groveChuck
U-matic Member
Billy Jack, not Billy Joel.
I'm a couple of days late on this, but been crazybusy with shoots. I was 14 when this was released, and if you weren't around at the time, it's hard to convey the rebel attitude and excitement it generated, and its influences on film of the 70s.
Tom Laughlin wrote, directed and produced "Billy Jack" and starred as the ex-Green Beret who defends a progressive Indian school against the racists and bigots of a conservative Western community. The film became a counterculture favorite.
Laughlin was in his mid-30s when he created Billy Jack with his wife and collaborator, Delores Taylor. Billy Jack was half-white, half Native American, a Vietnam veteran and practitioner of martial arts who had come to hate war.
Billy Jack was completed in 1969, but its release was delayed for two years as Laughlin struggled to find studio backing.
He eventually successfully sued Warner Bros. to retain rights and — with no support from Hollywood or from theater chains — Laughlin made a radical decision: Distribute the movie himself and rent theaters to show it in.
He also was among the first to advertise on television and to immediately open a movie nationwide, rather than release it gradually.
Billy Jack initially flopped at the box office, but generated an underground following and became a substantial commercial success and inspiration to independent filmmakers. The title character has been cited as a forerunner for such screen avengers as Rambo.
Laughlin was in many ways a maverick. In the early 1960s, he temporarily left his film career behind to start a Montessori preschool in Santa Monica that became the largest school of its kind in the United States.
In recent years, Laughlin became involved in psychology and domestic abuse counseling, writing several books on Jungian psychology and developing theories on the causes of cancer.
He ran for President of the United States in 1992, 2004, and 2008.
In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations go to Alzheimer’s Research: www.alz.org or to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation:
www.friendsofpineridgereservation.org
Perhaps Laughlin himself was an even more interesting character than Billy Jack.
The infamous, much quoted scene ("I'm gonna take my right foot and whop you on this side of your face, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it...")
If anybody can get the YT player to embed, be my guest- I can't get it to (Jason???)
I'm a couple of days late on this, but been crazybusy with shoots. I was 14 when this was released, and if you weren't around at the time, it's hard to convey the rebel attitude and excitement it generated, and its influences on film of the 70s.
Tom Laughlin wrote, directed and produced "Billy Jack" and starred as the ex-Green Beret who defends a progressive Indian school against the racists and bigots of a conservative Western community. The film became a counterculture favorite.
Laughlin was in his mid-30s when he created Billy Jack with his wife and collaborator, Delores Taylor. Billy Jack was half-white, half Native American, a Vietnam veteran and practitioner of martial arts who had come to hate war.
Billy Jack was completed in 1969, but its release was delayed for two years as Laughlin struggled to find studio backing.
He eventually successfully sued Warner Bros. to retain rights and — with no support from Hollywood or from theater chains — Laughlin made a radical decision: Distribute the movie himself and rent theaters to show it in.
He also was among the first to advertise on television and to immediately open a movie nationwide, rather than release it gradually.
Billy Jack initially flopped at the box office, but generated an underground following and became a substantial commercial success and inspiration to independent filmmakers. The title character has been cited as a forerunner for such screen avengers as Rambo.
Laughlin was in many ways a maverick. In the early 1960s, he temporarily left his film career behind to start a Montessori preschool in Santa Monica that became the largest school of its kind in the United States.
In recent years, Laughlin became involved in psychology and domestic abuse counseling, writing several books on Jungian psychology and developing theories on the causes of cancer.
He ran for President of the United States in 1992, 2004, and 2008.
In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations go to Alzheimer’s Research: www.alz.org or to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation:
www.friendsofpineridgereservation.org
Perhaps Laughlin himself was an even more interesting character than Billy Jack.
The infamous, much quoted scene ("I'm gonna take my right foot and whop you on this side of your face, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it...")
If anybody can get the YT player to embed, be my guest- I can't get it to (Jason???)
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