Last Picture Show Love Triangle: Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman Part 3

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts. 

At Polly’s urging, Peter decides to direct an adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel The Last Picture Show. Though credited only as the film’s “designer,” Polly is involved in every creative decision, including casting — and it’s with his pregnant-again wife’s enthusiasm that Bogdanovich casts 20-year-old model Cybill Shepherd as the film’s femme fatale. Though Polly believed she and Peter were “deliriously happy,” Bogdanovich and Shepherd fall in love on the set of the movie, and Polly has to make a decision: to save face and avoid personal humiliation by walking away from the production, or stay and fight for the creative baby that she feels ownership over. 

Polly Platt applying makeup blood to Timothy Bottoms on The Last Picture Show set | Photo Courtesy of Sashy Bogdanovich

SHOW NOTES: 

Sources specific to this episode:

This season is based in large part on Polly Platt's unpublished memoir, It Was Worth It, excerpted with the permission of Sashy Bodganovich.

 This episode includes excerpts from interviews with: Jules Fisher, Frank Marshall, Toby Rafelson, Nancy Griffin and Peggy Steffans. 

Here is a full list of sources referenced on this season. 

Cybill Shepherd with director Peter Bogdanovich on The Last Picture Show set

Music:

The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca.  

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode: 

There’s A Special Place for Some People - Chris Zabriskie
Bella Roma - Nonemis
Mister Poke Man - Peter Rockwell, Asger Wilde, Moellehoej Larsen 
A Dog with An Umbrella - Paul-Marie Jacques Bernard Barbier
A Walk in the Woods - Paul-Marie Jacques Bernard Barbier
Feel My Swagger - The New Fools
Organic Drums - Frederic Charles Sicart
The Eternal Scene - Rand Aldo
Land on the Golden Gate - Chris Zabriskie
Troubled Thoughts - Daryl Griffith
Glimmer - Hutch Demouilpied, Mix Amylo
Curious and Weird - Jean-Michel Vallet, Claire Guillot, Patrick Jean Chartol
Gobelin of Forest - Jean-Michel Vallet, Claire Guillot, Patrick Jean Chartol
Calm Waters - James Warburton
Open Window - Etienne Roussel

Credits:

This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.

Featuring special guests: Maggie Siff as the voice of Polly Platt, Bill Sage as Larry McMurtry and Meghann Lee as Cybill Shepherd.

Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.

Social media, transcription and additional research: Brendan Whalen.

Transcription and additional research: Kristen Sales and Wiley Wiggins

Producer: Tomeka Weatherspoon.

Editor:  Brendan Byrnes

Audio engineers: Jared O'Connell, Andrea Kristins and Brendan Byrnes.

Supervising Producer: Josephine Martorana.

Executive Producer: Chris Bannon.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

TARGETS with Karyn Kusama and new virtual screening series schedule

Due to the very necessary national conversation about race and police brutality that has been happening over the past 10 days, this week we postponed our schedule second installment of our Virtual Screening Series, in partnership with Vidiots Foundation. The conversation that had previously been scheduled for June 2, about Targets and episode 2 of Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, is now rescheduled for this coming Tuesday, June 9.

Here’s the new Virtual Screening Series schedule…. Join us, won’t you?

June 9: Targets
Polly Platt got her first story and production design credits on her then-husband Peter Bogdanovich’s feature directorial debut, a bone-dry, bare-bones thriller about the real horror -- ie: mass shootings. Platt found the locations and designed the total look of the film around an aesthetic that, as she put it, "I thought would make a murderer out of me."

June 16: The Last Picture Show
While he and Polly were making this now-classic, Oscar-winning film, Peter Bogdanovich began an open affair with actress Cybill Shepherd. Humiliated though she was, Polly felt so much ownership over this movie that she refused to leave the production. 

June 23: What's Up Doc
Though their marriage was over, Polly Platt agreed to production design her now ex-husband’s next two movies, What’s Up Doc (1972) and Paper Moon (1973). What’s Up Doc would be an anomaly in Polly’s filmography as a production designer: a trailblazer in American realism, here Platt went all in on designing a live-action cartoon. 

June 30: A Star is Born (1976)
In production designing the Barbra Streisand-starring remake of one of Hollywood’s oldest myths, Polly got an up-close-and-personal glimpse into what it really looked like to be a powerful woman in Hollywood. She also got a chance to subtly work some of her own story into the design of the film. 

July 7:  Pretty Baby 
Platt began a major career transition with this controversial film, which she wrote and produced. Though set in a brothel in early 20th century New Orleans, Pretty Baby is infused with much of Polly’s own autobiography, and shows how deeply she was grappling with her feelings of abandonment—and worries that she was abandoning her own children. 

July 14: Terms of Endearment
A decade after her creative partnership with Bogdanovich ended, Platt began a new collaboration with an incredibly talented writer/director: James L. Brooks. This was the perfect job for Polly; many of those close to her believed that the novel that the movie was based on had been at least partially inspired by her.

July 21: The Witches of Eastwick 
Polly Platt’s last film as a production designer — a job she took after she had established herself as a writer/producer and announced her intention to direct –– also features the most production design of her career, as she matched her instinct for visual storytelling to the format of the 80s special effects blockbuster. 

July 28: Say Anything... 
During one of the last phases of her career, Polly became a mentor to a number of first-time directors, including Cameron Crowe, whose now-classic rom-com features Polly on-screen in a memorable cameo.

August 4: Bottle Rocket 
Polly shepherded Wes Anderson’s first feature through a long development process, believing strongly that he and the Wilson brothers were telling an independent, American story that would fall in the lineage of The Last Picture Show.

YMRT #25: The Short Lives of Bruce and Brandon Lee

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

A martial arts master on the verge of major movie stardom, Bruce Lee died suddenly in 1973, at the age of 33; the official cause was “death by misadventure.” Twenty years later, Bruce Lee's son, BrandonLee, died suddenly in an accidental shooting on the set of The Crow — the movie which was poised to turn Brandon into a major star. These parallel tragedies have led some to suggest that the Lee family have been the victims of a curse, or a conspiracy. In this episode, we’ll explore what really happened to Bruce and BrandonLee, and discuss what happened over several decades, so that an extraordinary talented artist who was essentially run out of town thanks to Hollywood’s racism came to be one of the industry’s biggest moneymakers long after his death. 

Show notes!

This episode marks a couple of different landmarks for You Must Remember This. It’s our 25th episode. It’s the last episode of our second season, which has been devoted to stories loosely or not-so loosely related to my book, Hollywood Frame by Frame — making this also the last time I’ll mention the book in or around the podcast (there are pictures from the set of The Crow in it and you can buy it here. </plug>.) And, it’s our final all-new episode of 2014. We will have a special not-all-new episode next week, then we’ll take a week off and be back with the first episode of a new season on January 6. 

Bibliography:

There are a lot of books about Bruce Lee, and, honestly, I had trouble wading through them to figure out which were the most substantive/reliable. As I mention in the episode, the the demand for information about Lee after his death created a financial incentive to publish which didn’t necessarily support fact checking. I ended up putting more stock in newspaper/magazine articles written from the perspective of the future. Matthew Polly’s Playboy feature Chasing the Dragon was an important source for this episode, as were the LA Times and Entertainment Weekly’s extensive coverage of Brandon Lee’s death on the set of The Crow, particularly this story by Mark Harris. Also, I watched the documentary I Am Bruce Lee, as well as, um, this Unsolved Mysteries episode about the Lee deaths. 

Discography:

Atmosphere by Joy Division

Intelligent Galaxy The Insider

Strict Machine by Goldfrapp

Cyllider One by Chris Zabriskie

Money by Jahzzar

The Insider Theme by The insider

5:00 AM by Peter Rudenko

Laserdisc by Chris Zabriskie

These Days by Joy Division

Auto-Suggestion by Joy Division

Private Hurricane (Instrumental Version) by Josh Woodward

Undercover Vampire Policeman by Chris Zabriskie

For the Damaged (coda) by Blonde Redhead

Wonder Cycle by Chris Zabriskie

Dead Souls by Joy Division

YMRT #19: Raquel Welch, From Pin-up to Pariah

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

The poster for RaquelWelch's second film,One Million Years B.C., became the top pin-up of the late 1960s, and Welch — a divorced mom of two who had been a cocktail waitress just a few months earlier — found herself in the odd position of being an old-fashioned sex goddess in the age of flower children and feminism. With her unprecedentedly athletic curves, Welch was willing to exploit her natural gifts to some extent, but was adamant about not doing full nudity. Her stubbornness about maintaining control over the representation of her body made her unpopular in an industry which wasn’t interested in anything about her but her body; at the same time, Welch was disdained by contemporary feminists for her sexualized image, even though in several of her films, Welch set the prototype for the modern day action heroine. Fed up at age 40, Welch sued a major Hollywood studio for conspiracy to defame her and end her career.

Show Notes!

When I first recorded this episode, for some reason I kept referring to One Million Years B.C. as One Billion Years B.C. I have no idea why — I wrote it correctly in my script for the show, but somehow was unable to either read it correctly, or notice that I was reading it incorrectly until I started editing the episode. I went back and rerecorded a few lines; if I missed any of the old “Billions,” I apologize. 

This was a deep research week. In addition to Welch’s own, somewhat disappointing book, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, I consulted many, many magazine and newspaper articles, some of which I found only on microfiche, which is not always well labelled. These were the key sources, linked where possible:

“Playboy Interview: RaquelWelch” by Richard Warren Lewis, Playboy, August 1970

“Raquel Redux” by Stephen Rebello. Movieline, August 2001

“Raquel’s Story like Fairy Tale” by Abe Greenwald. Syndicated column. May 7, 1965

“RaquelWelch Won’t Deny She’s Married” by Sheilah Graham, Hollywood Citizen-News (also syndicated elsewhere), August 5, 1966

“OK, OK, But Can She Act?” by Robert Neville. New York Times, September 11, 1966

“Pinup’s Progress,” by Martha Sherrill, Allure, May 1993

“RaquelWelch Interview,” by Maury Levy, Playboy Fashion, Fall/Winter 1982 

“Sex Goddess is Human, After All,” by Joyce Haber. Los Angeles, June 9. 1968

“What’s Troubling RaquelWelch?” by Marilyn Beck. Syndicated (retrieved from the Palm Beach Post, November 16, 1972) 

Also, this is the legal summary of the Cannery Row case which I reference in the episode. 

Mediography:

Excerpt from this excerpt from Myra Breckinridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFgHFcxH6Mg

Discography:

“Night City” by Dirty Beaches

“Strange” by Patsy Cline

“You Go To My Head (Instrumental)” performed by Chet Baker

“Sincerely” by The Moonglows

“I Only Have Eyes For You.” performed by The Flamingos

“Joe” by Scott Walker

“Money” by Jahzzar

“Bring Down the Birds” by Herbie Hancock

“Out of the Skies, Under the Earth” by Chris Zabriskie

“The Wrong Way” by Jahzzar

“Poursuite” from the score to the movie Breathless, by Martial Solal

“Capri” from the score to the movie Contempt, by Georges Delarue

“Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel

“Gagool” by Kevin MacLeod

“Future Starts Slow” by The Kills

“Fiery Yellow” by Stereolab

“What True Self, Feels Bogus, Let’s Watch Jason X” by Chris Zabriskie

“Divider” by Chris Zabriskie

“Monte” by comounjardin

“Swimsuit Issue” by Sonic Youth

YMRT #16: Marlon Brando, 1971-1973

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

In the early 1950s, MarlonBrando became the first post-war mega-movie star, redefining screen acting and heralding the end of the star system by refusing to sign a studio contract. But as the studio system fell apart in the 1960s, and a new generation of moviegoers rejected the previous decade’s movie stars, Brando acquired a reputation as box office poison. This is the story of how, with two movies shot in 1971 — The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris — Brando turned his career around. He then spent his regained celebrity capital on an act of social activism that simultaneously drew attention to a good cause, and put Hollywood’s culture of self-adoration in its place. 

Show notes!

Today’s episode features excerpts from a conversation between myself and Austin Wilkin, the archivist for the MarlonBrando Estate. I’ve quoted liberally from Brando's own autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me. Of the many, many Brando biographies, Brando's Smile by Susan L. Mizruchi and MarlonBrando by Patricia Bosworth were the most helpful. I’m not sure how seriously to take Alice Marchak’s two self-published books about her time working as Brando's secretary (Wilkin suggested I take them “with a grain of salt”), but I did base some of the section on the 1972 Oscars on Marchak's More Me and Marlon. I consulted Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls to refresh my memory on some aspects of the making of The Godfather; I’ve also written about that film before.

I was a bit shocked to not be able to find an English-language biography of Bernardo Bertolucci (although maybe I shouldn’t have been). I made do with Bernardo Bertolucci: Interviews, and these twoarticles.

As noted in the podcast, my new book Hollywood Frame by Frame includes images of Brando on the set of The Godfather. The book also includes contact sheets featuring a much younger Brando, on the set of Julius Caesar. 

Discography:

“Preludes for Piano #2” by George Gershwin

“Exlibris” by Kosta T

“Looped” by Jahzzar

“Feel it All Around” by Washed Out

“What True Self, Feels Bogus, Let’s Watch Jason X” by Chris Zabriskie

“Rite of Passage” by Kevin Macleod

“Jump Into the Fire” by Harry Nilsson

“Be Thankful For What You Got” by Massive Attack

“Blue Lines” by Massive Attack

“Divider” by Chris Zabriskie

“Ghost Story” by Versus

“For Better or Worse” by Kai Engel

“Fiery Yellow” by Stereolab

“money” by Jahzzar

“Cylinder One” by Chris Zabriskie

“Rebel Without a Pause” by Public Enemy