Peter Bogdanovich on Cloris Leachman's Oscar
"Never underestimate the beauty of a human being responding."
I was introduced to Peter Bogdanovich by Victoria Wilson, who was the editor for Peter’s books and for mine. (Peter remains the only person I have ever known whose email domain was luckymail.com). Peter liked my book and gave me an enthusiastic blurb. I later had the chance to talk to him. We both loved movies, and I was grateful to him for being so blunt, and so often impatient with my questions.
From October of 2015:
JG: There are still people who argue over the Oscar for Supporting Actress for The Last Picture Show. Those who love Cloris Leachman [who won] and those who prefer Ellen Burstyn. I love them both, and find the decision a voter faced to be difficult. Why do you think Cloris won the Oscar?
PB: Cloris won the Oscar because she got more votes than the other four women nominated. That’s how those things work. I’m being churlish, but really, maybe Cloris won by four votes. I do wish they would release the tally, because that was a very good year, and I’m sure it was a photo finish among Cloris, Ellen, and Ann-Margret [for Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge]. Not only were they all wonderful, but they all had the appropriate life stories to get people to vote for them.
There was Ann-Margret, dismissed as a sexy lightweight, tits with ambition, a critic quipped at a screening, really stunning everyone with her performance. The Academy loves a redemption fable. There was Ellen, also unproven for so long: Pretty and yet pretty undistinguished, by her own telling. And Cloris, around for so long, always good, taking time away to raise her family, and suddenly around in the living room through the auspices of Mary Tyler Moore. The back stories were good.
But not to be a perpetual curmudgeon: I think Cloris won because she got to play a far more sympathetic character. Ruth was sad and dejected, then she glowed with affection and a reason to get out of the bathrobe. Then she got to unleash all of the rage and the anger that audiences had been feeling toward the main characters throughout the rest of the film. People really resented Jacy [Cybill Shepherd]. She was vain and disruptive. She could lead people to betray their better friendships and instincts. Larry McMurtry [who wrote the novel on which the film was based, and co-wrote the screenplay with Bogdanovich] said that the superiority of a film version of a novel is that a catharsis is easier to affect, and Ruth got the catharsis. Ruth/Cloris got to vent and release all the anger that had previously been self-inflicted. She got to let it out for all of us. Then she got to forgive. She got to reveal her love for Sonny [Timothy Bottoms], and to begin the rapprochement. Hands joined is one of the most powerful images you can place into a film. I mean, look at the number of scenes in which there is the consummation of flesh and soul through hands held, clasped, reach toward. I think Cloris and I believed that Ruth was the character we most feared we would become, but then she became the character we most wished we would be: Forgiving. Hopeful. Comforting.
Ellen’s character was very sympathetic in the final scenes she had. She, too, had a catharsis, but Ellen was so fucking sharp and brilliant in the earlier scenes, when she was almost diabolically carnal, greedy, grasping. Academy voters, while professing to vote on the merits of acting, are also—shocking news—human beings. They respond emotionally.
Cloris as Ruth was the friend you would have liked to have. Ellen as Lois was the woman you felt would make fun of your clothes and sleep with your man. Imprints.
Cloris captured the mood of the novel and the film. Desolate. Empty movie theatre. Empty bed. Empty heart. I mean, she’s in that house, in her bathrobe, falling apart, and you hear noise. TV, radio, her own self-defeating thoughts. But Ruth needs a partner. She needs love. Sonny needs Ruth. Is Sonny a user? A cad? Maybe, but he is there; he needs Ruth. People need to be needed. A dusty and empty street welcomes the person who decides to walk there.
You may have read that I '“tricked” Cloris in that final scene. What I did was I wanted it raw and savage, and I knew that Cloris would want to re-do, rehearse, calculate. Cloris would shine up the emotional grime Ruth was covered by, and that we needed to see and feel. I refused her another take. I refused her further rehearsal. She was livid. But I was right, and she was brilliant. I think she later forgave me that tense time. I think she thought I was right. But Cloris is an actress—a brilliant actress—and she will want—until the end of time—to go back and do it again. To get it better. Personally, I don’t think she can be any better. There are flubs with the camera and the props in that scene, but she is undeniably great, and she is undeniably the heart of that film—the lonely soul who sees the changes coming to Anarene [the Texas town in which the film takes place], to the country, to her body and her heart, and responds. Never underestimate the beauty of a human being responding.
JG: Those guns on the walls…
PB: Those were Ruth’s other options. She chose to forgive. Why can’t we all?
JG: And then…Hank Williams and the closing credits.
PB: Yes. Why can’t we love like we used to? Why can’t we love at all? Let’s not forget our family. Here are their faces. ‘I’m the same old trouble that you’ve always been through,’ but here I am. Love me.