{"id":11997,"date":"2013-12-15T20:43:03","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T01:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=11997"},"modified":"2013-12-15T20:45:04","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T01:45:04","slug":"tom-laughlin-1931-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2013\/12\/15\/tom-laughlin-1931-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Laughlin 1931-2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the death of Peter O’Toole, whose work I admired in such films as Lawrence of Arabia<\/em>, The Ruling Class<\/em>, and My Favorite Year<\/em>, saddened me, I was far more moved by learning today of the death earlier in the week of Tom Laughlin<\/a>, who starred in, directed, and co-wrote the 1971 movie Billy Jack<\/em><\/a>. O’Toole was, of course, the far better actor, but in terms of which man affected me the most, there’s no contest. Laughlin kicked me where it counted.<\/p>\n

And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.<\/a> <\/p>\n

I saw Billy Jack<\/em> multiple times when I was a teenager, had its dialogue memorized, imagined myself standing up for the downtrodden in that famous ice cream shoppe scene<\/a> (so iconic it was later spoofed by Paul Simon in a Saturday Night Live<\/em> sketch), and for a time even wore a BILLY JACK FOR PRESIDENT button.<\/p>\n

So when Marvel Comics decided to devote an issue of its Deadly Hands of Kung Fu<\/em> magazine to the phenomenon as a tie-in to the 1974 The Trial of Billy Jack<\/em> movie, who better to write a think piece about the meaning of it all than the guy who was nuts about the first film? (Beneath that wonderful Neal Adams cover you could also find a second article on the sequel by Black Panther\/Killraven<\/em> writer Don McGregor.) In order to make my point in the essay, I managed to drag in Paul Kersey from Death Wish<\/em> and Jesus Christ from, you know, The Bible.<\/p>\n

\"DeadlyHandsofKungFuBillyJack\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I reread the piece now, I can see that it’s overly influenced by the stylistic pyrotechnics of Harlan Ellison and Tom Wolfe, it suffers from the fact that I was still a beginner at this writing thing, and it contains all the self-righteous earnestness of a college dorm room bull session. <\/p>\n

And yet, through it all, my love for the Billy Jack<\/em> films and the work of Tom Laughlin is evident, so I think it’s still worth sharing on a day like today.<\/p>\n

\"BillyJackEssay1\"<\/a>\"BillyJackEssay2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"BillyJackEssay3\"<\/a>\"BillyJackEssay4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"BillyJackEssay5\"<\/a>\"BillyJackEssay6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"BillyJackEssay7\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Keep kicking butt in the hereafter, Billy Jack!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the death of Peter O’Toole, whose work I admired in such films as Lawrence of Arabia, The Ruling Class, and My Favorite Year, saddened me, I was far more moved by learning today of the death earlier in the week of Tom Laughlin, who starred in, directed, and co-wrote the 1971 movie Billy Jack. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[356,357,63,20,29,85,355],"class_list":["post-11997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-billy-jack","tag-deadly-hands-of-kung-fu","tag-don-mcgregor","tag-marvel-comics","tag-my-writing","tag-obituaries","tag-tom-laughlin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11997"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12028,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11997\/revisions\/12028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}