Late Night Landscapes

If you've been reading my shit for the last 10 years you know by now that for some period of time I was left to my own devices at night at a pretty young age.  I didn't find myself looking for trouble as a ten year old.  I was looking for occupations.

Of my hands, my mind, my spirit.

The house wasn't empty, but it was often dark and quiet, and I wasn't.  I took advantage of the holes in activity and discovered what late night television had to offer.  Out in the sticks of Kenosha County we didn't have cable.  We had both Chicago and Milwaukee television stations, decided by the pointing of the aerial, suspended high on the house's tower. I liked using the rotor,  as it was kind of a kick to hear it's mechanical whir in sync with the gradual clearing of the foggy static and emerging images on the screen as the antenna reached it's desired directional goal.  We also had Spectrum, as faithful readers of this blog well know, but the mercurial pay channel's evening material often drifted into the steamy category, and I wasn't interested yet.

Yes, WBBM 2, WTMJ 4, WMAQ 5, WITI 6, WLS 7, WGN 9, WISN 12, PBS' WMVS 10 and WTTW 11,  independents WVTV 18, and WFLD 32 provided a bevy of late night options.

Saturday nights were an interesting dish of varying materials.  Long after The Love Boat and Fantasy Island existed a veritable treasure trove.  It was at this time that I fell in love with Saturday Night Live and SCTV which followed directly after those ridiculous ventures into Captain Stubing/Mr. Rourke inanity.  Both SNL & SCTV's comedic styles helped shaped my sense of humor, which I tap into on Looking for Laughs on this blog.

It was the stuff after my beloved comedy that I found really interesting.  It was often a mixed bag, but when it hit right, it could be an interesting duffel of material.  Don Kirschner's Rock Concert , Midnight Special, and Austin City Limits helped expand my musical horizons as watching the musical variances of artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, Ian Hunter, Joe Walsh, Leon Redbone, Lou Reed, and others showed me there was much more out there than the WMAQ country that rang through the house on my mom's airwaves, or the heavy metal thunder blasted by my siblings.   Late night movies were often a paradox.  Sifting through melodrama at its often worst was often rewarded by the discoveries of Dirty Harry, The Brotherhood of Satan, Bullitt, High Plains Drifter, Billy Jack, & The Odd Couple.  

Of course there were the late night sitcom reruns, and I took in The Odd Couple, Laverne and Shirley, The Honeymooners, M*A*S*H, and others.  It is indeed pretty cool when a 9 year old kid develops respect for the writing of  Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, and Garry Marshall.  I knew good comedy when I saw it, and developed the sense of it from the genius scriptwriters of an era I was watching reruns from.  A video window into comedy history.  Siblings would often pop in to see what the hell I was laughing at.  Probably Colonel Flagg,  or Ed Norton.

As Saturday drew to a close, WFLD out of Chicago presented Keyfax's Night Owl after sign off.




An 8 bit animated full color illustration of the day's news, entertainment, and sports presented with quasi-massage music, was a surreal watch, but informative and strangely soothing.  It was the perfect antithesis to what came before on the evening, and an effective wind-down before finally turning my sad boyhood in for the night.

Even as a boy, I liked to stay informed.

This stuff is pretty clear in my memory, and it is probably because a seed was being planted here in some way.  And I'm grateful for it.

Baseball as Religion Part I: Civil War

I've written in this blog in the past about how, 37 years ago, my brother moved back home and introduced me to baseball.   Click this shit below to read it.

Along with Danny's baseball wisdom, came a deep love for the Milwaukee Brewers, or as they were known at the time, Harvey's Wallbangers.  Incidentally, for a great composite of how I like to remember this team, from another's point of view anyways, check this out:  Cardboard Gods  by the great Josh Wilker. 

This was the summer of 1982, (obviously, from the suggested reading I just plugged above) and my brother Dan and I immersed ourselves fully into Harvey's Kuenn's band of crazy, lovable, powerful, goonish baseball knights in blue pinstripes.  These rawhide chesspieces were a great vehicle that my brother used to school me on how the game worked, and he was good at it.  It eventually spread out into the backyard, where he taught me to catch a tennis ball, after helping me break in a new glove, and started bestowing on me the skill of how to swing a baseball bat and not look like a complete doofus while doing so.  

The Brewers were good, good enough to take the Cardinals to Game 7, but not enough to win it.  Short closer Rollie Fingers due to a rotator cuff injury, they just couldn't put the Redbirds away, and due to this fact I will forever hate that team with a burning passion for the hot tears that they caused to roll down a 10 year old boy's cheeks on late October evening.  

Otherwise, those were fun days. 

Jump forward a couple of years.  My folks and I moved into a house in town and with that residence came a new novelty, cable television, and with that, WGN-TV and daily Chicago Cubs games.  Due to the fact the Cubbies were in the National League, unlike my Brewers American League residence, I felt no guilt in becoming a fan.  Unless a mutual I-94 World Series occurred, there was no harm, no foul in rooting for the Baby Bears. 

 It was also a benefit that the Cubs, in this summer of 1984, made the playoffs for the first time since the dinosaurs were made extinct.  They were fun to watch with youngsters like Ryne Sandberg, Jody Davis and Bob Dernier, intermingling with grizzled vets Ron Cey, Gary "Sarge" Matthews, and Larry Bowa.  Thanks to that bastard Steve Garvey and his upstart San Diego Padres, the North Shore Cubs jaunt into the playoffs only lasted one painful round.

Little did I know this little factoid: Danny had a mutual love for the same Chicago Team I had and for the same goddamn reason.  They were on TV every day during the summer.  That's right.  WGN-TV carried all Chicago Cubs games, home and road, all season long.  And ten years prior to my discovery, my brother had the same one.  Unbeknownst to me. 

Mind you, Danny and I had watched countless hours of the national pastime as experienced by the Brewtown Bombers together, we listened to Bob Uecker and Dwayne Moseley calling Crew games on hot summer afternoons while we shot the frisbee, the baseball and the shit.  He had taken me to numerous games at vaunted Milwaukee County Stadium, where he bought me sodas, hot dogs, and Cracker Jack, all while watching our heroes in blue, white, and yellow.

All the while, his number one team was the Cubs.

I had no idea. 

I found this out years later when the ultimate nightmare for two baseball-loving people in my brother and I's position was revealed to the world.  MLB moved the Milwaukee Brewers to the Senior Circuit.  

And put them in the same division as the Cubs.

I said it like that, in a sentence separated from a paragraph, to of course be dramatic.  Where the hell else would you put a team that resides in Milwaukee?  I digress.

And when my brother and I came to discuss this seeming abomination committed by the league, he said it while on a telephone conversation. 

"I'll be rooting for the Cubbies, Rob."

My head spun, I dropped the phone, my legs got weak.  I never spoke to that son of a bitch again. 

I'm kidding, of course.   His indoctrination into the Grand Ol' Game was the age-old Northern Illinois stalwarts. You always imprint on your first experience with something, as I did when Dan first blessed me with the Milwaukee Brewers.   You can't change after that, it's impossible.  It just can't be done, at least not without withdrawal, irritation, and eventually excruciating pain, and really, it's just baseball.  There's no need for that shit. 

He rooted for the Brewers in '82 for the same reason that I rooted for the Cubs in 1984.  The Brewers were in a completely separate league from his team, and he saw no sin in pulling for the local Milwaukee boys as their success started to bring them into the limelight.  

Same damn thing I did with the Cubs in 1984 as they made a run. 

The Brewers were just the baseball ride Dan chose to take me on in that moment, as the 1982 Cubs finished 73-89 and 19 games out of first place.  The Brewers were successful and far more exciting. Who could blame that beautiful bastard for making that decision.  I couldn't be happier with how it worked out.

The only difference is, despite the fact that he will always put his beloved Cubbies first, Danny wishes no ill will on the Brewers.  I myself have however disowned the Baby Bears.  A heavy taste of the Lou Piniella-led out fit, containing the likes of Derrek Lee, Carlos Zambrano, Alfonso Soriano, and Geovany Soto, et al's antics, circa the late 2000's, really turned me off.  I'm sure the Brewers have had their share of idiots in recent years, but Danny has chosen not to hold that against my favorite team. But me, I'm a homer.

I guess he's just a bigger man than me.

I do find it fascinating, the parallells at work here.  The similarities in the reasons that we did things in regard to these two baseball clubs, but for the opposite team.  There was just a fork in the road in terms of personal preference, and we went in different directions, chose different paths.  

Danny's got a World Series however.  Jealous of that as I may be, I shall hold no ill will. 

I love my brother for many, many reasons.  Baseball's just one of them.

Thank you, Danny.

Bound to the Past: Walt Disney's America

When I was very young, I was enamored with the film Old Yeller.  There were Disney animated films at this time, but they weren't the frequent audio-visual market-controlling dominations that they are now.  This was long before Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and Pixar Studios.  Disney's old live-action films still made frequent visits to the small screen, and there was always the Sunday Night Disney TV show.  Like many, I was driven to tears by the conclusion of Old Yeller, but I kept returning to viewings of it anyway.  It wasn't because of any sort of experience with dogs.  At this particular time of my life, aged 7 or 8, the family had one dog for a short period of time that I don't remember being all that fond of.

A wiener dog named Hunts.

There are family stories about this pooch.  Like the time my Mom left the house, and driving away from the family home, she glanced into the rear-view and spotted Hunts chasing her car from behind.  After Ma had locked up, Hunts had bashed out what Wisconsinites call a "screen window" in the bathroom, made a jump that would have killed an ordinary dog, and began chasing my mom's car.

He was an irritating beast.  I seem to remember him being a lazy sort, who lay about, I think with a monocle on, barking at people with a German accent. (this may be my imagination speaking)  He was like a Dachshund Colonel Klink.  As I said, I don't remember liking him much, but occasionally the son of one of my parent's friends named Gibby (I don't think he went on to be the famous Gibby from the Butthole Surfers, but of this I can't be certain) always acted like the dog was his.  That pissed me off.  Hunts was a Nazi dog, but he was our Nazi dog.

The true family dog was yet to come, the legendary Ginger.

I digress, but that's a story I must get to eventually.

Old Yeller was a favorite film of mine, but this was way pre-VCR. The best I could do to revisit the classic was by reading (or having read to me) Walt Disney's America, one volume of a 1961 4-volume Wonderful World of Disney hardcover book set, one that I had inherited from a sibling somewhere along the line.  One of America's chapters was the literary breakdown of the Yeller saga.  The book also included the sequel, Savage Sam, which didn't tickle my fancy nearly as much.  I loved having my parents read the tale of Yeller and his family and their frontier life, before the immovable object of Yeller's impending doom darkened the horizon.  The pictures of Yeller, consumed with Rabies terrified me.  My mind equated it as some sort of demonic possession, and that beautiful Retriever mutt was the last creature on Earth deserving of that terrible fate.  My folks did a great job explaining why the end was the way it had to be, but it didn't stop the tears from flowing.

 America dominated the other books in the series, which were Fantasyland, Worlds of Nature, and Stories from Other Lands.  This Volume contained, besides Yeller: Ben & Me, Johnny Appleseed, & The Shaggy Dog, among others.  It was a great book for parents to read to kids right before bed.  Just enough text and great pictures to look at. I wish I had still had my copy when my kids were growing up.

It was, among others in this blog series, a book I returned to time and time again when I was at that age just before I was able to read.  I wish I knew what it was about this era that continually draws me back.  Maybe it is because that time period was the safest I've ever felt.  Maybe its just before the true drama of life made itself known. (which it would very shortly)

Maybe the earlier days of all media were simply just better.

Pick Up A Book: "There is No Other Way to Worship Them"

As a young kid, I can remember days when the summer sun was so bright you were forced to squint to keep from going blind.  When that happened it caused you to do a sort of tunnel-vision, hyper-focus on a very limited area.  You'd end up considering a piece of receipt drifting through the street, a pre-civil war era piece of gum, a crack in a tire that shouldn't be there.  You had to pay attention to that object, something you'd never even give the time of day to.

The sun forced you to.

That's what happens in Sam Snoek-Brown's book, a short story collection called There is No Other Way to Worship Them.   These stories and their characters are so detailed, so alive, that you find yourself feeling like you're staring at them instead of reading about them.  It's almost a sense of voyeurism or eavesdropping your experiencing.   From major life decisions to everyday minutiae, the characters fictional lives feel real to a degree and depth that most writers can't communicate.   Most of the stories are Texas/Mexico based, and range from a war fought before your grandparents' birth to the present day.  There is humor, there is dense drama, there is often suspense, twisting around each other.  Good or bad, the people feel real, and you find yourself caring for them.  Sometimes.... when maybe you shouldn't. 

Though I may not be smart enough to often understand what Snoek-Brown may be trying to say underneath the waves in some of these brief storms across the imagination, the characters and narratives are so powerful, the experience is rich.   And when the chapter ends and you set the book down, its not unlike when a cloud would step in front of that blaring sun on those childhood days, and you're suddenly set free from the sun-forced stare.

Whether or not you realize it, this man pulled you into a dream.

Click on the image and above, to get the book.

Halloween II on Lichter Road

John Carpenter's Halloween was literally the only film to give me nightmares.  The first time I saw it, sometime in 1981, was an HBO airing on a miniscule black and white Admiral Television.   I watched with my sister Randee in a tiny Racine, Wisconsin apartment she shared with another sister, Dee.  Imagine that, subscribing to HBO and watching it on a 9 inch black and white screen.

Scared the shits out of me nonetheless.  And that is plural "shits".

The second time was on the floor of our family's Lichter Road homestead, lying terrified next to my sister Linda as my future brother-in-law whispered from the shadows that Haddonfield, Illinois was not far from Kenosha, Wisconsin.

To me, the original Halloween, (and I know I'm one of gajillions who think this way) is the epoch of horror, and the icing is its perfection in seasonal viewing at this time of year.  It's tone personified.  It's not gory, it's intense and just plain scary.

Everyone in the world should remember a bullet-riddled Michael Myers falling out of an upper middle class balcony in that Haddonfield, Illinois on October 31, 1978.  Only to have gotten up and walked away as his demented psychiatrist looked on with an empty revolver.  I was mortified.

After all, Illinois wasn't very far from Wisconsin, said my caffeine and sugar encased imagination.  Don echoed that sentiment a short few months later from those affore-mentioned shadows.

Needless to say, I could not wait to find out what happened next.  I needed to know.

So in the fall of 82, in a two page spread in the Spectrum guide, there it was.  The featured film on the month.  Halloween II!!

To this day, I love the film.  I love how, taking a page from Bride of Frankenstein,  it picks up immediately after the climax of the original...it gives it some air of intensity. Director Rick Rosenthal claims to this day that he wanted to keep the suspense and tone of the original going for the sequel, but it was Carpenter who did recuts to implement more gore and graphic violence into the film to keep pace with the nasty slashers that followed in the seminal film's wake and became box office gold.

I don't know if that's true or not, (I hope not) but I will admit the sequel has a mean-spiritedness that seems unneccesary.  That needle in the eye!  Lance Guest slipping in a pool of blood!  Poor Alice!  All she did was wonder what the hell Mrs. Elrod's problem was!  What a random murder, Michael, geez.

All of this kind of caught me offguard as an 11 year old watching alone.

Anyhoo, the film affected me, just not as much as the first.  Because It had things that bugged me, even as a kid.  I thought the mask was weird and stupid until I learned years later that the mask was the original, worse for wear, from the first film and that I was actually stupid.

Myers walked in this one like he shit his pants.  As a kid, I queried, Would Michael care if he shit his pants?  Did he visit the bathroom?  Was the toilet afraid?  Now I'm thinking of Michael, Jason, and Freddy freshening up in front of a public bathroom mirror together.

I told you I was stupid.

40 years later Halloween is back on the big screen, with direct involvement from John Carpenter for the first time since Halloween III in 1982, and it is an amazing film.  The new one skips Halloween II entirely and acts as a direct sequel to the first, but there's an extended sequence that is an obvious homage to it that should keep the fans happy, if their memories are sharp.

Ham anyone?

Movies I Stayed Up Late For: Guest Appearance by Aidan Will: A Study of Billy Jack

The Billy Jack franchise has been a long-standing piece of my family's household for decades.  As readers of this blog and my Facebook page will well know.  My sister, Linda, indoctrinated me in the late 70's, and my love of the series has only grown despite its much deserved criticism.

The second in the series, Billy Jack, has a standing that has decreased in the mainstream over the years, but its cult adoration still exists and thrives.  Even modern film/tv stars like Nick Offerman sing its praises.  Why the fans exist is a question answered with multiple responses.  Whether its the nostalgia factor, the political leanings that dance on the fringes of history lessons, or its sympathy to the plight of Native Americans and their reservations, (these are issues still being addressed cinematically by the likes of Taylor Sheridan with the incredible Wind River, and TV's Yellowstone), all answers are valid.

My kiddo Aidan has discovered it as well, and is a proud owner of the recent Shout Factory's Blu-Ray box set of the series.  Their explanation of the Billy Jack Franchise's ups and downs is as strong, if not better summation of any I've read.  Sit back, put on your banded hat, prepare for a vision quest, and absorb the foundations of Milwaukee native Tom Laughlin's labour of love.

Ladies and Gents, I give you the words of Aidan Will:

It was a tumultuous time for the world, and a time of change for the cinema. The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement had galvanized the youth culture into action and activism and disillusioned them with authority and government. In response, the film industry had to change. Those investing their money in film could no longer afford to ignore the youth. So, in the mid-sixties, a wave of more modestly budgeted and, frequently, more politically aware films hit the market, and these films made money. This was the scene Tom Laughlin entered with Billy Jack. Though obscured by the more well-known films of the day, Laughlin’s most well-known feature was nonetheless influential in how films are marketed and stands as a perfect example of the cinema of the early 70’s in both the methodology of its release and the merit of its content. 

Tom Laughlin was a Milwaukee native who began acting in the 50’s (Spiro, Milwaukee Journal). Upon witnessing the mistreatment of Native Americans in South Dakota, the hometown of his wife, Delores Taylor. This mistreatment ranged from attempts at exclusion and intimidation at the post office to their inhumane living situations. Laughlin deigned to write a screenplay capturing his frustrations at this mistreatment. He was in disbelief seeing people living in covered cars and showering in water coming from a pipe outside of a church. (Esposito) After marrying Delores, they were off to Hollywood, because he “wanted to change things.” They were soon bankrupt but the couple managed to arrange funds to produce the exploitation film The Born Losers (1967) to cash in on the motorcycle-gang film craze and raise the money to make Billy Jack. (Wilkins, People) 17 years after the script was initially written, they were able to make the film they wanted. Fighting tooth-and-nail all the way, they experienced various production problems ranging from disputes with Warner Bros. to Laughlin’s own fiery attitude and approach to directing on set. After selling the finished project to Warner Bros. for distribution for $1.8 million, Laughlin was unhappy and suspicious of their treatment of the film. He accused them of sidelining the project’s release in preference to their own productions and took them to court. The dispute was settled and Laughlin supervised the re-release himself, booking theaters across the country. He began showings with 66 Los Angeles theaters each showing the film for one to two weeks. It then spread to nearly 400 theaters simultaneously, a number which would only grow over the next two years. (Hall, Neale, 196-197)

The film, against all odds, was an absolute hit, factoring in both its initial 1971 release and subsequent re-releases facilitated by Warner Bros. in ’72 and ‘73, it grossed around $90 million on an $800,000 budget. When adjusted for inflation this is still an incredible and noteworthy success. The film was, if only briefly, a phenomenon, it seemed Billy Jack was the hero for the right place and the right time. Something about this film spoke to people, and when its content is considered, it’s surely understandable. Billy Jack (as played by Laughlin himself) was a war veteran who hated the Vietnam war, and sought to defend people from social injustices whenever he could, perhaps the perfect hero for the youth of 60’s and 70’s. In particular, he aimed to defend the so-called ‘Freedom School,’ a facility ran by Jean (Delores Taylor’s character) where all were welcome, no matter their heritage or interests. Of course, a group of backwards townspeople, even on the establishment level, are not keen on this institution, essentially relegating it to a haven of kooks encouraging and bolstering hooligan behavior. The design of this film is, to say the least, peculiar. It defies categorization. Surely many people flocked to see the film’s impressively executed martial arts sequence, but that’s only a small fraction of the film.

 It could be said Laughlin was uncertain of the sort of film he wanted to make. The focus of the final product, for all its merit, is certainly questionable. At times it does hearken back to its exploitation predecessor, The Born Losers, with a subplot involving the rape of Delores Taylor’s character, and of course the titular character’s physical vengeance upon the oppressors of the town. Yet there are large portions of this film that seem to lean towards the tendencies of the Art film, or even the Neorealist film. Billy Jack comes and goes, but what is always there is the town and its people. And Laughlin was happy to let the camera stay on the people of town and the students of the school. We see children sing songs, and men perform improvisational theatre both on campus and in the middle of the town. He had visual reverence for the natural landscapes surrounding the area. These sequences alternate between being somewhat of a drag to legitimately charming. Calling back to Neorealism, the film was shot on location and much of the cast was culled from non-professional sources, including friends of the Laughlin family. Laughlin got convincing performances out of the people where it counted. Thanks to this, the serious moments of the film operate with actual gravity and are able to land on the audience with impact. 

There’s no doubt that the film is deeply spiritual as well, with Laughlin wanting to pay great respect to the Native American people. He stated in an interview his belief that in making Billy Jack he was helping to preserve the message and memory of the Ghost Religion founded by the Paiute leader Wovoka, after Wovoka’s son-in-law and last surviving descendant, Andy Vidovich flew to the set stating “Wovoka wants me to get his message out.” In consideration of more than one interesting synecdoche occurring on set (one a scene of Native Ritual, the other a dispensation of mortal justice) Laughlin states that upon filming certain scenes, “It became clear to me that Wovoka was using us to get his message through to today’s youth.” (Esposito) It has to be admitted that the film is preachy, Laughlin had no interest in subtlety here. The saving grace being that it was well-meaning, sincere, and perhaps appropriate for the time it was made. The film draws from real experiences had by Taylor growing up in South Dakota. One famous scene, in which one of the oppressors pours flour over some of the students in an ice cream shop to “make them white,” was based off of actual events. (Esposito) It is very likely, given Laughlin’s very particular anti-authority attitude and borderline-hippie aesthetic, that this film couldn’t have been so successful in any other period of time. 

It goes without saying that despite the film’s stellar box office performances and warm reception by audiences (if not critics), not to mention its spawning of at least one highly successful sequel, The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) (which itself featured a highly influential marketing campaign) , it’s simply not remembered like the box office hits of its day such as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). When looking at the time in New Hollywood when a film first became an event that could be sustained for a long time over a wide area, Billy Jack is surely not irrelevant to the conversation. Yet it’s not frequently included in such discourse. There are no Billy Jack Halloween costumes, no Billy Jack action figures or playsets, or talks of rereleases and reboots. The film’s popularity has died down from a blockbuster audience to what is essentially a cult following that, while passionate and enduring, is not massive. 

So, why was the Billy Jack craze so ephemeral in comparison to that of the blockbusters that would follow? Why would a massive blockbuster audience simmer down to the most modest of followings?  Perhaps it was simply too much of a product of its time, satisfying to its immediate audience, but dated in such a way to render it less palatable for later audiences. On an objective level, Billy Jack simply wasn’t as great a film as Jaws or Star Wars. The film’s unfocused and unclassifiable nature, while part of its intrigue, may have been to its detriment in the long run. This film couldn’t reward the average viewer on repeat watches as perhaps Jaws and Star Wars could. Those curious about the film’s seminal, Bruce Lee-predating martial arts sequence may have lost interest after learning they would also have to contend with prolonged sequences of singing and improvisational theater.  The Trial of Billy Jack, while also a great success, was even more experimental and carried on the political themes of its predecessor, even featuring recreations of the Kent State Shootings and the My Lai Massacre. This was not a well-received film, critically speaking (Though there are those in recent times calling for a reappraisal), and the next Billy Jack film, Billy Jack Goes to Washington would end up being a cinematic vehicle for Laughlin’s real-life political ambitions, and never saw theatrical release. A fifth sequel began production but was never finished. Perhaps, if the sequels had committed to a specific genre (likely the action film) the franchise’s popularity could have maintained momentum enough for it enough to have achieved lasting mainstream recognition.

So, what is Billy Jack? Is it’s a blockbuster or a cult film? The proportion of its budget to its success was surely suggest a blockbuster, and one might demand it take a place at the table of the 70’s box office successes, given its re-release exhibition method of “four-walling” had an influence on several major studios’ re-releases of expensive pictures who’s initial box office results were disappointed, such as Warner’s Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Avco Embassy’s The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and MGM’s Westworld (1973).  (Hall, Neale, 197) But today the film holds onto but a modest cult audience. It could be said that Billy Jack was a cult film that scratched and clawed its way to blockbuster success through the sheer tenacity of its creator. 

In the end, the film’s legacy still clings to life in the periphery. Laughlin and Taylor have since passed on (Laughlin in 2013, Taylor in 2018), survived by their children who also took part in the making of their films. However rough around the edges, Billy Jack deserves a place in the discussion of New Hollywood given to its unlikely success and appeal to the youth culture.  The Billy Jack franchise remains as a testament to the Laughlins’ passion and their hope for social change, as well as a monument to their extraordinary perseverance in a harsh industry. 

Bound to the Past: Jaws

As a kid, I was really a huge fan of sharks.  Ridiculously so.  They were, after all, "nature's perfect killing machine", which was a quote said or written by everybody.  By the 4th grade, I had accumulated numerous books of the Scholastic variety, and watched every nature program on the subject that was available without the benefit of cable television.  My mom had added to my burgeoning interest by finding copies of Shark: Attacks on Man by George A Llano and Shark Attack by H. David Baldridge at rummage sales. I was, at a young age no less, becoming an oceanographer-level expert on the notorious carcharodon carcharias.

And needless to say, I had seen Jaws about 10 times by the time I was 9.  At that age, I had decided I wanted to take the leap and read Peter Benchley's novel that was the basis for Steven Spielberg's now famous popcorn extravaganza, and likely my favorite movie. In the same basement rec-room that I had stumbled across the book Strange Unsolved Mysteries, I had also found someone's ragged and dog-eared copy of Jaws, emblazoned with the "Now a Major Motion Picture" stamp that has become so famously applied to novels making the leap to the silver screen.

Benchley's book became the first "non-kid" book I ever read.  Sadly, it was nowhere near as exciting as Spielberg's filmed version, and contained a bit too much melodrama for a youngster geared up for blood-and-guts killer fish action.  Who needed all that marital intrigue?  Certainly not this 9 year-old.  Despite that, this was the moment that I fell in love with the concept of the novel.  I've been an avid reader ever since.  Eventually my sister bought me the novelization of Jaws 2 by Hank Searls for Christmas, and this young completionist was thrilled.  I had a mini-library of shark-related material to continually delve into, while that behavior drew shaking heads and rolled eyes from family members.

In the winter of 1979, another sister (see a trend developing here?) bought me Ideal's Jaws "board game" where you need to pluck junk from the great fish's mouth before its jaws clamp down on the plastic hook you use to accomplish this goal. To be honest, the box it comes in is much cooler than the game itself.

Not too much further past that moment in time, sharks lost much of their luster as explained here.  Nonetheless, The Great White Shark, through fiction and fantasy, had become an imagination-piquing device that I, to this day, occasionally still reference.  I've seen Jaws and Jaws 2 many more times since, passed their legendary stories on to my kids, (avoid numbers 3 and 4 at all costs, unless you dig unintended laughter) own a DVD copy of Blue Water, White Death, and have immersed myself in Steve Alten's hyper-speed Meg series with great relish.  Meg, to the uninitiated, is based on the Megaladon species, the prehistoric precursor to the Great White, said to be a 65 foot version of it's descendant.  You can imagine where the imagination can take that concept.  A filmed version of that classic is headed to the big screen this summer, 43 years after Jaws.

I don't know if I would have become the avid reader I am, the lover of suspense and sci-fi that I continue to be, the admirer of the great creatures that only mother nature can provide that I have always been, had it not been for Jaws.  I definitely wouldn't have turned out to be the Roy Scheider enthusiast that I am.  Speaking of which, check out The Seven-ups and Sorcerer today.  I mean it, buy them now.  These films are 70's masterworks.

And again, to a book, I'm grateful.

Say, if you're in the mood for my less-than-insightful look at one of the most blatant rip-offs of Jaws ever made, there's this.