New Year, New Theme
By Sarah DiMeo
When I was in preproduction for You Don’t Know Jack, planning everything, deciding how each episode should go, I decided to group all of Jack’s B-movies prior to his big break with 1969’s Easy Rider together by year, because I naturally was thinking everyone would be eager to get to his famous titles. But each week, as I watched each film getting ready for every upcoming episode, it really started to seem like there was a common theme for each year.
Let’s break this down: In 1960, Jack was in a total of four films, Too Soon To Love, The Wild Ride, Studs Lonigan and Little Shop of Horrors. I described to you in Episode 2 the DVD case that Too Soon To Love came in, “YOUTH RUN WILD” and “Hormones Run Amuck!” Teenagers wreaking havoc as if they were invincible, no fear of consequences. That was the idea of Too Soon To Love, two teenage lovers who sneak around to spend time together in secret, go “all the way,” continue to sneak around to find a way out of their… let’s call it predicament. Then we have The Wild Ride, a starring role for Jack. The title says it all. Jack plays a cocky teenager who races cars, runs people on the road and doesn’t even take responsibility when it results in a fatality. And then there’s Studs Lonigan, a more dramatic piece set in early 1920s Chicago, about a young guy and his buddies who don’t want to grow up and join the workforce. They just want to drink, party and shoot pool forever.
When we move forward a few years to 1963, we’ve got a whole new theme. Jack would do two movies alongside Boris Karloff. The Raven, a comedic take on Edgar Allan Poe’s legendary poem; and The Terror — a much darker tale, considered by some to part of director Roger Corman’s “Poe Cycle,” though it was not directly adapted from any of Poe’s work.
In 1964, we started off with a Naval comedy, Ensign Pulver, where Jack plays a Navy yeoman. Then we ended things for that year with a World War II drama, Jack playing a fallen World War II soldier. Next week, we’re covering two westerns, The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind. And furthermore, the week after that, we’ll be covering two movies about LSD culture.
So why do we see these common themes evolve each year in Jack’s early career? Was this intentional on Jack’s part? Or are these stories that simply reflected audiences’ interests at the time, and just happen to be the roles that were available to a young actor? I would like to think that it was a little bit of both. I think it was a cumulative effort of a group of young, clever, attentive filmmakers, who wrote and produced the stories that they wanted to tell, but were also in tune with what audiences wanted to see. That’s why they all became success stories; they were young and ambitious, but they paid attention. They took the time to learn about what would work and what wouldn’t. And if there’s one thing you need if you’re trying to navigate such an unpredictable career path as movie-making, it’s awareness. Self-awareness, and awareness of the business around and how it works.
