Joe is a 1970 drama film starring Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, and Susan Sarandon in her film debut. The film was directed by John G. Avildsen.
Plot
Advertising executive Bill Compton (Patrick), his wife Joan (Audrey Caire), and daughter Melissa (Sarandon) are a wealthy family living in New York's Upper East Side. Melissa has recently been living with a boyfriend who is a junkie and pusher. Melissa is apparently also doing drugs and searching for meaning. After Melissa overdoses and is sent to a hospital, Compton goes to her boyfriend's apartment to get her clothes. Compton then kills the boyfriend in a fit of rage.
Shaken, he grabs a bag of the boyfriend's drugs, flees from the apartment, and goes to calm down in a local bar. There, he hears Joe Curran (Boyle) ranting about how he hates hippies, and repeatedly saying, "I'd love to kill one." Compton, unable to restrain himself, blurts out "I just did," then fakes a smile once he realizes he has just made a public confession. Joe appears to believe Compton's statement at first, but then to take it as a joke.
The next day, Joe sees a news report about a drug pusher being murdered a few blocks from the bar. He immediately realizes Compton is the one who did it. Joe arranges a meeting with Compton, and the two form a very strange friendship. Compton tells Joe about the phoniness and emptiness of his smug rich friends, while Joe holds Compton in high esteem for doing what Joe could not bring himself to do: kill a rebellious youth. Joe takes Compton to meet Joe's blue-collar friends at a bowling alley, and Compton brings Joe to a bar frequented by advertising executives. At the bar, Compton tells an executive from a rival firm that Joe was just hired as an Executive Vice President at the rival firm.
After a very awkward dinner among Joe, Compton, and their wives, Compton tells Joan, who is concerned that Joe might blackmail Compton, that she need not worry because Joe so identifies with Compton that Joe feels as if he were a willing accomplice to the murder. Melissa, having escaped from the hospital and returned to the family apartment, overhears her father confess to the murder. Storming out of the apartment house, she asks her father, "What are you gonna do, kill me too?" Compton tries to restrain her but she breaks away.
With Melissa missing, Joe and Compton begin to search for her. During their search, they meet a group of hippies at a bar in downtown Manhattan. Joe and Compton tell the hippies they have drugs (the drugs Compton took from Melissa's boyfriend). The hippies invite Joe and Compton to join them at an apartment, and Joe and Compton accept the invitation. At the apartment, they share the drugs with the hippies, and Joe and Compton have sex with hippie girls. While they are having sex, the male hippies abscond with the remainder of the drugs, as well as Joe's and Compton's wallets.
When they discover this theft, Joe and Compton become furious. Joe beats one of the girls until she tells him that the male hippies often spend time in an upstate commune. Joe and Compton drive to that commune, and Joe brings along some rifles and plenty of ammunition, "just to scare them." Joe and Compton are shown entering the commune building. When they see the hippie thieves and demand their wallets back, one of the hippie thieves tosses the pair their now empty wallets and begins to run away. Joe shoots the thief and goes on a rampage, firing at everyone in the commune, including people who had no involvement in the theft. Compton protests, but Joe tells him that all hippies deserve to die.
When a new group of hippies arrives at the door and Joe is out of ammo, Joe encourages Compton to join in. Compton shoots and kills several of them, and a girl in the group flees out of the building. Compton runs to the doorway and fires at the fleeing girl's back, hitting her. As she falls, the viewer sees her face. She is Compton's beloved daughter Melissa. As we see her fall, Compton cries out her name and he hears in his mind, once again, her voice asking, "What are you gonna do, kill me too?"
Production
Norman Wexler's screenplay for Joe received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Joe also featured an original soundtrack, introducing artists such as Exuma with the song "You Don't Know What's Going On", Dean Michaels' version of "Hey Joe" and other original songs by Jerry Butler and Bobby Scott.
Arville Garland -- a real-life "Joe"
Ten weeks before Joe was released in the United States, a real-life mass murder with chilling similarities to the movie's climactic scenes occurred in Detroit, Michigan. At about 2 a.m. on 8 May 1970, a railroad worker named Arville Douglas Garland (b. 21 September 1924 - d. 26 April 2004) walked into Stonehead Manor, a "student-hippie residence" near the campus of Wayne State University, and killed his daughter Sandra (17 years old), her boyfriend Scott Kabran (18), and their friends Gregory Walls (17) and Anthony Brown (16). Sandra Garland, Arville's oldest child, had graduated from high school at age 16. She was a resident at Stonehead Manor and was in her third semester of pre-med classes at the university.
Garland brought with him a .38 calibre revolver, a Luger -- both of which he used during the crime -- and two pocketfuls of extra ammunition. After shooting Sandra and her friends, he began reloading the guns as he went in search of Sandra's roommate, Donna Sue Potts. It was then that his wife Martha -- who had ridden along with him, expecting that they would merely retrieve their daughter and take her home -- forced him to leave the building. She then insisted that he turn himself in to the police.
Although the Time Magazine articles from 1970[1] and 1971[2] repeat Garland's claim that he shot Sandra accidentally as a result of striking Scott Kabran in the head with one of the guns, the Detroit Free Press in its 2000 book The Detroit Almanac claims that Garland actually "fired repeatedly into Sandra's sleeping body." The book also quotes Martha Garland regarding her daughter's murder: "Sandra was our princess. If we wouldn't have loved her so much, it never would have happened."[3]
Early link between Arville and Joe
During pre-trial deliberations, Judge Joseph A. Gillis saw Joe and strongly advised both the prosecution and defense teams to do the same. He then carefully screened each member of the jury pool and excluded any who had seen the movie. He also forbade any seated juror from watching the movie or discussing it with anyone who had seen it.[4]
Sentencing
Arville Garland used two guns, brought extra bullets for both guns, and was reloading the guns while stalking Sandra's roommate immediately after the murders -- all of which are clear indicators of premeditation and intent to commit further mayhem. Yet, on 18 December 1970, he was sentenced to one count of manslaughter (10 to 15 years) and three counts of second degree murder (10 to 40 years for each count). Judge Gillis allowed the four sentences to run concurrently.
It is possible that the lenient sentences originated from sympathetic jurors who believed that American youth was being corrupted by "hippie" culture. Before and after sentencing, Garland received hundreds of letters from parents across the country who expressed sympathy with him. Some letter writers congratulated him for murdering his daughter and her friends. It was also reported that during the first weeks after his sentencing, he received no letters expressing outrage or condemnation of his actions.[5]
Parole
On 23 October 1980 -- nine years, ten months and five days after his sentencing -- Garland was released from the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections.[6] Twenty-three years, six months and three days later, he died in his hometown of Erwin, Tennessee at the age of 79.
How Arville may have "helped" Joe
As a result of the national media coverage of the Stonehead Manor murders, Joe gained a "ripped from the headlines" cachet prior to its release. Without the murders, it is unlikely that this low-budget exploitation film would have found a large audience. Instead, the US domestic gross box office return for Joe was $19,319,254 (US)[7] from an initial production budget of $106,000 (US).
Furthermore, it is likely that the similarities between the real life murders and the movie's story line inspired the Writer Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to nominate Norman Wexler's screenplay for an Oscar. It is also likely that the larger audiences helped boost the careers of director Avildsen, writer Wexler, and stars Boyle and Sarandon, all of whom were new to the movie industry. (This was the film debut for both Wexler and Sarandon.)
Aftermath
When Peter Boyle saw audience members cheering the violence in Joe, he refused to appear in any other film or television show that glorified violence. This included the role of Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971). The role would earn Gene Hackman the Oscar for Best Actor.
In the 1980s, there were rumors that Peter Boyle might appear in a sequel to Joe. The sequel would follow Joe as he tried to rebuild his life after spending a mere ten years in prison, as Arville Garland had. The film never materialized.
Parodies
Joe was spoofed in MAD Magazine as "shmoe".
References
- Nystrom, Derek (2004), "Hard Hats and Movie Brats: Auteurism and the Class Politics of the New Hollywood" Cinema Journal, Vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 18–41.
- ^ Time Magazine, "Crime: Joe and Arville" 07 December 1970. Accessed 2009-09-09.
- ^ Time Magazine: "The Nation: Sympathy" 25 January 1971. Accessed 2009-09-10.
- ^ Gavrilovich, Peter, and Bill McGraw, eds. The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City. Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 2000. ISBN 0-937247-34-0
- ^ Time Magazine, "Crime: Joe and Arville" 07 December 1970. Accessed 2009-09-09.
- ^ Time Magazine: "The Nation: Sympathy" 25 January 1971. Accessed 2009-09-10.
- ^ Michigan Department of Corrections (MDoC) Offender Tracking Information System (OTIS) - Offender Profile webpage on Arville Douglas Garland (MDoC Offender File Number 127775). Accessed 2008-01-28. (Upon learning of his death, the MDoC has since purged OTIS of Arville Garland's information.)
- ^ Box Office Mojo webpage on Joe
External links
