The Last Picture Show eye fell on an interesting title, "The Last Picture Show". The back of the book said it was about "kids growing up in Texas" and Bogdanovich decided that it did not interest him and put it back. A few weeks later, actor Sal Mineo handed Bogdanovich a copy of the book. "I always wanted to be in this," he said, "but I'm a little too old now" and recommended that Bogdanovich make it into a film. At the time, Bogdanovich was married to Polly Platt and he asked her to read it. Her response was, "I don't know how you
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