it was the Third of June….
The movie “Ode To Billy Joe” (which made great use of the song) was directed by Max Baer, Jr., of Beverly Hillbillies fame. Quite a serious movie for a guy who played such a dim-witted character on television.
Bobbie Gentry co-wrote the screenplay for the movie with her hand-picked collaborator, Herman Rauncher (Summer of ’42). The screenplay included several characters based on characters in various songs from Gentry’s outstanding album “Patchwork.”
The movie cost only $1 million to make and astounded the studio by earning over $50 million in its theatrical release. I am guessing that Baer was given the director job because no well-established director had the courage to attach their name to it - but it was a very well-done movie, thanks in large part to the efforts of Bobbie Gentry.
"A study in unconscious cruelty"
Fifty-five years later, Ode to Billy Joe sounds just as fresh as the day it was released. I absolutely love the masterful performance Bobbie Gentry gave for the BBC. Her vocal is remarkably nuanced, and makes the story 100% believable. It is amazing to consider that she was recovering from illness that day.
Wikipedia brings together some of the statements Gentry has made over the years about the song's meaning.
Pretty deep stuff.
Leaving open the reason for Billy Joe's suicide and just what he and the song's narrator threw from the Tallahatchie Bridge was a brilliant compositional device.
I have never seen the movie. Nevertheless, I was disappointed to read in its synopsis on Wikipedia that both were given concrete expression in the film. [Spoiler alert:] In the movie, it was the narrator's rag doll, a symbol of childhood innocence, that the two threw off the bridge. Billy Joe's reason for suicide was shame over a drunken homosexual encounter he had in a brothel.
What?
SPOILER FOLLOWS.
The movie makes clear it was an encounter with an older man in the town - not a brothel. The source of that information is the older man who was involved.
Some were upset that the movie specified facts left vague in the song. Many people assumed the song was inferring the girl had an affair with Billy Joe (who was possibly a black man, which would have been a greater taboo in that location at the time), and that the object thrown off the bridge in the song was their offspring, so they didn’t appreciate the movie story. But I give Gentry and the whole creative crew a lot of credit for having the guts to tell the story they told - and it was a fine use of the song.
Gentry was an impressive woman. She moved from the Mississippi town described in the song to Palm Springs, California at age 13, when her mother remarried. Then she went to college in Los Angeles, where she studied philosophy, among other things.
Yeah, I get it that a mass audience probably liked having the details fill in. It is also worth pointing out the wide gulf there is between a four-minute pop song and a film lasting one hour and forty-five minutes.
I was happy to have the two issues left open in the song. I think it makes for a better narrative, especially in light of Bobby Gentry's statement that "the object thrown was not relevant to the message." It would have been much harder to omit the details in a feature-length film.
Thanks for correcting me about the brothel. I was just going off the synopsis in Wikipedia.
Although it was not intended, I see now that my original post can be taken to imply that Billy Joe was seeking a male companion when he entered the brothel. According to the synopsis in Wikipedia, it was an accident of inebriation.
It’s not clear that she wrote the song. Although that’s not really relevant. The movie came after. It’s total fiction. I always assumed based on the song that the two throwing things off the bridge were 13 to 15 years old. I got the impression that they threw a variety of things off the bridge and the girl may have partially encouraged him to jump. She knew he never had a lick of sense. Even though the father makes that observation in the song. And then she felt guilty about it afterwards. So she kept going back and throwing flowers off the bridge. It’s fiction so there’s no right or wrong interpretation.
SPOILER:
KeepingItLight: my intention wasn’t to correct you - I was correcting a few of the many misunderstandings of other people that you read online.
One other point I can add, because I’ve seen the movie: the encounter between Billy Joe and the older man wasn’t a drunken accident. In the movie Billy Joe eventually confides in the girl about the encounter with the other man, to explain why he withdraws from her and seems conflicted about their budding romance, and generally in torment she can’t understand. In response, the girl tries to reassure him by telling him it was an accident or mistake that won’t happen again. He tells her the source of his anguish and the reason he can’t live happily ever after with her - he knows it will happen again.
^ That makes sense. And it makes the movie sound a lot more interesting to me.
I wish the writers at Wikipedia had been as precise as you.
since June was a popular topic,
here is something stupid but good:
Debussy was a genius way ahead of his time. This piece and Suite Bergamasque are my favorites by him. He was so savaged by the critics that he began naming his compositions after the criticisms he received in the press.
Reminds me of Elaine dancing on Seinfeld
how high’s the Gasoline?
$5 a gallon and risin’.
Lucas Imbiriba – "Hotel California" (2021)
Monster chops!
The YouTube algorithm fed me this. Definitely worth repeated listenings.
Incredible Hotel California Solo
Here is a part of a live version. Unfortunately, the full-length video was removed from YouTube. It is not as precise as the studio version above, but the energy makes up for any missed notes. I prefer the live recording over the album.
What can we learn from this? - Hotel California, Lucas Imbiriba
Here is a “reaction” video that mangaged to get by the YouTube censors. It’s got the entire live recording.
Why do I suddenly have the urge to lick my bowling ball? 
Nobody ****s with the Jesus! 
