One of the most unexpected things about entering your 30s is having nostalgia. It’s not necessarily a fondness for a moment that helped shape the person that you became. In some ways, it’s trying to remember a bygone era, where the world was a very different place. Ideas float through the air telling you how to live life and the venues where you wasted hours upon hours of your life have been demolished, changed into something different. To go back there is to risk disappointment, never being able to retrieve a sensation that was taken for granted.
What makes this feeling in your 30s different is that you’re no longer just dealing with a symbolic loss of childhood innocence. In some ways, to look back at being 20 is to see a naïve adult, unsure of what the world was going to offer. It was a time when almost everyone was being undermined, discredited for simply not having experience. Those with drive knew how to push forward faster, likely to live with less regret over mistakes made. But in some ways, being nostalgic at 30 feels worse because there aren’t as many cultural barriers to suggest the start and end of an era. There is no high school graduation to uniform thought, nor does every friend group follow the same trajectory. Life becomes a beautiful, jumbled mess that reminds you of its potential. Trying to hold onto it is cruel, especially for those wishing to cradle the little things.
It's the sensation I get reading Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show.” As the characters sit down to watch Red River (1948) at a closing cinema, I am reminded of some terrible truths. As much as that symbolized a close to high school and teenage shenanigans, the idea of a theater closing feels painfully relevant in 2021, leaving me to parse through memories that are sometimes only two or three years old. The venues that used to give me comfort have now closed permanently due to Coronavirus and pandemic concerns. They couldn’t afford to stay in business, pay the rent and maybe one day open up. We were all living in an uncertain future in 2020, and I’m starting to notice the painful reality.
All I wanted was to escape my woes for a few hours, watching a bright wall in a dark room. It didn’t have to be the most life-changing experience, but I needed that reliable routine for when I needed to escape. Don’t get me wrong, there are still theaters. The major chains have managed to survive, but for the smaller venues, I’m left to find other options. The future of indie cinema feels more threatened than ever, and the best I can do is pray something changes, that some kindhearted tycoon (is that an oxymoron?) swoops in and revives these locations that lay dormant.
However, I have been experiencing history in some ways fading since I was a teenager. I think back to the OTHER theater in Downtown Long Beach that likely closed because parking was a nightmare (and overpriced where applicable). Meanwhile, the famed bookstore Acres of Books went under and remains a vacant lot. Downtown has changed greatly where The Pike went from having a diverse set of options for loitering parties to basically a bunch of places you can buy clothes or eat ice cream. I don’t want to go to these places. Frankly, it only helps to symbolize how the world has changed and I cannot imagine the new way is viable for anyone emotionally.
But here’s another thing about nostalgia in your 30s. With the right level of manipulation, it’s possible that nostalgia can fade and the familiar places become foreign. I think of the places around my old high school. In middle school, there was a record shop that was eventually replaced by a Hollywood Video. Now it’s someplace more generic, less desiring. I cannot imagine a teenage me wanting to loiter in those stores, eagerly flipping through their merchandise, and realize that I don’t care about a lot of things. The truth is that I don’t remember what was next to that Hollywood Video. I don’t even know what was across the street. Was the donut shop always there? Without digging up old blueprints, an aspect of my teenage years is gone. Even the McDonald’s has been greatly renovated since then.
I’m aware that this isn’t unique to me. Everyone who has been alive long enough will notice that the world has changed. Still, there is something worth savoring about the idea that you can’t know where you going if you don’t know where you’ve been. How can one understand their identity without these signifiers of how one has evolved and changed? Sure, I’m talking strictly about landmarks, fragile as they may be, but as a person who benefits from visual signifiers, it’s hard to really feel a connection to one’s past.
But there has to be a reason that McMurtry ends the story at Red River, where the residents of a small town with a dwindling population try to survive. What is it about this moment that speaks so well to the story’s emotional component? It isn’t a story about a cinephile nor does the theater really function within the narrative in a meaningful way. Is it the film itself?
To be completely honest, I think it’s because of how unifying art is. While there are central characters, none of their stories feel reliant upon each other. They are each living their formative years in ways that hint at the adults they will become. The story hits all of the hallmarks of the familiar coming of age story. There’s the athletes pushing themselves to be greater, the women insecure in their looks trying to navigate their sexuality, and even the idea of careers. This is practically a ghost town. There is no future here. Everything will die, blow away in the dust. No economy could possibly survive in this atmosphere.
Despite McMurtry being one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, I am not in love with the original version of this story. Yes, all of the components are here that would make up the superior Oscar-winning Peter Bogdanovich film, but they feel less formed, like a scrapbook. They are as hormonal as the characters that inhabit the pages, only a few chapters from awkward sex or potentially getting married across state lines. In my opinion, these stories by themselves are fine but have no greater permanence. So why even tell these stories where close to nothing happens and at best we get a taste of small-town life and the fear of youth being suffocated?
It’s because our memories are fleeting. As everyone enters the bigger world that is busier and less precious about minor accomplishments, there is a longing for a time when the biggest conflicts were emotional. Who wouldn’t want to think back on those relationships that helped form who we became? Yes, this is a cliché. Yes, “The Last Picture Show” is not special in this way. What I think gives it some credence is how few stories think to capture small-town life, demystifying the western aesthetic through a contemporary lens and realizing that life may be boring and lack the attractions of a big city, but it sure ain’t boring. There are still ways to get by.
I think what ultimately makes Red River feel important is that despite all of the tangents, this is one of the last moments in the narrative where every character is in the same space. It’s the time where they shared a moment and knew where their friends were. For as much as each had strayed away, they had the chance to talk about something they all witnessed from the same vantage point. They knew what it was like to live in this city, to watch as their few institutions threaten to disappear. What will they even have left when they visit? Will it just be an empty lot?
I have never been to the city depicted in McMurtry’s tale. I have seen the film, but I can at best imagine what it’s like to stare down the road for miles, realizing how empty everything is. I don’t have personal nostalgia for that place, but I know the struggle to hold onto the diminishing emptiness of youth. At some point, the odometer will flip over and enough days have been acquired to be an adult. It’s scary and I notice how vulnerable the final hallmarks disappearing can ultimately feel. Without the cinema, what is the unifying source of entertainment? Small things can have great impacts, and that feels like a big one.
Despite opening this with a lengthy discussion of how my geographic location has changed, I haven’t necessarily specified much of anything. Yes, I mentioned that I loitered inside a Hollywood Video – but did I actually enjoy being there?
My high school story isn’t all that special. I have my memories that have helped define me and I think helped to build a better character. Do you know my friends’ names, where we hung out on the weekend, or what was playing on the radio? These are all pertinent details, but I don’t think they’ll explain why symbolically, watching Red River is the greatest moment in the story. We all have our own journeys, the highlights creating a permanent nostalgia in our hearts. I will cherish them. However, they weren’t often where everyone’s paths intersected.
It is my belief that the media we consumed in some ways is the only tangible connection to the past. With limited exceptions, art rarely changes over time and the emotions we accumulate can often remind us of where we were when we consumed it.
As I continue to return to theaters, I am reminded of how powerful that feeling was. This is especially true of The Marketplace in Long Beach. That was my favorite theater, where I’ve spent most of my adult life discovering a wide variety of international and indie cinema. It was a formative place, where I discovered art that connected me with like-minded individuals on social media. The hours of conversation I had because I chose to spend an afternoon in those rooms have been invaluable, and in some ways, I’m scared of what could possibly be the replacement. I need art. It’s the only way that I truly can define moments in time, especially in a world where construction seems to be a permanent fixture in our communities.
It is painful because our minds will mold, forming a vision of the past that may or may not be true. For some, it can actually soften the edges and make life seem greater. It’s just how the human brain works, tirelessly repressing and forgetting moments that are sad or trivial in favor of the latest experience. To say that a person doesn’t change is farcical. It’s just that we’re often so close that it’s hard to notice. Given that landmarks aren’t allowed to exist in ways that allow for pause and reflection, it’s difficult to properly understand the ideas we once thought about and the memories we made. What we need is media to present an image, a song to play a few notes, a book to write a few words that only serve to connect us all.
It is why Red River means the world. I have dozens of movies from throughout my adult years that will transport me to a theater or a street corner where I’m talking to someone. Being 32, I want to return to those places. They were so lovely. Some are still around, but others have been demolished, burned down, or simply went bankrupt. I have to just press play and have my imagination take me back, feeling the comfort once again, hoping that it will do until the feeling once again passes.
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