Hello Backstory fans! We have a really great episode for you this week. We sit down and chat with actor Vernon Wells! If you've ever seen some of the Mad Max movies, Commando, or Weird Science, among others, Vernon will be instantly recognizable as portraying some of the most intense and potentially scary roles in these movies. We found him to be quite the opposite from his on screen personas though. We have a long talk with him about his intro to acting, and he reveals lots of interesting and funny stories about his long career. He has worked with many icons in the film industry through the years, and talks about their influence on him. From listening to his stories of working with Mel Gibson, his first meeting with Clint Eastwood, and much more, we get the sense that Vernon has remained grounded, and continues to enjoy acting, as well as helping the other actors and directors he works with currently perfect their craft. We chat about his many upcoming and current projects as well. Definitely a genuinely nice, charismatic, funny, and sweet man. Until in front of the camera, or until you poke the bear. We thank Vernon for his time and being such a great interview guest.
There are certain aspects of Billy Jack that admittedly do not play well today. Most notably, Laughlin, who is white, plays a character who is supposed to be half-Native; and the film in other ways appropriates Native American culture. Nonetheless, the movie is one of the first American movies to acknowledge the injusices done by white settlers to Indigenous people. (Several revisionist Westerns of the 1970s did so as well; but Blly Jack is the only 1970s movie I know of to show this in the present, not just in the Old West). Billy Jack focuses on Native people much more than on Blacks and other minorities, but it clearly takes the side of the 1960s/1970s counterculture, and the anti-War and anti-racism movements of the period. (The American Indian Movement is not as well remembered today as, for instance, the Black Panther Party, but it was equally militant and active at the time the movie was made).
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