Megan McLachlan talks to The Last Picture Shows documentary director Rustin Thompson about his film celebrating classic movie theaters.
Don’t be surprised if, after you watch Rustin Thompson’s The Last Picture Shows documentary, you suddenly want to book a road trip out west. That’s where this project started.
“I have always enjoyed road trips through that area,” said Thompson. “I used to work in Reno, Nevada and Colorado Springs, Colorado. I really just fell in love with those wide open vistas. So I knew that when I started this film that I wanted to combine it with a road trip, because I was going to be filming mostly by myself. And I just love being alone on the road, listening to music and stopping wherever I want and seeing images that I think could provide some sort of like texture to the film. And I knew all of that stuff was out there.”
Thompson’s documentary is a travelogue through classic movie theaters of today and yesterday, some still in operation, others defunct. We meet the folks behind the theaters, often husband-and-wife duos, as well as the patrons.
The Last Picture Shows: A Cinephile’s Dream Travelogue
One reason why theaters sometimes remain abandoned and dilapidated is because of the way they’re constructed.
“A lot of them have a sloping floor, and that’s really hard to rip out and rebuild it up into a flat floor for a restaurant or a grocery store or a Verizon store or whatever. And they also have balconies, which are difficult to deal with. So those ones that were empty are the ones I really was most interested in.”
Each building tells a story, which Thompson learns through research and talking to the building owners.
“I did a lot of reading. I went to a lot of different sites that talk about the state of the industry and the history. But the main thing was the site Cinematreasures.org, which I interviewed the co-founder of that, Ross Melnick, who’s a historian, professor, and has written several books.”
The Last Picture Shows is a cinephile’s dream.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Thompson about all things movie theaters, including how COVID affected the industry, Shazam 2, and the hope for the future.
The Last Picture Shows opens August 7 in New York. For more showings, visit the film’s website.
