‘Billy Jack’ hits back: Tom Laughlin speaks tonight in Westwood
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Michael Albo revists the legend of ‘Billy Jack’ in this Los Angeles Times article about the screening of the quirky 1971 classic tonight at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
The America of 1971 was a place of deep divisions. A war dragged on in a far-off land, conservative values were pitted against the politics of personal freedoms and the youth were restless. It was against this backdrop that actor-writer-director Tom Laughlin tapped into the spirit of the times and unleashed ‘Billy Jack’ -- a tale of one man’s fight to preserve justice for the young hippies and Native Americans attending a ‘freedom school’ situated in an ultraconservative town.
Now, almost four decades later, a digitally remastered ‘Billy Jack’ is set to screen Sunday night at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, followed by a conversation with Laughlin.
Though there had been plenty of lone-wolf heroes in cinema before the arrival of Laughlin’s titular character, few were so closely aligned with the counter-culture of the era. And though the movie had a hippie vibe, Billy Jack was no daisy-draped peacenik. First introduced in the 1967 biker exploitation classic ‘The Born Losers,’ he was a troubled former Green Beret dressed in a black reservation hat and jeans jacket. He was skilled in the martial art of hapkido and was a crack shot with a rifle. And he wasn’t afraid to use excessive violence to protect his friends when they were hassled by local police and rednecks.
‘Billy Jack’s’ mixed message of violent pacifism confounded some critics, but that only underscored the moral ambiguity of the times -- and made for some entertaining fight sequences that predated the soon-to-be-popular Hong Kong martial arts movies.
Laughlin, now in his 70s and living in Moorpark, says that the characters and situations in ‘Billy Jack’ came out of his personal experiences when he was courting his wife, Delores Taylor, who co-wrote and costarred with him in the film and sequels -- ‘The Trial of Billy Jack’ and ‘Billy Jack Goes to Washington’ -- in the small town of Winner, S.D., where he heard tales of discrimination, including one about service refused at a local store. The incident inspired what is arguably the movie’s signature scene...
-- Michael Albo
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CREDIT: ‘Billy Jack’ photo, showing Tom Laughlin with wife and co-star, Delores Taylor, from the Los Angeles Times archives.