Billy Jack; The New Super Hero From The 99 Percent!

Take heart boomers. Just when you thought you would never see another film worth sitting through let alone the exorbitant price of admission Tom Laughlin is promising a sequel to that cinematic masterpiece, Billy Jack. Billy will have a girlfriend named Jean and they will be in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Laughlin spends over an hour in tedious videos to document the decline of the motion picture industry which he seems to think is all about marketing. In Billy Jack's case the end of the drive-in theater where nobody was interested in watching the movie but would gladly pay a few bucks for some uninterrupted parking time was probably the cause of death. In the indoor theaters where most in the audience went with people whom they weren't ashamed to be seen with in public the decline is not so clear. Laughlin thinks the cause of the decline was due to a lack of controversy or meaning, a point missed by the makers of The Caine Mutiny, Ben Hur, and The Sound of Music plus thousands of other films that countenanced the goal of entertaining an audience not provoking it.

Laughlin's spiel is all about making money-not movies-as one might expect when reflecting upon his acting career. Aside from making money, according to Laughlin a movie should be some sort of a politically correct morality play. The selling point of any good movie should be the controversy it creates which brings one to ask how a theme that 85% of the audience agrees with can be controversial.

"And we have found out that the way the positions we’re going to take, 85% of you, the overwhelming majority, are going to agree with, will be supported by and fulfilled by and enriched by and empowered by. We’re going to do it in a way that’s never been done in a film before."

I guess "conventional controversy" might serve as the appropriate oxymoron to describe this genre of theatrical banality where millions of people will pay hundreds of millions of dollars to enjoy seeing their points of view sustained by a super hero from the 99 percent as long as the movie is "meaningful".

"From epic, epic masterpiece films, from Dr. Zhivago, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, just endless … anything, anything can be made into a meaningful, intelligent picture."

Laughlin does give us a hint of the real villains.

"In our film Billy’s going to have extensive discussions like this with people like Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Ralph Nader, Bill Clinton, Sarah Palin. We’re gonna do that in spades in this movie in a way that’s just going to shock and stun you, and really challenge everyone out there, everyone who cares about America, and the content and the morality and the politics of it."

I think I'll skip the movie and wait to be empowered by the book.