Tagged: Buckskins

Moonrunners: Kiel Martin’s Fringed Buckskin Jacket and Blue Jeans

Kiel Martin in Moonrunners (1975)

Vitals

Kiel Martin as Bobby Lee Hagg, daredevil moonshine driver and part-time guitar picker

Georgia, Fall 1973

Film: Moonrunners
Release Date: May 14, 1975
Director: Gy Waldron
Costume Designer: Patty Shaw

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Two rambunctious and fast-driving cousins speed through a fictional county in the deep south, running moonshine for their uncle Jesse while evading local sheriff Roscoe Coltrane and his connections to a corrupt local crime boss who drives a white Cadillac—all set to the music and homespun voiceover of outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings. And no, I’m not talking about The Dukes of Hazzard.

Four years before the Dukes debuted on CBS, Gy Waldron’s B-movie Moonrunners premiered in drive-in theaters across the South fifty years ago tomorrow on May 14, 1975.

Moonrunners could have been lost in the traffic jam of cheap ’70s hick flicks about moonshine and muscle cars until it was plucked from potential obscurity by Warner Brothers’ perplexing—but indeed prophetic—suggestion that it could form the basis for a successful TV show. Now best known as the rawer progenitor to The Dukes of Hazzard, Moonrunners has essentially all the same elements and characters but distilled into a dirtier, hornier jar of shine—seasoned with the visceral authenticity that comes from filming on location in rural Georgia and not a WB backlot. Continue reading →

Midnight Cowboy: Jon Voight as Joe Buck

Jon Voight as Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Vitals

Jon Voight as Joe Buck, naïve Texan wannabe gigolo and Army veteran

New York City, Summer through Winter 1968

Film: Midnight Cowboy
Release Date: May 25, 1969
Director: John Schlesinger
Costume Designer: Ann Roth

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Harry Nilsson recorded his cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin'” 57 years ago this week on November 13, 1967. This Grammy-winning folk hit has since become inextricably linked with the 1969 drama Midnight Cowboy—which celebrated its 55th anniversary in May—after director John Schlesinger chose it as the film’s theme song.

Adapted by Waldo Salt from James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel of the same name, Midnight Cowboy received a controversial if critically acclaimed response upon its release. Six months earlier, the MPAA implemented its voluntary rating system to classify age suitability for major releases, replacing the increasingly outdated “Hays Code” that had been enforced since the early 1930s. Midnight Cowboy was one of the first mainstream movies to be rated “X”, which forbade any audience members under age 17 to be admitted and was reserved for movies demonstrating the most extreme sexual themes, graphic violence or language. Despite the stigma of this dramatically restrictive rating, Midnight Cowboy was the third highest-grossing American movie released in 1969 and won three of the seven Oscars for which it was nominated—Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay—and it remains the only movie with an X (or equivalent NC-17) rating to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Continue reading →

Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider

Dennis Hopper as Billy in Easy Rider

Dennis Hopper as Billy in Easy Rider (1969)

Vitals

Dennis Hopper as Billy, cowboy-styled biker and cocaine smuggler

Across the southern United States from Los Angeles through Louisiana, February 1968

Film: Easy Rider
Release Date: July 14, 1969
Director: Dennis Hopper

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The late Dennis Hopper was born 86 years ago today on May 17, 1936. The iconoclastic filmmaker had been acting on screen since the ’50s before he made his directorial debut with the groundbreaking Easy Rider.

Filmed early in 1968 but not released until the tumultuous summer of ’69, Easy Rider had been conceptualized by Hopper with screenwriter Terry Southern and fellow actor Peter Fonda, who would join Hopper on screen as the pair of freedom-loving bikers we follow across the country following a lucrative cocaine sale. There’s plenty more drug use along the way, from a few LSD tabs scored from a fellow traveler to introducing the wild-eyed lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) to marijuana, but the substances are secondary as Easy Rider allegorizes the death—or, perhaps, the contemporary redefinition—of the American dream. Continue reading →