Ode to Billy Joe

I remember seeing 'Ode to Billy Joe' when I was about twelve, and just starting to deal with the fact that I was gay. Growing up in rural Wisconsin I could relate very well to the negative attitudes towards gays, and find it very believable that a young gay person in that situation would consider killing themself. I also find it very believable that a young gay person would date a person of the opposite sex, just think about how many gay people do get married. Even though Billy Joe is a tragic figure I found the movie to be comforting, I think I took comfort in the fact that at least someone was talking about homosexuality, being Catholic my family never spoke about sex much less homosexuality and I think that is the way it was in most families in the seventies. Over the years I have thought of that movie often and I think at times it helped me keep my sanity, I would love to see it again!

If this is truly supposed to be an adaptation of the Bobbie Gentry song, it makes utterly NO sense. I'm gay, so I'm usually sensitized toward picking gay references out of pop culture, but to make Billy Joe in the film struggle with his sexuality is fairly ridiculous.

If you read the lyrics to Bobbie Gentry's song, it seems pretty darn obvious that what the narrator and Billie Joe are throwing off the Tallahatchee Bridge is their out-of-wedlock baby.

Just Google search the lyrics, listen to the song, and see if that interpretation doesn't make much more sense than how the movie presents the story.

It has been a long time since I saw this movie. I always read very negative reviews of it, but I always thought that the photography and sound were beautiful. It was my impression that Max Baer Jr. was making a movie about how beautiful the rural South is. Of course a movie based on a rather enigmatic song is doomed to storyline problems, but as a mood piece, I think it was a great success.

Tragic movie.

The backstory on this 1976 film is interesting. 10 years earlier the country music singer Bobbie Gentry had written a song with the same title which tells of a young man committing suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. But Gentry's lyrics never reveal why the fictional Billy Joe killed himself and in interviews about the song she was very coy and unrevealing.

So, they made a movie about it. Robbie Benton, teen idol of the 70s, plays the title character although this movie is really about the young girl who loves hm: Bobby Joe Hartley, played by Glynnis O'Connor. I thought these two young actors were incredible in their roles and they held this otherwise flawed movie together. The subject matter can feel a little strange at times (there aren't many movies these days that delve into the sexual desires of a 15 year old girl) but if you can get past that, I think you'll enjoy this movie. It's not an all time great one but just for Benton and O'Connor's acting alone, it was worth watching.

This comment is provoked by one made earlier by someone who seemed to feel the film unsalvageable. It might not be a masterpiece, or even particularly memorable, but this Southern boy had little trouble identifying with a boy trying to cope with his deepening feelings for a lovely young lady in the arch-conservative South, and of the young lady whose family opposed the union with the appalling callous intolerance and ignorance that seems epidemic in deep rural South. It's worth the rental fee if you find it at the video store.