The Trial of Billy Jack/Fun Facts
From The Grindhouse Cinema Database
< The Trial of Billy Jack
- Delores Taylor claims that the lyrics of "The Theme from 'The Trial of Billy Jack'" came to her in a dream.
- The Indian Rights symposium in the film was unscripted. The testimonials delivered were written by the actual speakers/actors.
- A few months before the release of the film, a potential disaster threatened the success of the release. In "Variety", director/star/writer *Laughlin read the news that the executives in charge of the film's distribution, Lou Marx (who was once a top executive at MGM during the studio's golden days) and Roger Reese (who was almost single-handedly responsible for the original film's financial success) had suddenly quit, and they had done it during a press conference at the National Association of Theater Owners convention in Atlanta, the biggest event of the year for the nation's theater owners. The reason they had quit, they announced, was that Laughlin had changed the deal and was now refusing to give distributors the picture without a cash advance. Laughlin regarded it as an outright lie. With this development, Laughlin and wife Delores Taylor knew that their film would be denied exhibition in each of the 1,200 theaters that agreed to show it. The problem was resolved and the film went on to become one of the top money-makers of 1974.
- One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.
- The credited director, Frank Laughlin, was the then-nineteen-year-old son of co-stars Tom Laughlin and Delores Taylor.
- The credit screenwriters Frank and Teresa Christina were, in fact, the names of the three children of co-stars Tom Laughlin and' Delores Taylor': Frank Laughlin, Teresa Kelly and Christina Laughlin.
- The first film to be launched in a wide release in the modern fashion, debuting simultaneously at over 1,000 theaters, and booked by the filmmakers on a four-wall basis, renting the theaters and controlling the box-office receipts. Major distributors did not attempt wide-release debuts until 1975, beginning with Columbia for the film Breakout (1975).
