TV Reviews : A ‘Show’ Marathon on Movie Channel

Few sequels have ever been quite so roundly excoriated upon their release as “Texasville,” in which, foremost among his sins, director Peter Bogdanovich dared to make such a completely different style of film than its classic predecessor, “The Last Picture Show.” In a remarkable opportunity for rediscovery, expanded “director’s cuts” of both the 1971 original and the 1990 sequel are on view today on the Movie Channel, in a marathon linked by George Hickenlooper’s excellent on-the-set documentary, “Picture This.”

The seven-minute-longer, letterboxed “Last Picture Show” has previously only been available on a Criterion laserdisc. The newly expanded “Texasville,” however, gets its premiere today, with Bogdanovich having gotten the funding from the cable network to “restore” about a half-hour to its already considerable two-hour-plus original running time. The additional footage probably won’t transform the hearts of those who hated it the first time out, but it helps make a good, sprawling, messily adventurous picture a lot more emotionally cohesive.

The chief problem with “Texasville” is that its wisecracking characters are working so hard (and so successfully) to bury their feelings about the past--and the movie itself works so hard to replace the elegiac tone of “Picture Show” with a sprightly, satirical one--that it offers no resonance for anyone not intimately familiar with the prequel. This expanded cut tries to rectify that by giving a little more screen time to Timothy Bottoms, the one character who is in touch with his memories--so much so he’s gone bonkers.

More significantly, Bogdanovich has added sequences that clarify the confusion of the flirtatious but unconsummated relationship between leads Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd, including a nice scene where she coquettishly invites him over while his wife (show-stealing Annie Potts) is out of town, only to have the middle-aged Bridges fall asleep on her bed watching a video. The last picture show, indeed.

“Texasville” is still far from perfect, with uneven performances, a gallery of barely sketched supporting characters (mostly cheatin’ wives with designs on Bridges) that it’d take a miniseries to get to know, some overbroad comedy, rushed epiphanies and a weak ending. (Also, the deliberately grainy image of the theatrical release has been pushed blandly bright for this video unveiling.)

Despite all that, it’s like no other movie, in the way it captures the ridiculously outsize aura of the suddenly moneyed, small-town “new Texas” circa the early ‘80s, and how oil temporarily revived a town that appeared to be in its death throes three decades earlier. Full of midlife characters who’ve outlived their black-and-white romanticism and gotten richer, funnier and more sublimatedly hopeless in the process, “Texasville” is well worth reconsideration.

“The Last Picture Show” plays at 1:45 p.m., followed by “Picture This” at 4 and “Texasville” at 5.