ODE TO BILLY JOE

US, 1976, 106 minutes, Colour.
Robby Benson, Glynnis O'Connor, Joan Hotchkis, Sandy Mc Peak, James Best.
Directed by Max Baer.

American audiences, and Australian audiences, seem to like the spate of adolescent-focused film dramas, set in the recent past and in a Southern rural community. This one is about a 15-year-old girl growing up in 1953 and a pleasantly eccentric boy, Billy Joe, who died. there is an exuberance and pathos underlying it all, even if the evocation of the times and the talk is romanticised. And the ending is sombre and asks for reflection. Robby Benson is a gangly Jerry Lewis-voiced adolescent. He was the shy Jeremy and is teamed again with Glynnis O'Connor, a strong young actress who is very good. Directed by Max Baer.

1. Was this a good film? The human values it presented and stood for? Its impact on American audiences. non-American audiences? The generation appeal?

2. Audience familiarity with Bobble Gentry's song, its lyrics? Its impact, used at the beginning of the film? Its setting a puzzle, an atmosphere of pathos, an invitation to understand both Bobble and Billy Joe?

3. The authenticity of the atmosphere and its importance for understanding the characters and issues? Filmed in Tallahatchie Country? The look of the 50s, the attitudes and behaviour of the 50s? The importance of the look of the place: the town itself, the houses, the outskirts, school and the school bus, the river and the bridge, the mills and the fields etc.? Could audiences identify with the place and the characters? How real was it to live in this place?

4. The focus of the film on Bobble? How attractive a girl, a fifteen-year-old changing, affected by her times and people, the past and the future? Her relationship with Billy Joe? The secret that she shared with him? How did this change her and influence her future?

5. The atmosphere of the deep south: its isolation, its gradual adaptation to the twentieth century, even in terms of electricity, toilets? The expectations of behaviour in the south? The double standards illustrated by church-going people and their Saturday night behaviour? The personnel of the church? What point was being made about this society?

6. Comment on the character of Bobble: her attractiveness, her age, her experience at school, her loneliness and her creating of Benjamin and conversing with him, her reading love magazines and being affected by them? Her chats with her mother, her dress, flirting? The attraction of Billy Joe? The discussions about gentlemen callers? Her discussion of church attitudes and holding out? The importance of her relationship with her father, helping him on the bridge?

7. The fact that Bobble never met Billy Joe at home, her encounters with him outside? The encounter after his disappearance, her listening to his difficulty, meeting him at the bridge, her love for him, its effect on him, the destruction of Benjamin? The significance of Bobble Joe's song-poem at the end? The themes of time, healing?

8. How credible a character was Billy Joe? A young boy of the deep south, what type? At school, at work, his relationship with his fellow workers, his attraction to Bobble Joe, his theory about gentlemen callers, encountering her and her parents at church? His calling on her, his love fur her?

9. How did the film fill out his character by presenting him at the mill, the discussion about managing the group, seeing him on the night when people were drunk, the prostitutes, his disappearance and the effect of this? Benjamin and his falling into the river as a symbol of Billy Joe? His wanting to love Bobble but the impotence consequent on his sense of guilt? Audience response to his explanation of his sin, awareness of his guilt? The pathos of his being driven to death? The audience seeing his drowned body being taken out of the river, Benjamin being thrown back in?

10. Bobble and her coping with the situation? The fact that people would talk? Her decision to leave? The encounter with her brother and his harsh double standards? The importance of the discussion with the mill owner and the revelation of the truth? The manifestation of her courage and compassion? The fact that she would later return?

11. How important were the parents? Their character, their values, the way they ran the home? The father and his stubbornness on the bridge? The mother and Bobbie's confidence in her? Meals. the toilet, gentlemen callers? Her brother and his way of behaviour, especially on the night with the prostitutes, his comment on it at the table, his wanting Bobbie to have an abortion?

12. The character of the Minister and the church? The previous ceremony and his sermon about lust and sexuality? His encounter with Bobble at the bridge? The funeral service? Bobbie's father being dismissed as Deacon?

13. The way that the fatal night was presented? The atmosphere of carnival, dance, enjoyment? The lurid side of sexuality and drunkenness? The fight with the thugs from Alabama?

14. The significance of the final song and Billy's speaking of it? The narration of what happened to everybody after these events?

15. How real were the issues presented in the film? Presented with a tone of truth, sentiment?