Terry

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Posts by Terry

• 
  9

  One Tin Soldier Rides Away -- my memory of meeting actor Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is one of my hollywood memories.

  i lived in california for ten years from 1974 to almost 1984. i worked in the art business and had occasion to run into famous people and also has-been's :) ______ one tin soldier.

  i met a fella unlike any other.

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• 

  Terry

  I'll bet if I had been a born-in JW I wouldn't have gone to movies either.
  During the Knorr presidency, the Watchtower was so different than the Org is today.
  That era went from rather liberal to smothered conservatism like a boa constrictor.
• 
  9

  One Tin Soldier Rides Away -- my memory of meeting actor Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is one of my hollywood memories.

  i lived in california for ten years from 1974 to almost 1984. i worked in the art business and had occasion to run into famous people and also has-been's :) ______ one tin soldier.

  i met a fella unlike any other.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Terry

  Laughlin was without a doubt in real life a larger-than-life character.
  If you go to his wiki page and begin reading as I did yesterday you'll see he was
  a pretty big activist on a lot of issues.
  But in person - I've got to say - really strange.
  Perhaps "deadpan" is most accurate.
  He liked to provoke and see what was inside of you. Maybe. Maybe just strange :)
• 
  9

  One Tin Soldier Rides Away -- my memory of meeting actor Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is one of my hollywood memories.

  i lived in california for ten years from 1974 to almost 1984. i worked in the art business and had occasion to run into famous people and also has-been's :) ______ one tin soldier.

  i met a fella unlike any other.

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  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Terry

  Kids need a source of strength (even if it is projected on a silver screen) to ignite and inspire a sense of self-justice; to embolden through example, the will to transcend the rut in which they're trapped (seemingly).
  I think the thirst for a humble, no-nonsense vigilante is an ongoing popular trope just out of the great milieu of injustice evermore surrounding us.
• 
  9

  One Tin Soldier Rides Away -- my memory of meeting actor Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack)

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is one of my hollywood memories.

  i lived in california for ten years from 1974 to almost 1984. i worked in the art business and had occasion to run into famous people and also has-been's :) ______ one tin soldier.

  i met a fella unlike any other.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Terry

  This is one of my Hollywood memories. I lived in California for ten years from 1974 to almost 1984. I worked in the Art business and had occasion to run into famous people and also has-been's :)
  ______
  ONE TIN SOLDIER

  I met a fella unlike any other.
  Let me tell you about the man--a strange and wonderful guy--one of a kind--but housing two personalities at the same time.

  A fascinating list describing him below:

  1. Hapkido expert who liked to kick pedophiles in the chin

  2. Presidential candidate

  3. Successful producer, writer, Director, and actor

  4. Expert on Jungian philosophy

  5. Self-styled ‘half-breed” peace activist given to fits of violent anger

  6. Former Green Beret who liked to wear a cowboy hat

  7. Intensely private citizen who hated to be recognized in a public place by me!

  Get your attention? If so, settle in and let me tell you when I met him.

  _______________

  Time: circa 1982
  Place: Creative Galleries (about a mile from MGM Studios in Culver City, California)
  I was 35 years old and working as an Art Consultant.
  If anybody walked into the gallery, whoever was on site would walk up to them and
  Greet them and make them feel comfortable.

  Cue Entrance:

  A 50-year-old man walked into the gallery out of the bright sunlight.
  I have a strange knack about faces... I recognized him immediately.
  
  The man had been in three or four movies about a decade earlier. I’m a movie
  nerd - so I spotted him and nodded with the ‘knowing’ smile private people cringe at.
  
  I should say this first off: Unless you’ve seen the Billy Jack cult films of around 1973, his name won’t mean doodly squat to you.
  
  (Check out this link:)
  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rt2v0
  
  (Or just watch a quick trailer for the film:)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXvqaBw_iA
  
  

  _______________________________
  

  
  
  Got it? Good.
  I walked up to the man and nodded.

  I muttered quietly to myself, “Tom Laughlin.”

  It was a statement and not a question.

  Tom Laughlin slowly turned and squinted at me with a certain sort of slo-mo menace. It was theatrical body language meant to scare me off.
  At least, that’s how I assessed the situation.

  Laughlin spoke.

  He looked me right in the eye and his message was clear enough.

  “No.”
  Of course, I knew better than to annoy a celebrity--especially a washed up surly one.

  It’s rude to approach an actor or speak other than a casual greeting.

  That sort of behavior was left to tourists and nut-jobs. Neither of those were adjectives I wanted to have applied to myself.

  “My mistake. I’m sure you get that all the time since you resemble Tom Laughlin 100%.”

  I worded my sentence exactly so he’d know he wasn’t fooling me.

  I was met with another of his slo-mo half turn glares.

  “No.”

  Chatty fellow! I thought to myself.

  Still, I did my job.

  I pointed out various features of the gallery and its artwork consisting of
  framed lithographs, serigraphs, etchings, paintings, photography, and art posters hanging pristine in every sort of matte and frame.

  I turned up the volume on my expertise and charm--suddenly rising to the challenge to do the impossible.
  
  This was going to be like the old joke told about President Calvin Coolidge:

  
  ***(Coolidge had a reputation for quietness and speaking as few words as possible.

  One lady, however, at a party at the White House, was determined to overcome the hurdle as she approached the President and spoke. . .

  “Mister President, my next door neighbor bet me I couldn’t get you to say three words. I told her I bet I could.”

  Coolidge looked up from his meal, fork in hand, and simply said, “You lose.”)***

  _________

  I escorted Laughlin into a small showing room with special quartz halogen lighting.
  I pointed to a series of triptychs (3 views in separate frames) with Arapaho, Navajo, and Cheyenne Chiefs depicted in shadow-box style Barnwood frames.
  Pressed into the hand-made paper were embossed arrowhead and bear claw indentations.

  I walked over to the rheostat light switch and dimmed the fluorescent lights while brightening the halogen (diamond) lights.

  The dramatic effect immediately impressed Laughlin, I could see it plainly on his otherwise inscrutable face.

  Unknown to me, his life and wife were connected to Native Americans.

  He quickly became more human.

  
  The pikes, moat, and wall around his citadel of privacy vanished.
  He became engaging and talkative. Bye-bye Calvin Coolidge; hello Chatty Kathy.

  _____________

  I’ll do my best to approximate the story he told me.

  “I met my-then-future wife in South Dakota where I was a student. She lived on an Arapaho reservation and she invited me for a closer look at how she lived.

  I saw the poverty and degradation there. Worse than that--the racism. When the tribesman went into town to pick up their monthly allotment of flour, some of the local assholes would dump it on their head and try and provoke them. I carried that around inside me for years.”

  He paused and I offered him wine.

  “S’okay if I offer you a glass of Chablis, Tom.”

  His head jerked sideways like a hornet had stung his ear. (Oops!)

  “I’m not Tom Laughlin.”
  (Oops!)

  ________________

  What could do other than go along with it?
  
  

  “Sorry, not-Tom-Laughlin; get you sip?”

  He loosened up a bit when I gave him the wine.
  He’d have made a helluva poker player.

  __________________

  After a bit, he continued. . .

  “Delores and I moved around a lot after we married since I worked the TV circuit for years. Bob Altman auditioned me for a film and cast me in the lead and we had to move again; this time to Hollyweird.”
  
  (Yes, he said ‘Hollyweird.”)

  As he spoke, he sipped his drink. The he stood and made a sweeping gesture with his left hand indicating he wanted to buy the three pieces.
  
  His voice changed; the tone; the sincerity.
  
  He began talking (more or less to himself) and I realized I was listening to a kind of personal soliloquy.

  I’m not saying his words were scripted.
  Just spoken with gravitas; a faraway look in the eyes.
  
  The Native American art had touched him somehow and illuminated a true thing he witnessed in the artwork--a memory and an emotion rooted deep.

  I pulled each framed piece off the wall and proceeded to process the order and wrap piece each separately as he continued speaking his story.

  Once they open up--it just pours out.

  ________________

  “Altman was a close-minded son-of-a-bitch. I didn’t get on with him at all. He wouldn’t listen or accept any ideas from. . . “

  I interrupted. (I couldn’t help myself!)
  
  “I’ve heard Altman is the actor’s favorite Director - giving everybody a free hand to improvise or …”
  
  

  "Not with me. Everybody “else--just not me. He called me a “pain-in-the-ass.”“
  
  

  This actor - this Not-Tom-Laughlin grinned as he relived the private memory.

  His biography became a narrative ...

  “You either make it or you hang on until you disappear. I had other plans. I saved what little money I made. The studio wouldn’t promote anything if they didn’t control it. This was what drove Cassavetes out and Corman got a handle on it and I thought, “Why not?”

  We were now in the main sales office and it was quiet in the gallery; the right time of day for conversation and processing credit cards the old-fashioned way in those little machines we used to have pre-Internet.

  “My wife and I started our own Montessori school trying to make a difference in the world. It’s not all that easy to do if you buck the Hollyweird system. But studios were dying, choking in the garden on TV weeds. So, I wrote my script and took the money I saved and packaged my movie myself. I put the cash into promotion, distribution, without studio help. Sure, two studios got their paws on it and started making changes--but I got it back and did it all myself. I remembered that Navajo reservation and saw how Civil Rights had completely ignored the plight of aboriginal Americans. I wanted to change how people saw the problem and I succeeded. We made back 41 times what it cost and even Hollyweird sat up and took notice.”

  I expected a smile of great satisfaction to accompany his boast.
  Nope.
  He said everything like he was reading the label ingredients on a can of roach powder.

  He reached into his hand-crafted leather billfold and pulled out an American Express card and handed it to me.
  A mischievous thought balloon popped up over my head.

  “So, what name do I put on this order--if you don’t mind me asking?”

  I grinned and waited.

  He pursed his lips and hesitated for a beat and then spoke.

  “Just put down Lloyd E. James.”

  W-h-a-t?

  I was holding his American Express card in my hand. The embossed letters on the card clearly shown in the light of the sales office. The card read:

  “Tom Laughlin.”

  What would you have done?
  What would you have said?
  Here’s what I did.

  “Well, I guess I’m going to have to call the police Lloyd.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I have to report a stolen credit card. The real Mr. Tom Laughlin will no doubt appreciate my conscientiousness.”

  Was I a jerk or an asshole or just mischievous?
  Why did I say that?
  
  I’ll tell you.

  Here sits Tom Laughlin, Billy Jack himself, telling me the biography of Tom Laughlin and yet--for whatever crazy reason--insisting he is Lloyd E. James.
  Nuts!
  Why shouldn’t I call him out on it-- in a ‘calling-his-bluff sort of way?
  I mean--just because I thought I could do it. A chess move.

  Laughlin’s face was blank; impassive.
  He worked his jaw a bit. . . calculating a couple of beats and then his eyebrows lifted and he sniffed.

  “I’m not Tom Laughlin. I’m his older, fatter brother.”

  I had to smirk.
  Of course, he was now calling my bluff.

  The ball is in my court . . .

  “Shouldn’t you be Lloyd E. Laughlin and not Lloyd E. James?”

  Unexpectedly, the man laughed out loud!
  Big grin.
  (Much to my relief.)
  
  Checkmate.

  He chuckled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand as I handed him his American Express card and gave him the bill of sale to sign.

  “You’ve got a point. You’re probably right.”

  I tore off his receipt and helped him carry the artwork out of the gallery.
  
  He pulled up his pickup truck and I settled the wrapped pieces on top of some kind of Navajo blanket he kept there nestled safely for the journey.

  We actually shook hands. I couldn’t resist saying:

  “Tell your brother Tom, ‘Hello’ for me. Tell him I’m sorry The Trial of Billy Jack made the list of Worst Films of All Time.”

  The man did not blink.

  “Yep, it only earned 89 million. Heartbreaking.”

  He raised his eyebrows, turned, got into his truck - and away he went.

  I watched his ponderous truck pull out onto Culver Blvd. and make a hard left.
  A trail of blue smoke lingered in the afternoon sunlight and faded into a thin curtain of Hollyweird dreams.

  I thought to myself: “One tin soldier rides away …”

  ____________________

  Lyric to the theme song for Billy Jack

  “Go ahead and hate your neighbor; go ahead and cheat a friend.

  Do it in the name of heaven; you can justify it in the end.

  There won't be any trumpets blowin' come the judgment day

  On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away. . .”

  _____________________

  Terry Walstrom

  Epilogue : Tom (Billy Jack) Laughlin lived another 32 years. He died at the ripe old age of 82 in Thousand Oaks, California in 2013. He had retired in 2010. I had met him around 1982.
  
  _______________
  
  New York Times Obituary for Tom Laughlin
  https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/movies/tom-laughlin-82-star-of-billy-jack-movie-series-dies.html
• 
  15

  My Hollywood Memory : Sean Connery and Michael Caine

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the year is 1983.. two new james bond films are slated for release, one of which will star the one, the only, sean connery, while the other one sports jolly roger moore.. never say never again vs octopussy, and i am one of the original james bond fanatics--so, how can i possibly miss out on the opportunity to attend the world premiere of connery’s flick?

  the premiere was to be held at the mann national theater in westwood california.. was i excited or what?!.

  tickets were impossible to obtain--unless--you had contacts in “the biz” and fortunately for me, i did.

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  Terry

  sir82 : That was one of the best pieces you've written on here.
  
  Oh, thank you.
  Fun times makes for great memories.
  I'm pulling together my so-called memoirs which I've been collating for
  many years. I definitely am going to publish it as my 3rd book if can finish editing.
  My JW years, my prison years, my Parole, escaping the cult and moving to California, Art business and Hollywood, 4 wives and 4 divorces, yep--it won't be dull, fer sure :)
• 
  15

  My Hollywood Memory : Sean Connery and Michael Caine

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the year is 1983.. two new james bond films are slated for release, one of which will star the one, the only, sean connery, while the other one sports jolly roger moore.. never say never again vs octopussy, and i am one of the original james bond fanatics--so, how can i possibly miss out on the opportunity to attend the world premiere of connery’s flick?

  the premiere was to be held at the mann national theater in westwood california.. was i excited or what?!.

  tickets were impossible to obtain--unless--you had contacts in “the biz” and fortunately for me, i did.

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  Terry

  Frank Oz directing.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exqXoi878M4
• 
  44

  The idiots Hollyweird destroys the Bond Franchise

  by rockemsockem in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  99% of the people who go to bond films want a straight white english bond with a bit of light sexism and some bond girls thrown in.

  they do not want a tranny bond or a gay or lesbian bond.

  and they do not want a black woman bond.

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  Terry

  Mind-reading isn't possible.
  None of us can know what "other people" think or want.
  Even when a subject is polled, how is any particular group being sampled and how is it
  provably representative who ticket-buyers at large?
  
  Trolls stir the pot. It's the very definition of Troll.
  Look at it this way: Every major motion picture is surveyed and polled over and over again, passing from group to group, changed here and there - and still no guarantee exists the final product will have a heart and soul.
  The latest incarnation of THE LION KING is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the animated version and it is gorgeous and all that -but cold and without soul.
  I'd compare it with Gus van Sant's shot for shot remake of PSYCHO.
  
  All the above to say this, many (if not most) controversies are simply the grass fires some troll set to watch it burn.
  Hardcore fans almost never like anything new or different, do they?
  
  So, there's that.
  
  Creativity is almost anathema in Hollywood. Too dicey.
  Melody is seldom allowed in music underscoring because some genius said out loud
  it was old-fashioned and manipulative.
  Dirty Harry was fascist.
  Elvis was vulgar.
  The Beatles looked like girls.
  And on and on and on and on...
• 
  15

  My Hollywood Memory : Sean Connery and Michael Caine

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the year is 1983.. two new james bond films are slated for release, one of which will star the one, the only, sean connery, while the other one sports jolly roger moore.. never say never again vs octopussy, and i am one of the original james bond fanatics--so, how can i possibly miss out on the opportunity to attend the world premiere of connery’s flick?

  the premiere was to be held at the mann national theater in westwood california.. was i excited or what?!.

  tickets were impossible to obtain--unless--you had contacts in “the biz” and fortunately for me, i did.

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• 

  Terry

  I'm looking forward to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood for Tarantino's examination
  of the 3 stages of Hollywood "fame".
  It's gotta be good.
• 
  15

  Surviving Idiots

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  surviving idiots.

  there is in every species a "best" at surviving.. .

  99.99 % of every species which has ever existed has perished.. .

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  Terry

  One of the finesse moves of politics is to re-frame an issue in a particular specific way.
  AOC wants all aliens at the border to be seen as asylum seekers.
  Calling anything exactly what it is - is almost unheard of in political discourse.
  
  I live in Texas and I know the border towns are in chaos with more illegals in custody than border patrol officers. Cities have the burden of food, medicine, child supervision, crime control, etc.
  In RULES for RADICALS we find tactics listed for bringing down your opposition.
  

  1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
  2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people."
  3. "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."
  4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
  5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
  6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
  7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
  8. "Keep the pressure on."
  9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
  10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
  11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside."
  12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
  13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
      
      Overwhelming law enforcement is a good way to provoke responses which can then be framed as brutality, inhumane treatment, etc.
      
      
• 
  15

  Surviving Idiots

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  surviving idiots.

  there is in every species a "best" at surviving.. .

  99.99 % of every species which has ever existed has perished.. .

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  Terry

  I have thought many times how worthless most politicians are in their job;
  how little they DO, and how pompous and privileged they are in the process.
  
  They are trained to say what people want to hear and hardly held accountable once elected for failing to try to make good on promises.
  
  Sociopaths beat a well-worn path into that profession.
  
  I would love to see REAL debates where these characters could face off without moderators and handlers and sink their teeth into each other.
  
  They are far too protected to ever let an honest debate break out.
  "How would you solves X problem? You have thirty seconds to answer?"
  That kind of question is an insult to voters.