Road Dogs

 

This is my entry in the Hit the Road Blogathon, hosted by yours truly.

 

If you weren't alive in the 70's, you will never know just how big the CB craze and the love affair with the trucker was.  The trucker was a standard fixture in country music for years. But with the recording of C. W. McCall's #1 hit Convoy, a veritable fad craze hit the country. And Convoy was #1 not only on country charts, but it held the #1 spot on American Top 40 radio for one week. It stayed in the Top 40 for 13 weeks, which is pretty impressive since most of the top 40 at that time was dominated by easy listening and disco.

Convoy triggered a smattering of follow-up CB and trucker songs in it's immediate aftermath. But unless you listened to country radio most of them probably would have escaped your notice. The White Knight, a favorite of mine by a guy who billed himself as Cleddus Maggard, would probably be the only song that music fans of the 70's would recognize (that one hitting #19 on AT40).

But the CB craze went far beyond top ten radio. For those of you not alive during that time, virtually EVERYONE had a CB radio at the time. It was such a popular thing that, when my Boy Scout troop looked to raise some funds, we raffled off a CB as the top prize.  And the craze even included the movies. Between 1975, when McCall first came on with his monster hit, until about 1980, when the CB craze and America's love affair with the "rebel" trucker was dying out, there were no less than about a dozen trucker movies to hit the big screen.

Besides today's two features, among others, there was also the first two Smokey and the Bandit films, Breaker! Breaker!, a Chuck Norris film, White Line Fever, High-Ballin' and Trucker's Woman. 

The American love affair with the trucker didn't stop with just feature films. There was also trucker TV shows and movies. Some of you may remember Movin' On, a short-lived TV series featuring Claude Akins and Frank Converse or B.J. and the Bear, another show featuring Greg Evigan and his more intelligent partner, "Bear", a chimpanzee riding the asphalt highway. 

I have a confession. For a brief period while still in high school I had  a flirtation with wanting to be a truck driver when I grew up. That only lasted as long as my first attempt at driving a stick shift car, however. I found out pretty quick that I had no aptitude for using a clutch.  But, damn, wouldn't it have been cool living the life of a long haul transportation executive...  

 

 

 

Convoy (1978):

A little background: As noted above, the song Convoy  was the inspiration of Bill Fries, who performed the song under the moniker of "C. W. McCall, and his writing partner, Chip Davis (who later created Mannheim Steamroller, a band you may have heard of due to their frequency on radio during the Christmas season).  The character of "C. W. McCall" came from a series of TV commercials for a bread company called Old Home Bread. In these commercials C. W. would tool into a roadside diner and flirt with the waitress, all the while with Fries' vocals delivering a trucker inspired voice over. Watching these old commercials is pretty interesting if you were a fan of the song that Fries eventually recorded. The style is the same as the song.

 

 

First things first. The original song Convoy had no real plot. It's just about a bunch of truckers and the ones they add along the way who are on a cross country trip from L.A. to the Jersey shore, dodging the various police along the way.  That's it.  Not enough there for even an episode on a half-hour sitcom. So the writers had to come up with a plot to flesh out a full-length  movie. You decide whether they did a decent job of it. For reference, here is the original song:

 

This entry is going to throw a lot of CB slang at you, but don't worry. For the uninitiated, I'll translate as I go. 

Arizona, noon, on the seventh of June

When they highballed over the pass.

Bulldog Mack with a can on the back

And a Jaguar haulin' ass.  

He's ten on the floor, strokin' a bore

Seat cover's startin' to gain.

Now, beaver, you truckin' with the Rubber Duck

And I'm about to pull the plug on your drain. 

 First verse of the title song (movie version)

 

OK. Here's your first lesson in CB slang:

"Bulldog Mack with a can on the back- a Mack truck semi with a tank that is hauling a liquid  (probably gasoline, but it conceivably be milk or some other liquid)

"Seat cover"and "beaver"- a female driver  

To set the scene. Big rig independent trucker, "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson) is hauling his rig across the Arizona desert. And note, while all these characters have real names, most of the time they are addressed by their CB handles (nicknames), which is fitting. Rubber Duck is minding his own business when a seat cover (good looking girl) passes him in a Jaguar. This is Melissa (Ali MacGraw). 

 

Melissa messes with Rubber Duck, because after she passes him, she slows down. Eventually the two get into a road race, which just happens to bring them into contact with a smokey (police officer) who pulls Duck over.  But Duck manages to get out of a ticket after he tells the smokey that the girl in the Jag isn't wearing any panties. Note: The immediate scene after the cop leaves to chase down Melissa has Rubber Duck giving a "smokey report" (letting fellow truckers know of a cop in the area). He says it is on "I-4-Oh", which would be 1-40, but if that's I-40, even in 1978, it's pretty run down...

 

Just down the way Rubber Duck hooks up with "Spider Mike" (Franklin Ajaye) and an old buddy "Love Machine" (Burt Young).  Because Love Machine's current cargo is a Bulldog (Mack truck) full of hogs, Mike suggests that the change Love Machine's handle to Pig Pen. Of course he isn't enamored with it.. (would you be...?)

The three end up in a bear trap (radar speed trap), caught speeding by the unscrupulous county mountie (police), Sheriff Lyle (or "Dirty Lyle", as he will be referred to by the truckers). Lyle having no moral compass, nicks the three for $70 each to avoid jail time and impounding of their trucks, which needless to say is going into Lyle's own pocket. Grumbling, the three pay the fine and leave.

After their run in the three decide to stop off at a truck stop to get something to eat. And guess who just so happens to be at the same truck stop... Melissa, who has sold the Jag and some other personal items to get enough money to get where she is going, ultimately Emerald City (Dallas). So she ends up hooking up with Duck.  But Duck and the boys are not through in town yet.  Who else comes in but Dirty Lyle. And we get to see just how unscrupulous as well as vindictive or villain is.  He tries to arrest Spider Mike for vagrancy, since Mike has no money after paying off his forced bribe to Lyle earlier.

 

The boys and Lyle go at each other, as well as some other cops who show up on the scene and ultimately Duck decides that their best bet is to get across the state line in to New Mexico, where they figure they will be safe since Lyle has no jurisdiction. But like Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit, Lyle isn't going to let anything like jurisdiction prevent him from settling scores.

New Mexico, on I-four-oh

Like a Texas lizard on glass.

One thousand pedals was mashin' the metal

Them bears was a walkin' the grass.

We trucked all day and we trucked all night

Big Benny was improvin' our style.

We could tell by the smell we was headin' for Hell

And the Devil was Dirty Lyle. 

Second verse of title song 

Along the way, Duck and his pals keep picking up more trucks some long haired friends of Jesus in a microbus. (Hey! Wait one damn minute... that microbus is supposed to be chartreuse... )  The rest of the truckers who join the convoy seem to be joining just because it's an act of rebellion. But somewhere along the way, someone gets the idea that it is a protest of what was then a 55 MPH speed limit, which many people, especially truckers, did not like. The governor sends a representative to try to interview Duck and the other members of the convoy.

 

Meanwhile, Lyle is still on a one-man objective to bring down the Duck, or even to the point of killing him. When Spider Mike breaks off from the convoy to get to his final objective, that of being with his wife who is about to give birth to their child, Mike is arrested and beat up by the local police.  It is Lyle's intention to use Mike as bait to get Duck to come and rescue him. Duck heads off by himself at first, but when he gets to the town he has several other truckers with him and they demolish the town in order to rescue Mike.

Now Lyle was a creep, he was tacky and cheap

But he had him a badge and a gun.

He hated the Duck and he hated his truck

And he loved to bust truckers for fun.

So he followed the line and he bided his time

As he watched for his time to strike.

Then he picked on a trucker, a wiry old sucker

Yeah, the trucker they called Spider Mike.

Third verse of the title song. 

After the rescue, Duck and several others decide to head south of the border to Mexico, and finally, we get that old Peckinpah touch, a scene of needless violence as Lyle and about a thousand national guard and army guys try to prevent him from crossing the bridge. 

But the great Rubber Duck sorta run out of luck

When he crossed that final bridge.

There's choppers and rigs full of guns and pigs

They's wall to wall on the ridge.

He showed no fear as he grabbed his gear

And he stuck it in granddaddy low.

Them guns went boom and his ass went zoom

And the Mack took a terminal blow.

Fourth verse of the song  

 

 

 

Well, all seems at a bad end, because it looks like the Duck is dead and Dirty Lyle wins the day. But you know that just can't be how the movie ends. I will say this, the final three minutes are satisfying.

This movie made a decent showing, despite the fact that it was mostly panned by the critics.  At a budget of $12 million, it eventually drew in $45 million in receipts. What happened to the movie is an interesting story in itself.  

Sam Peckinpah, director of such classics as The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and The Getaway was the director of the film, and some elements ca still be seen as classic Peckinpah. But the original running time was way too long for the brass at the front office.  The original running time was 220 minutes (compared the 120 minutes in the final cut. Because Peckinpah seemed to be dragging his heels on cutting it down he was fired and the studios brought in an editor who, according to Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons, :cut the life out of it". (I'd be interested in seeing a director's cut just to see what was culled from it.  This one is compact, but it is well put together, so I wonder what they left on the cutting room floor.) 

 

 

 

The Great Smokey Roadblock (1977): 

The scene opens with a poor old truck driver, Elegant John (Henry Fonda) stuck in a hospital (or maybe it's an old folks home), trying to figure out how to spring his beloved Eleanor, his truck, from the impound lot.  

It becomes revealed in the early part of the movie that John went into the hospital for a checkup.  But he is aging, 60 by his own admission, and he ends up having to stay in the hospital (and I still think it's an old folks home). His truck was repossessed by the finance company, so John basically has to steal the truck. A fellow hospital patient (inmate in the home) tells him if he steals the truck on a Friday night he may have a good three or four days before the authorities get wind of his theft.

 

 

In a roadside cafe, he has some words with a fellow trucker, Charlie (Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinatti TV fame), who tells John he won't get the load to drive because the truck is stolen, so apparently John hasn't quite gotten away with his subtle tactics.

 

John picks up a hitchhiker, Beebo (Robert Englund). Beebo is on his way to Florida, but since John is not going that far, Beebo may be out of luck. John carries a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which explains the name of the truck, and probably also indicates just how long John has been a truck driver.

 

Meanwhile, somewhere in Wyoming, a brothel being run by Miss Penelope (Eileen Brennan) and her crew of courtesans (which includes, among others, Susan Sarandon) is invaded by the authorities. They are given 48 hours to leave town. (Yeah, that's the same thing I thought...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the truck, John and Beebo are headed across Wyoming (surprise, surprise). Beebo, ever the picky freeloader, complains to John they are headed the wrong way if they are to get to Florida.  But we find out that John's goal is to find a load to haul, and has a line on one in Laramie. Only when he gets there, the boss tells him he can't let John have the job because his truck is reported stolen.

Eventually John and Beebo end up at the "now in the process of being evacuated" brothel, where it turns out that John knows Miss Penelope, and her girls.  Miss Penelope hooks up with John and Beebo to go to South Carolina (eventually). Since John's main driving goal is to make one last haul in his truck, it might be a while before he gets either of his passengers to their destinations.  Especially since now the police are on the lookout for John and his stolen truck.

But the advantage of having a rolling brothel is not lost on Penelope, or John, (or for that matter, the audience...) When you have such a viable source of bringing in money, little things like the need for gas for the truck or food to feed a dozen hungry souls on the road becomes a little insignificant.

 

The sad part of all this is that John really is sick, not just an escaped old folks home resident. (So much for my thoughts...) He apparently is getting a little worse for wear as time passes.  Making this goal of one last hurrah at driving his rig cross country more than just an idle dream of living the life he once knew one last time. (Side note: at the time of this movie Fonda really was suffering from complications of his age. You probably already know Fonda passed away just a few years later after having received an Oscar for On Golden Pond.)

 It isn't long before every cop in the south, north, east and west is on the lookout for the stolen truck and escaped prostitutes. (Wait a minute, you might be thinking... weren't those hookers just told to vacate town? Why are the police after them, too? Well, you know how Hollywood doesn't really care about coherency of plot if there's potential money in the offing...)

But John has the misfortune of getting snagged by a backwoods sheriff and his bogus stop light.  Sheriff Harley (Dub Taylor) knows exactly what he's got. Think of Harley as a low rent version of Ernest Borgnine's sheriff from the first feature in this blog. He arrests his victims with the sole purpose of turning them in just to get his picture in the paper. Of course, the girls have a different plan,,, and John and the ladies escape.

 

 

In a bar somewhere they see themselves on the news broadcast where the newscaster (Sander Vanocur, playing himself) gives the basic story so far to his television audience (and I guess the movie audience, too, in case they fell asleep...) He wishes on the behalf of the public a Good luck" to John in his goals. The first indication that the public might be on the side of the lawbreakers.. (seems like a pattern is developing...)

 Up until this point, that "great smokey roadblock" seems to be non existent (and there's only 20 minutes left in the film...) But never worry. We still get the roadblock. All 4 minutes of it. Along with some hangers on who seem to have joined this "convoy" just because there was nothing else to do at the time. And with only about four police cruisers, not so "great" a roadblock... 

 

I won't say this film ends on an entirely positive note. Sure, the crew gets to their goal before the credits roll. At least almost all of the crew.

Henry Fonda is pretty damn good in this movie, and Robert Englund proves he can do more than just haunt your nightmares with razor sharp fingernails. (Yes, that's Freddie Kruger from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise...) The film is billed as a comedy and there are indeed some comedic moments in the film, but the romantic relationship between John and Penelope will tear at your heart strings, too. Is this one a great movie? Not hardly. One review I read said the more appropriate title would be "The Great American Sex-Trafficking Trip". Personally, I think he or she is taking a way too modern PC attitude.

It's definitely not family friendly, although the endearing romantic relationship between Fonda and Brennan is pretty sweet. I wonder what Fonda thought of the final movie, however.  He had recently been relegated to just cameos and probably took on this role as a way to get back into the spotlight of his glory days as a headliner. You'll appreciate On Golden Pond even more as his final movie after seeing this one. So, no, it's not a great movie, but at least it wasn't his last hurrah after all. It's worth one watch, but I don't think I will seek it out again. 

One thing that cropped up in my research. The original title of this film was "The Last of the Cowboys" which makes better sense as a title, given that that titular "roadblock" only takes up 4 minutes of the running time. But, as Hollywood is often wont to do, they tried to cash in on the CB craze by changing the title, obviously to draw in the crowds who had seen Smokey and the Bandit. The unhinged demeanor that Burt Reynolds had in that movie is barely visible in Elegant John. Good thing, too, because who would have accepted an aging Henry Fonda as an all-out rebel? 

Well, folks, that sound you hear is not a big 18 ton big rig firing up. The old Plymouth just needs some new mufflers. Drive safely.

Quiggy