Billy Jack
|  Since the dawn of cinema there have been scores of hit movies, but few of them can be to said to have become a phenomenon. Gone With the Wind (1939) was a phenomenon. Jaws (1975) was a phenomenon. And Titanic (1997) was a phenomenon. Of course, those movies all have in common the fact that they were big-budget Hollywood productions backed by the vast technical, financial, and marketing resources of a major studio (or, in the case of Gone With the Wind, A-list producer David O. Selznick). This is one of the reasons why Billy Jack was such a unique hit. Independently produced by actor/writer/director Tom Laughlin and his wife, actor/writer Delores Taylor, it was a labor of love that Laughlin had been trying to make for nearly 20 years. The production was marked by numerous conflicts between Laughlin and various studios, as the production began with a deal with American International Pictures (AIP). AIP had produced and distributed Laughlin’s previous film, The Born Losers (1967), which was the first to introduce the character of Billy Jack. When conflict arose between Laughlin and one of the AIP executives, he bought out the AIP deal and continued to finance it on a purely independent basis. While the film was still in production, 20th Century Fox made a distribution deal, but when Laughlin suspected that they intended to recut the film without his involvement, he stole the soundtrack reels and essentially held them hostage until the studio allowed him to buy it back. He then sold the film’s distribution rights to Warner Bros., which released it theatrically in 1971, although that release was hampered by internal studio politics and confusion about how to market it. Even though it was dropped in a handful of theaters with little to no advertising, word of mouth spread and it quickly became a cult hit, drawing repeat viewers to the tune of $10 million, almost all of which was made in smaller markets in the Midwest and West, making it one of the most profitable independent films ever (and the second highest grossing film of the year). But, Laughlin was not satisfied, and he took the bold step of suing Warner Bros. for the right to redistribute the film his way. He won the case, and in 1973, under a new deal with the studio, he re-released Billy Jack by four-walling theaters (meaning he rented entire theaters outright) and drew more than $20 million more, a virtually unheard-of feat for a film that had already had a successful run two years earlier. So, the question is, why Billy Jack? Or, as New York Times critic Vincent Canby put it in the headline of an article on March 11, 1973, “Why Has Billy Jack Made So Much Jack?” Canby—like most mainstream critics—was mostly at a loss to explain Billy Jack’s success, especially since he viewed the film as “a passionately muddle-minded contemporary Western.” At best, he recognized that it spoke to people, especially younger viewers, in a way few other films did and that it was, above all, sincere. The seeds of Billy Jack had been planted in the late 1950s when Laughlin witnessed the mistreatment of Native Americans in South Dakota and began to imagine a heroic character who might stand up for them, a modern protector who embodies both the best of human potential and its many flaws. The result was the character of Billy Jack, a consciously mythic construction whose popularity sustained him through four films of varying genres. Billy Jack is a half-Native American Green Beret and veteran of the Vietnam war who, along with Jean Roberts (Dolores Taylor), runs a “Freedom School” on an Arizona Indian reservation for runaways and abused and otherwise disenfranchised adolescents. The Freedom School represents the pinnacle of ’60s thinking, where peace, love, and freedom to be oneself are cherished above all other values. Mostly, the kids engage in role-play and street theater as a way of addressing racism, classism, and any other -isms that create inequality in the world (interestingly, a half-dozen of the roles in the film were played by members of The Committee, a San Francisco-based improv comedy group founded in the early 1960s by alums of Chicago’s Second City). The narrative in Billy Jack involves a threat to the Freedom School by a bigoted businessman and his son from a nearby town, as well as a deputy police officer whose pregnant, runaway teenage daughter is hiding at the school to escape her father’s abuse. Jean argues for a pacifist solution, but Billy Jack tends to resort to violence. As a former Green Beret with training in martial arts, he is a weapon that is always primed to go off. And not just any weapon; Billy Jack is a unique combination of vigilante force and cultural signifiers, one of the biggest being his knowledge and use of the Korean martial art Hapkido, which at the time was a rarity on the big screen in the U.S. (Spencer Tracy had used judo in Bad Day at Black Rock in 1954, but otherwise there were virtually no examples of American films depicting martial arts). Thus, one of the distinctive aspects of Billy Jack is that it openly addresses its hero’s violent tendencies, portraying them as a war zone between idealism and the all-too-human desire for vengeance and justice, whatever that might look like. Billy Jack has a temper, something he openly admits, and he refuses to back down when engaged. His sense of righteousness compels him to protect what he loves and values, and he recognizes that sometimes violence must be met with violence, a stance Jean adamantly rejects. In this sense, though, Billy Jack comes dangerously close to completely subverting the idea that pacifism can be effective. Because the film wants to have its cake and eat it to, it preaches one thing but enacts something else, hence Canby’s assessment that it is “muddle minded.”
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This four-disc set includes The Born Losers (1967), Billy Jack (1971), The Trial of Billy Jack (1974), and Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977).Overall Rating: 
(3)
