from Ruth who has since become even more depressed and has shuttered herself in her house. She explodes in hurt and anger. Then, spent, she takes his outstretched hand, tentatively reuniting the pair. Cast Production Going into The Last Picture Show Peter Bogdanovich was a 31-year-old stage actor, film essayist, and critic, with one small film to his directorial credit, Targets (also known as Before I Die). He had made the first with his wife and collaborator, Polly Platt. As Bogdanovich later explained to The Hollywood Reporter, while waiting in a cashier's line in a drugstore, he happened to look at the rack of paperbacks and his eye fell on an interesting title, The Last Picture Show. The back of the book said it was about "kids growing up in Texas" and Bogdanovich decided that it did not interest him and put it back. A few weeks later, actor Sal Mineo handed Platt a copy of the book. "I always wanted to be in this", he said, "but I'm a little too old now" and recommended that Platt and Bogdanovich make it into a film. According to Bogdanovich's recollection, Platt said, "I don't know how you make it into a picture, but it's a good book." Bogdanovich, McMurtry, and Platt adapted the novel into the film of the same name. Stephen Friedman was a lawyer with Columbia Pictures but keen to break into film production as he had bought the film rights to the book, so Bogdanovich hired him as producer. After discussing the proposed film with Orson Welles, his houseguest at the time, Bogdanovich agreed with him that shooting the film in black and white would work aesthetically, which by then was an unusual choice. The film was shot in Larry McMurtry's small hometown of Archer City located in north-central Texas near the Oklahoma state line. McMurtry had renamed the town Thalia in his book; Bogdanovich dubbed it Anarene (for a ghost town south of Archer City). The similarity to famed cowtown Abilene, Kansas, in Howard Hawks' Red River (1948) was intentional. Red River again is tied in as "the last picture show", which Sonny and Duane watch at the end of the film. After shooting wrapped, Bogdanovich went back to Los Angeles to edit the film footage on a Moviola. Bogdanovich has said that he edited the entire film himself but refused to credit himself as editor, reasoning