What did I ever see in you?

Have you ever re-watched a film you once thoroughly enjoyed only to think "What the heck was I thinking?"

And I'll ask the question the other way, too. Did you watch a movie when you were 15 that still held up nearly 20 years later?

Had both experiences over the weekend. One was great. One wasn't.

The film that held up -- and I don't care if you crucify me over this -- was "Saturday Night Fever." The one that didn't, much to my disappointment, was "Any Which Way You Can."

I may be one of about five people to admit it (sadly, critic Gene Siskel is no longer around to agree), but I think "Saturday Night Fever," the 1977 John Travolta film that forever stitched disco into the American experience, is a darn good movie.



Yes, it's dated. But that's the point. Like George Lucas's "American Graffiti" and Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show," "Fever" captures a moment in time -- in this case late '70s Bay Ridge, Brooklyn -- better than any history book ever could.

Everybody remembers the bell bottoms and the Bee Gees, but what has managed to fade from our collective memory of "Fever" is the story itself, a good one, about a young man named Tony Manero (Travolta) who knows he's headed nowhere and wants to escape his dead-end life. That narrative is as universal as good vs. evil. Travolta delivers his best film performance (save, probably, his turn in "Pulp Fiction") as a guy who overcomes the drabness of everyday life by living it up on Saturday nights.

It's a sad story and a dark one, too. Its language and situations are rough in parts, but director John Badham had the guts to go behind the glitter of the disco's flashing lights and point his cameras toward the uglier aspects of the urban America of the period. The film has some rather pointed things to say about religion, too. There's no way it would be made in this politically correct era, which says something about how much we haven't advanced as a culture.

Now let's switch gears.

Saturday night we were looking to watch something completely stupid. We needed a break. We needed a laugh.

DirecTV was offering a free HBO preview and I recorded "Any Which Way You Can," my favorite of the two offbeat movies Clint Eastwood made with an orangutan. I'm not ashamed to admit that I loved this movie 20-plus years ago. I'm also not ashamed to now say it sucks.



I don't know who came up with the idea to pair Eastwood with "Clyde," but the first film, "Every Which Way But Loose," was a box office success in 1978. The sequel didn't do as well, but for whatever reason I liked it better. I rather vividly remember watching its network broadcast probably around 1982 or '83. And I can remember renting the film back when one still had to go to a brick-and-mortar video store.

I guess my tastes matured (one hopes that ones sensibilities don't peak in early adolescence) because watching this film all these years later was positively painful.

Other than a few scenes between Eastwood and Clyde, the film just wasn't funny. The acting, particularly that of Sondra Locke (Eastwood's girlfriend at the time), was atrocious. We weren't expecting much but this film makes "Smokey and the Bandit" look like "Citizen Kane." About all I can say for it is the song "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma," some nice location scenes in Jackson, Wyo., and a brief appearance by Glen Campbell.

Such is growing up, I guess. Looking at the reruns now, I have no idea why I used to like "Green Acres" and "Bosom Buddies," either.

Oh, pointless junk, what did I ever see in you?

'The Last Picture Show'

Some movies stay with you long after the lights go up, rattle around in your head for days, make you think about life and love, the agony and the ecstasy and how the weather was.

So it is with "The Last Picture Show," Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 masterpiece, based on the Larry McMurtry novel. Watched it last night after reading McMurtry's new novel, "When the Light Goes," which returns to the town -- and to some of the characters -- featured in the film.

Although Duane Moore (called Duane Jackson in the movie) became the focus of both McMurtry's 3 sequels and the 1990 film sequel "Texasville," "Picture Show" is really Sonny Crawford's story. He's Duane's best buddy and they both come of age, with a few bumps and bruises, in the small West Texas town of Anarene (called Thalia in the novel and based on McMurtry's hometown of Archer City) in the early 1950s.

Sonny (brilliantly played by the underrated Timothy Bottoms) is a somewhat tragic figure, stifled by the rigid confines of his hometown, unsure of where he's headed. Duane (Jeff Bridges) is his cocky, somewhat unlikable best friend. They're both in love with Jacy (Cybill Shepherd, in her film debut), the flippant rich girl in town.

When they aren't playing football or making out with girls at the picture show, the boys hang out at the pool hall owned by town patriarch Sam the Lion (the late, great Ben Johnson). Johnson won an Academy Award for this role; it is the finest of his distinguished career. The scene where he's talking with Sonny at the water tank about a long-ago romance is one of American cinema's finest moments.

Anyway, Sonny has an affair with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the high school coach's wife; Jacy gets Duane to sleep with her long enough to lose her virginity so she can impress a local rich boy; Duane and Sonny split over Jacy -- and on it goes. This sounds like "Peyton Place," but in actuality is the most realistic portrait of small town life ever put to film.

Bogdanovich wisely shot in black-and-white and used no score; instead, he peppers the film with music from the period, especially Hank Williams tunes. It carries with it a stark, documentary feel.

I don't know why I love this film as much as I do. It had to be controversial for its time, given the nudity and the frank portrayal of what kids do together when they're alone.

But it's honest, it's sad, it comments on the despair that lies below the surface of many human lives. More than that, it's an homage to the ending of an era, a good-bye if you will, to the golden age of American cinema.

Bogdanovich was a movie critic before he became a director and was obviously influenced by Orson Welles, John Ford and some others. The last picture show of the title, shown the night the town's movie house closes, is Howard Hawks' "Red River," ironic because that film also portrays the ending of an era.

The cast is superb. Bottoms gives the performance of his life. Bridges somehow manages to make Duane likable. I've already told you about Ben Johnson. And Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn and Eileen Brennan nearly steal the movie as the three older women of the picture. Shepherd is the weak link, although is very much the sultry temptress here, perfect for her unlikable character. Randy Quaid makes his film debut here and Clu Gulager has a fine supporting role as the older town stud.

It's one you have to see to understand, although I must tell you that whatever is at play here once caused me to drive all the way to Archer City, Texas, to see the filming location. Sad to say, the real picture show burned. The building now has a gaping hole in its side.

Which, somehow, is a fitting epitaph.

Back to Thalia

Tonight, if I ever escape this insane asylum called work, I'm going home, fixing dinner and spending the evening with some old friends in Texas.

Not literally, of course. I'm still here in Halls, doing what I love and loving what I do.

But author Larry McMurtry has released the apparently final installment in his long saga of the life of Duane Moore that began years ago with "The Last Picture Show." And, tonight, before I tackle the American Revolution and John Adams, I'm going back to Thalia. The book is called "When the Light Goes."

I'm quite hesitant to return to that sleepy little Texas town. McMurtry is notorious for taking characters you love and doing crazy things with them. (Read "Streets of Laredo," his bizarre sequel to "Lonesome Dove.")

They're his characters. I guess it's his right. But they've bounced around in my head so long I feel some kind of claim on them, too.

Return I will, though. I once drove, as part of a vacation, all the way to Archer City, Texas, McMurtry's one-stoplight hometown and the model for his fictional Thalia, on some kind of crazy, quixotic odyssey.

I ducked into McMurtry's delicious antiquarian bookstore hoping I'd see him, but he wasn't around. I left on the shelf a first edition of James Reston Jr.'s biography of former Texas governor John Connally -- a move I've regretted for four years.

(Film buffs will know the town. Peter Bogdanovich filmed the cinematic version of "The Last Picture Show" there in 1970. I still contend that's one of the finest films I've ever seen.)

It's funny how books, and characters, can grab you. One of my editors, Larry Van Guilder, says they become like old friends, members of the family.

So it is with Duane. When last I left him, he was living in a cabin, going everywhere on foot, in love with his shrink, reading Proust at night.

I feel like this book is going to leave me terribly depressed. But, off I go, back to Texas, to spend a few hours with an old pal.

Mark this down: writers -- and readers -- are a sick bunch.