray before they went to UHD; too bad).

Same for "The Last Picture Show", even if - it seems to me that on the Paramount 4K restoration box set the blu-ray is not identical to the Criterion release; they use for the Paramount blu-ray the 4K restoration "downscaled" for blu-ray resolution.

I wish things would be different (like Arrow, for instance "True Romance" looks fantastic using the 4K restoration for the blu-ray) but apparently that's Criterion's "policy".

So 3 disks : means that they will put the original "old" Criterion blu-ray from the BBS box set in the package (even if Paramount box set release a blu-ray downscaled from 4K restoration (vidcaps looks different between Criterion blu-ray and the Paramount Blu-Ray) + the UHD from the new 4K restoration and Texasville will be on blu-ray, that's it ?

[hearthesilence]

I posted about Texasville's history before but will paste it below for ease:

It was mentioned earlier in this forum that it may not be possible to re-issue the director's cut of Texasville on BD because it was unknown if the proper materials exist. I'm still trying to track down more info on this, but a google search landed on this quote from what appears to be a 2003 newsgroup exchange hosted by critic Fred Camper:

"PB is not averse to recutting. He felt Columbia rushed him on Texasville, so he went back and recut it to achieve a better balance between comic and dramatic elements. Finished only on tape, that version was broadcast by Showtime with the unexpurgated Picture Show. It hasn't been shown theatrically because it doesn't exist on film." It's possible this guy is misinformed (for starters, he appears to get the cable channel wrong - see below), but still, it again raises the possibility that a costly re-creation of that edit would have to be done.

Anyway, some more bits and pieces I've dug up, including a late 2018 interview that suggests a film element wasn't created for the director's cut (though to be clear, Bogdanovich only states that a film print was not available)...

From an April 5, 1992 article in The Morning Call:

"....when Texasville premieres next month on the Movie Channel, it will be 28 minutes longer than its theatrical version.

"This is the way Texasville should have been seen when it was originally released," [Bogdanovich] said. "We had to take out a lot of the dramatic scenes between Jeff (Bridges) and Cybill and between Jeff and Timothy Bottoms.

"There was also a wonderful scene at the Centennial when Cybill sings a hymn. The balance between comedy and drama was off, so when the movie turned out to be a drama, people were thrown. Whereas the correct version, the longer version, has a better balance."

Why wasn't this "correct" version shown in theaters?

"We were cutting the picture under a lot of pressure," he said. "It didn't turn out like we wanted -- at all. It was rather sad. So now we're glad to have this second chance."

From an interview with Bogdanovich published 11/2013 in IndieWire:
Q: At Long Last Love just came out in a new cut. Are there any alternate cuts lying around or movies you’d like to tweak?

A: Well, that was quite an amazing story about how that came about… But there’s a director’s cut of Texasville that came out on laserdisc and I would dearly like for that to come out. It’s a much better film than the one that was released. It was available on Pioneer laserdisc for a while but that’s gone the way of the dodo bird. And I finally got Nickelodeon out in black-and-white on DVD and that was a big triumph. It’s a much better picture in black-and-white. As Dave Kehr in the New York Times said, “it becomes a totally different picture.” And he’s right – it does. But most of my films I’ve had problems with like Mask or Nickelodeon, have come out in versions that I prefer.

Q: Have you talked to Criterion about Texasville?

A: Yeah, we’ve talked about it and we’re still discussing it.

Interview with Bogdanovich from 9/2018 for Vulture/NYMag:

Q: Speaking of producers who bothered you: There are a lot of director’s cuts in the line-up of your Quad retro.

A: I wanted them to show the director’s cuts; I didn’t want to run the other versions. One problem is that Texasville is not available in the director’s cut except on a laserdisc, which they weren’t going to show. I’m trying to get the Criterion Collection to let me put together the director’s cut of Texasville, which is better in the sense that it’s a lot sadder. Because there’s 25 minutes missing [from the release version]. I wanted to reissue The Last Picture Show in theaters before we released the new film. The head of the studio when we were preparing to make the picture was Peter Guber, and he said, “Fine.” While we were shooting, Frank Price replaced him. Frank Price did not like me, and I did not like him, because he had already fucked up Mask, and I had fought with him on that. He didn’t want to reissue The Last Picture Show. He referred to that as “cheating.” I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. And the movie wasn’t available at the time. So we cut a lot of the sadder parts that referred back to the earlier film — because audiences wouldn’t have had a chance to see it — and that left it more of a comedy.

And from a prior post:

When we were preparing Texasville, Peter Guber agreed to let me recut The Last Picture Show by adding certain footage to it. The picture had not yet appeared on video so the idea was to add some footage and make a new version of it and put it out in theaters prior to the opening of Texasville. That started to happen...I reviewed all the material and decided there were about seven minutes I wanted to put back in...I put back about seven minutes and then Frank Price took over Columbia and Frank didn't like me because of the situation that happened at Universal on Mask, so Frank pretty much sabotaged that plan, which was to bring Picture Show out and then Texasville, so that was sabotaged and didn't happen. What did happen was that Texasville had to be totally recut because I had to lose certain stuff that wouldn't make any sense if you haven't seen Picture Show. It wasn't available anywhere. So that was unfortunately very sad. Texasville came out and was perceived incorrectly because it wasn't what we made. It was perceived as too much of a comedy when in fact the original Texasville was more evenly balanced between comedy and drama. Subsequent to that the long version of The Last Picture Show was finished on 35mm and on laserdisc and is available on Criterion laserdisc, seven minutes longer...Pioneer did a director's cut of Texasville so that also exists on laserdisc in a version that's twenty-five minutes longer. But the only way to see those two pictures the way we would have like them to be shown one after the other is on laserdisc.

[HitchcockLang]

I'm a little disappointed that the theatrical cut of Last Picture Show doesn't seem to be included (only the director's cut) even though the Columbia Classics box set includes both cuts on UHD. Seems odd to have a definitive release of multiple cuts of Texasville without the original theatrical Picture Show.

[Tuppence]

In-keeping with Criterion's MO of these UHD upgrades, I assume the Blu-ray of The Last Picture Show will be literally the same as the 2010 edition. Which means that the new Texasville disc will have two cuts of the film - about 4 1/2 hours - plus the (laserdisc?) introduction, and what, from the specs, seems to be another documentary about The Last Picture Show as well. That is a very tightly packed second disc, which is not exactly Pixelogic's forte.

[FrauBlucher]

DVDBeaver...The Last Picture Show UHD and Texasville bluray

[Orlac]

I'm a little disappointed that the theatrical cut of Last Picture Show doesn't seem to be included (only the director's cut) even though the Columbia Classics box set includes both cuts on UHD. Seems odd to have a definitive release of multiple cuts of Texasville without the original theatrical Picture Show.

Is there anything in the theatrical of LPS not in the Director's Cut?

[cdnchris]

I last saw the theatrical cut in the early 90s, but I'm positive nothing important is missing and that the director's cut just adds material.

movie-censorship on the other handbdoes indicate that one shot is a few seconds longer in the theatrical cut, and another is placed differently.

[HitchcockLang]

I last saw the theatrical cut in the early 90s, but I'm positive nothing important is missing and that the director's cut just adds material.

movie-censorship on the other handbdoes indicate that one shot is a few seconds longer in the theatrical cut, and another is placed differently.

Even if the DC only adds content, sometimes only excising content makes for an interesting watch (see the UK cut of The Shining for a superior cut that only cuts and adds nothing new).

[cdnchris]

I get that and I agree on The Shining, but i dont feel that to be the case here. I can't remember the flow of the theatrical cut (which was a recording off TV I think), but I honestly think the added material, based on refreshing my memory of what was added (at least with Brennan and the extended scene between Shepherd and Gulager), is essential to the film.

The Shining was all Kubrick's doing while it was the studio in this case, wanting a shorter film and scenes like the Shepherd/Gulager one (I assume) to be less graphic. I'd love to compare again, but I do remember liking the new cut more the first time I saw it, which was when my father bought it on VHS.

[sabbath]

Criterion botched the English SDH on The Last Picture Show 4K by making their color pure white before applying HDR. So when you turn on HDR, those subtitles shine blindingly bright, making it almost impossible to concentrate on the rest of the image. Some Kino Lorber 4Ks have the same issue, but this is the first time I saw it on a Criterion 4K.

For the record, The Last Picture Show 4K discs (both the theatrical cut and director's cut) in the Columbia Classics Collection Vol.3 box set are okay.

[andyli]

I've noticed this issue every now and then on multiple labels and not seen it brought up here often enough. This actually matters more than it seems, since HDR videos are usually viewed in a completely dark environment, those ungodly white subs become eye-scorching and totally unbearable. Some studios consistently make an effort to avoid that (sometimes calling it "subtitle optimized for HDR"), which is deeply appreciated here.

[jazzo]

After revisiting both pictures, I think Alexander Payne or Tamara Jenkins may be the only American filmmakers capable of properly finishing the trilogy with Duane's Depressed. Wishful thinking.

[hearthesilence]

I would lean towards Payne simply because he's probably better with that setting and the town and community's dynamics given his background. (You see it play out in everything from Election to Nebraska to The Holdovers.) I'm sure he'd be open to it - he openly admits he's directed too few feature films and wishes he could make more.