Hi, this is Steve.

It's hard to imagine a more incredible introduction to the world of Hollywood than the one enjoyed

by Peter Bogdanovich.

As a writer for Esquire and the Saturday evening post, Bogdanovich found himself on the

set of West Side Story with director Robert Wise.

He watched Hitchcock shoot the birds and traveled to Monument Valley where John Ford was directing

John Wayne.

And that's not all.

Jerry Lewis liked him so much, he gave him a whole bunch of his suits and even one of his

Mustangs.

He had breakfasts with Fritz Lang, every Sunday, Howard Hawkes, was a regular dinner guest

and Orson Wells literally lived with Bogdanovich often on for years.

And it was those relations which formed the foundation of the director he would become.

Peter Bogdanovich loved Old Hollywood and he was determined to honor those great directors

while incorporating ideas from the French New Wave and a kind of naturalism that was

almost unheard of in American cinema.

However, his second film, The Last Picture Show, based on the Larry McMurtry novel, is

more than an exploration of cinematic technique.

It is a profound, deeply personal, emotionally raw, and unflinchingly honest examination

of the loves, losses, secrets, and betrayals that take place in a small Texas town in the

early 1950s.

This is, without question, one of the great films of the 1970s and if you haven't seen

...