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No bull: Texas has never looked on-screen the way it did in urban cowboy.

Article Excerpt
The camera fades in on a pair of brown leather cowboy boots crossed at the ankle. It steadily pans up, taking stock of the painted-on blue jeans, the burnished belt buckle emblazoned with a bull and rider, the crisply ironed Western-style shirt, and, of course, the bottle of Lone Star beer, slung at the hip like a holstered six-shooter. Finally it settles on the face of John Travolta, in profile, leaning against a bar, a black cowboy hat perched forward on his brow. His expression is both curious and purposeful. He's a stranger in a strange land determined to seem as if he belongs.

All of this represents just a fraction of James Bridges's Urban Cowboy (1980)--ten seconds of celluloid at the most. But as unforgettable cinematic snapshots go, it ranks right up there with Marilyn Monroe's white dress billowing over a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch (1955) or Julia Roberts' shopping spree in Pretty Woman (1990): It's a moment in which costume and setting combine to capture the style and sensibility of an era. Travolta's Bud Davis is a restless young man from the country who...

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