High school seniors and best friends, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges), live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach’s wife (Cloris Leachman, in an Academy Award-winning role). As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures, Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.
Released in 1971 to critical acclaim, Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show received eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and was hailed as the most important work by a young American director since Citizen Kane.