Coming to Blu-ray this week via the Transmission/Radiance label is Joe, a corrosive satire on the generational conflict in late 1960s/early 70s America. Written by Norman Wexler (Serpico, Saturday Night Fever) and directed by John G. Avildsen (Rocky, The Karate Kid), the film stars Peter Boyle as the eponymous Joe, a racist blue collar schlub who holds nothing but fear and contempt for the younger generation. It also features Susan Sarandon in her big screen debut.
Wealthy New York advertising executive Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick) finds himself at breaking point when his daughter Melissa (Sarandon, impossibly wide-eyed) is hospitalised after a bad trip administered by her drug-dealing hippie boyfriend, Frank Russo (Patrick McDermott). Arriving at their apartment to get her things in the hope that she’ll return to the family fold in New York’s upper East Side, a confrontation plays out between the two men in Melissa’s life which quickly turns violent. Finding himself subsumed by rage, the normally urbane Bill kills the younger man and takes a bag full of drugs in order to make the murder scene look like a botched robbery. Reeling, Bill heads to the nearest bar for a drink to settle his nerves, whereupon he meets pub-bore Joe Curran, holding court with a tirade against the younger generation and anyone who isn’t a middle-aged straight white male. When these views reveal his vigilante fantasies of killing hippies, an unguarded Bill admits that that is exactly what he has just done. Though he tries to pass his admission off as a joke, Joe reacts favourably to his confession and a chalk and cheese friendship develops between the disillusioned pair that will lead to a shocking conclusion.
As Joe, Boyle doesn’t appear in the film until somewhere around the thirty minute mark. Seated at the bar, mouthing off to anyone who has the misfortune to be in his vicinity, Boyle’s titular character rails against people of colour whom, he believes, are being paid handsomely by the government to not work and are accomodated in fancy hotels at the taxpayer’s expense. Sound familiar? It can be quite depressing to realise that some things haven’t changed at all in almost sixty years and that a discriminatory world view can still be emboldened by such harmful myths. Even the film’s tagline “Keep America Beautiful” (taken from the non-profit community improvement organisation of the same name, established in 1953 and committed to to end littering, improve recycling, and beautify American communities) sounds today like a slogan that MAGA would happily embrace. Understandably therefore, Joe is a film with something to say. Unfortunately, its message was misconstrued by some audiences.
Like the Jewish socialist Warren Mitchell, who played the bigoted Alf Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part, Boyle was the complete opposite of his character in real life.
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Made for just $106,000 in a grim New York winter, Joe went on to become an unexpected sleeper hit, amassing a gross of over $19.3 million in the United States and Canada and becoming the fourteenth highest grossing film of the year. Avildsen’s film had clearly struck a chord with moviegoers and the reason behind it might have had something to do with two very real massacres. The first was Manson killings that had occured in August 1969 and signified an end to the peace and love ideal of the flower power generation; Wexler’s characterisation of some of his hippy characters – selfish, amoral drug dealers – arguably pointing towards this sea change. The second massacre however, would be the one to place astonishing significance upon Joe. In May 1970, just ten weeks before the film’s release, Arville Garland, a railroad worker from Detriot, entered a university residence and killed his daughter Sandra, her boyfriend Scott Kabran and two other students, Gregory Walls and Anthony Brown. During his trial, Judge Joseph A. Gillis saw Joe and believed there to be parallels in the case. Gillis instructed the prosecution and defence lawyers to watch the movie, whilst also excluding anyone from the jury who had seen the movie and forbidding those jurors from watching it during the trial. Despite the severity of Garland’s crime and the fact that he went equipped with an arsenal of weaponry and extra ammunition, Gillis passed a surprisingly light sentence of just ten to forty years imprisonment. Before and after sentencing, Garland was the subject of an outpouring of sympathy from across America, receiving letters of support (one California father wrote “There must surely be many among us who have done in our hearts what you have done with your hands. To have those to whom we have opened our hearts and treasures say ‘Your truth is not truth, your values are without value’ can be beyond bearing.”), and even congratulations.
For Peter Boyle, the message of the movie being so misunderstood proved too much to bear. Like the Jewish socialist Warren Mitchell, who played the bigoted Alf Garnett in Til Death Us Do Part, Boyle was the complete opposite of his character in real life. For a start, at just 35, he was a good ten-fifteen years younger than service veteran Joe Curran; his premature baldness often affording him more mature roles. Witnessing audiences cheer on Joe‘s discriminatory language and violence, the sensitive actor swore off appearing in anything he believed may glorify violence for a number of years. This included passing on the role of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection – a role that secured Gene Hackman the Oscar for Best Actor. However, the audience reaction should not take away how great Boyle is as Joe. It’s a really lived in and authentic performance, and it’s to his credit that he could embody the complete opposite of himself so well. Boyle had an incredible career, and this is undisputedly one of its highlights. I’m just grateful that it wasn’t sullied in the 1980s by Cannon Films, who wished to make a sequel entitled Citizen Joe. Somehow, I suspect the satire and message would be even further lost in the hands of the people who brought you the Death Wish sequels.
Viewed now, and with hindsight, modern audiences are likely to hold a greater appreciation of the true intentions of Wexler, a bipolar screenwriter once arrested for threatening to shoot President Richard Nixon, though his commitment to depicting the authenticity of Joe Curran’s bigotry – his first scene is littered with the N word – leaves one feeling uncomfortable today. Nevertheless, it is an astonishing piece, opening almost as a dark thriller with Bill’s murderous act and closing with the equally hard-edged reality of its shocking and tragic denouement, yet inbetween those two poles there lies the cringe comedy of manners that depicts the burgeoning friendship between these two unlikely bedfellows and their subsequent navigation of the counter-culture. There’s something really satisfying in seeing the authority of two middle-aged men – the wealth and sophistication of Bill and the loudmouthed assuredness of Joe – completely lost in the face of the younger generation, with their greater knowledge of different cultures and their tastes for free love. Joe, in particular, is rightly skewered and Boyle plays it beautifully; from a gloriously funny triple-take in the hippy restaurant sequence to a brief expose of the character’s fragility and softness when his request to see one sexual partner at an orgy (which he comedically misprounounces with a hard G) is politely but firmly rejected. It’s these tonal shifts that are key to Joe, as Wexler fleshes his gritty, melodramatic narrative with humour and director Avildsen keeps an assuredly tight rein on these throughout.
This UK Blu-ray premiere is presented in high definition digital transfer with original uncompressed mono audio and optional subtitles for the hard of hearing. It features a brand new audio commentary from critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Jason Bailey, and an equally new appreciation of the film from critic Ellen E. Jones of Radio 4’s Screenshot fame. Theatrical trailers, TV spots and a stills gallery conclude the extras on the disc whilst, unavailable to this reviewer, the release is rounded off by a limited edition bookley featuring new writing from Adam Nayman.
MARK’S ARCHIVE – JOE (1970)
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