"Go ahead and hate your neighbor, Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of Heaven, You can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing Come the judgement day, On the bloody morning after.... One tin soldier rides away."
(Blog editor gives silent salute)
"Tom Laughlin, 82; star of ‘Billy Jack’ movie series" by Paul Vitello | New York Times, December 28, 2013
NEW YORK — Tom Laughlin — the actor, writer, director, and producer who created the “Billy Jack” movie series of the 1970s, a low-budget fusion of counterculture piety and martial-arts violence that struck a chord with audiences and became a prototype for independent filmmaking and distribution — died Dec. 12 in Los Angeles. He was 82.
The cause was pneumonia, his daughter, Teresa, said.
Mr. Laughlin wrote, directed, and starred in all four of the Billy Jack films, earnest tales of a tightly wound, half-Cherokee Vietnam veteran named Billy Jack who protects Indians, wild horses, and progressive ideals against attacks.
When progressive ideals actually meant something. Now the ideas are progre$$ive, if you know what I mean. Billy discovered that when he went to Congress.
None were critically acclaimed, but they played a big part in changing the way movies reached American audiences.
“Billy Jack,” which was produced for about $800,000 in 1969, was initially distributed the old-fashioned way: Mr. Laughlin sold the distribution rights to Warner Bros., which undertook a modest publicity campaign in selected markets for a limited test release. If it was well received, it would be introduced into other movie markets. If not, not.
“Billy Jack” got tepid reviews, did good but not huge business, and was withdrawn from theaters after selling about $6 million in tickets.
A war media even then.
But Mr. Laughlin, certain that his movie had been sold short, began a two-year legal battle to reacquire distribution rights. He won, and in 1973 he mounted a nationwide advertising campaign, arranged for the rental of 1,200 theaters across the country, and rereleased “Billy Jack.” This time it made $80 million and caused Hollywood to rethink its approach to releasing films.
By most accounts, the single-minded, loner-idealist tough guy at the center of the Billy Jack franchise was based on an amalgam of cowboy archetypes, Asian martial-arts film archetypes, and Mr. Laughlin’s image of himself. Colleagues and family described him as driven, stubborn, uncompromising, and intensely attracted to quixotic endeavors.
Like being antiwar as this blogger begins to break down.
After a succession of small film and television roles during his first decade in Hollywood, he and his wife, Delores Taylor — who later co-starred in the Billy Jack films — opened a Montessori school to keep their children out of what they considered the mediocre public schools of Southern California.
Oh, she was his wife. That explains the emotions.
A half-dozen years later Mr. Laughlin decided to return to the movie business, but on his own terms. He wrote his script and raised money for the motorcycle movie “Born Losers” (1967), the first to feature Billy Jack. He later became an outspoken environmentalist and antinuclear activist and sought the Democratic nomination for president on several state primary ballots in 1992, 2004, and 2008.
I don't remember seeing him in any debates, and he was an environmentalist before they were environmentali$ts, if you know what I mean!
Thomas Robert Laughlin Jr. was born in Milwaukee, one of three children of Thomas and Margaret Laughlin. He described his father’s work history, as an accountant, as somewhat unreliable and his early childhood as unsettled. He played football at Marquette University and at the University of South Dakota, where he met Ms. Taylor, who grew up on a reservation and inspired his interest in Indian affairs.
Besides her and his daughter Teresa, he also leaves a son, Frank; another daughter, Chris Harrington; and five grandchildren.
Mr. Laughlin followed “Billy Jack” with “The Trial of Billy Jack” in 1974 and, in 1977, with “Billy Jack Goes to Washington,” which was never released theatrically.
But I have seen it! I saw them all!
All of the films treat issues of the day — ecology, war, pacifism, the generation gap, gun control, police corruption, drug abuse, the occult, the mistreatment of minorities — with blunt-force clarity epitomized by the “I just go berserk” scene in “Billy Jack,” which became a cult favorite.
Oh, now I'm part of a cult, huh? At least I'm not part of a certain tribe from Central Asia that usurps and steals land.
Looking back there are many issues I would disagree with him on now, but that's the point. We are 40 years down the road now. The promise of those times was lo$t somewhere.
In that scene, a group of Indian students are dusted with flour by a group of racist bullies at an ice cream shop. Billy Jack delivers his soliloquy with what begins as cool restraint but soon becomes a white-hot, vein-bulging rage:
“I really try,” he says. “But when I see this girl of such a beautiful spirit so degraded, and this boy, that I love, sprawled out by this ape here, and this little girl, who is so special to us that we call her God’s little gift to sunshine — and when I think of the number of years she’s going to have to carry in her memory the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours, I — just — go — berserk!”
Then he beats up the bullies.
Doing what we all wanted to do to privileged and authority pricks back then, and something we would cheer today although in Billy Jack pacifism wins the day. Gandhi was right, and always will be. Non-violent non-cooperation is the only way. Or maybe not.
Teresa Laughlin said that her father was a person of great spiritual yearning, not unlike the Billy Jack character.
“The separation between the character of Billy Jack and my father was tissue thin,” she said, “at its thickest part.”
No wonder he came off as so damn authentic.
--more--"
His spirit lives on.
