Jebus Crisco, I hope this is just a bad drug flashback...

[onager]

Nope, that webpage is still there. With today's date on it...

Financing the new Billy Jack Film

Billy Jack and Jean - Restoring America to Its Moral Purpose

The only film investment to guarantee you, in a worst case basis, 100% of your investment plus a 14% Return in 24 months (7% interest per annum).

Summary - A new Billy Jack film made for $6.5 million is certain to generate presales far in excess of its cost before the film is even released – which is why it is possible to guarantee an investor under our bridge loan financing option (see Investment Proposal), a 100% of their investment back plus a 14% return in 24 months in a worst case basis, or their loan back, plus 7% interest per annum.

http://www.billyjack.com/index.php?menuID=Page&pid=92

I ran across this horror because I been a-Googling. Because over the weekend I watched - for some bizarre reason - the original Billy Jack movie, Born Losers. That was an el cheapo biker flick made in 1967 but not released until 1969, because it sucked. The credited director was one "T.C. Frank," which is really two - T.C. Frank is the nom de crap for Tom Laughlin (a/k/a Billy Jack) and his wife Delores Taylor (a/k/a Jean).

Most bad-movie fans - and pissed-off Native Americans - know about the unaccountable success of the next movie in the series, Billy Jack.

Here, have a horrible head-rattling but drug-free flashback: Listen, children, to a story, that was shitten long ago...

Billy Jack was followed by a train-wreck called The Trial of Billy Jack. Which, IIRC, did have one happy and inspiring moment when the National Guard massacres a bunch of yowling, guitar-slinging hippies. It routinely appears on lists of "The Worst Movies Ever Made."

And it was Citizen Kane compared to the last BJ movie - Billy Jack Goes To Washington. I'm surpised that a zombie Frank Capra didn't rise out of his grave and claw unsuccessfully at the Laughlins' skulls in a futile attempt to eat their non-existent brains. Mercifully, that one never went into general release. Which Mr. Jack/Laughlin naturally blamed on a US government conspiracy.

But I know what you're thinking - "Damn, Onager, you rambling, addled-headed old fart, why are you going off on Billy Jack, here on the Psuedoscience board?"

Thanks to Al Carroll's analysis over at BadMovies.org, I can answer that. Billy Jack was partly based on a guy named John Pope. This is a jaw-dropping concatenation of Woo:

John Pope AKA “Rolling Thunder” was a retired white railroad worker who spent the latter part of his life posing as an “intertribal medicine man.”

Pope claimed he was part Cherokee and that was allegedly teaching Seneca beliefs. This he did, not among either the Cherokee or Seneca, but almost entirely among the white hippie counterculture.

Pope proselytized among hippies for the remainder of his life, telling them they were “Thunderpeople” who would change the world. According to Pope’s own family, his former followers have mercilessly exploited Pope’s name for money beyond all bounds of decency, creating a number of New Age cults in the process.

Pope played a central role in Billy Jack. The movie was very loosely based on what Pope claimed had happened in his own life, and Pope briefly appeared in the films as "Thunder Mountain..."

Pope’s own beliefs were rather eccentric, to put it mildly. He claimed Cherokees came from Atlantis and that they once had technology far superior to anything in modern times. The “Indian” beliefs (again, no tribe is ever specified) in Billy Jack are a bizarre amalgam of hippie platitudes about pacifism and Christian fundamentalist Holy Roller snake handling.

Pope and the film’s author, director, and star Tom Laughlin were a perfect match for each other. Laughlin fancied himself a great spiritual thinker, and even today sells seminars in spirituality...

Billy Jack’s status as a veteran tells us nothing about what Native veterans went through. Billy Jack (both the character and the film overall) pose as both Native and a veteran as merely convenient tropes for the film’s author and audience to invent a fantasy (often quite bizarre at that) of what they wish Indians were like, one which bears no reality at all to actual Native beliefs, cultures, or history...

Too offensive to even be camp, at best the film is a revealing look at the extremes a white filmmaker will go to in order to misrepresent Native cultures. It also is quite revealing of some truly troubling mindsets among some whites and the counterculture. Who would have expected allegedly peace-loving hippies and New Age people to wallow in as much gratuitous violence as there is in Billy Jack?

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/billyjack/

[Warpy]

1. I might have slept through "Born Losers," it sounds familiar

from the end of the 60s when there was an air conditioned all night theater in the Combat Zone that showed nothing but biker flicks, the cheesier the better. On particularly oppressive August nights, it was a good way to get some sleep if you didn't mind the racket, and most inner city dwellers are well used to racket. The six inch hatpin on my shirt kept the pervs away. The blade in my right boot made sure they'd leave in a hurry if they braved the hatpin, although none ever did.

I honestly did try to watch "Billy Jack" when it came out on VHS, if only for the cultural (emphasis on cult) artifact aspect of the whole thing. It was so ridiculous I only made it through the first 20 minutes, all the characters being cardboard cutouts with exactly that level of acting ability.

I also vaguely remember Pope and realizing just how full of shit he was because I'd actually known more than a few Cherokees, real ones, and none of them spouted that kind of crap. I couldn't wait to get out of the room full of people hanging on every shit tinged word.

I never really got those movies or their most ardent fans, for that matter. The combination of bad acting and ponderous dialogue punctuated by seemingly random violence that had little to do with the story line provided a puzzling basis for any sort of peace-love-New-Agey-hippie-dippie-back-to-the-lander-medicinal-tea cult.

Thanks for the blast from the past, I think, I hadn't thought about this stuff for years. Laughlin might yet achieve cult film status with his latest cinematic abortion, but it won't be cult status in the better sense of the word. The world has changed and the best he can hope for are the drunken frat boys shouting the lines with the characters as they throw stuff at the screen.

[onager]

2. Hint, hint - bikini-clad girl on motorcycle

Imagine the road rash...

Anyway, the heroine in the white bikini on the motorcycle was Elizabeth James, who also confessed to co-writing the alleged script of "Born Losers."

Ms. James' acting clearly owes a lot to Native Americans - at least the kind of Native American that used to be seen standing in front of cigar stores.