The Last Picture Show northern Texas. McMurtry had renamed the town Thalia in his book; Bogdanovich renamed it Anarene for the film, a name chosen to correspond to the cowtown of Abilene, Kansas, in Howard Hawks' "Red River" (1948). "Red River", significantly, is the movie, indeed the last picture show, which Sonny and Duane watch at the end of the film. After shooting the film, Bogdanovich went back to Los Angeles to edit the film on a Moviola. Bogdanovich has said he edited the entire film himself but refused to credit himself as editor, reasoning that director and co-writer was enough. When informed that
The Last Picture Show encouraging us to understand and care about its characters, though not to emulate them." In 1973, largely because of the skinny-dipping party scene, the film was banned in Phoenix, Arizona, when the city attorney notified a drive-in theater manager that the film violated a state obscenity statute. Eventually, a federal court decided that the film was not obscene. Ed Ware, the district attorney of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, managed to block the showing of the film but only temporarily because the theater filed suit successfully to overturn Ware's directive. It ranked No. 19 on "Entertainment Weekly"'s list of the 50 Best