The Legend of Billie Jean (1985)

A Texas teenager cuts her hair short and becomes an outlaw martyr with her brother and friends.

Director:

Matthew Robbins

Writers:

Mark Rosenthal, Lawrence Konner

Stars:

Helen Slater, Christian Slater, Keith Gordon

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Helen Slater	...	Billie Jean
Keith Gordon	...	Lloyd
Christian Slater	...	Binx
Richard Bradford	...	Pyatt
Peter Coyote	...	Ringwald
Martha Gehman	...	Ophelia
Yeardley Smith	...	Putter
Dean Stockwell	...	Muldaur
Barry Tubb	...	Hubie
Mona Lee Fultz	...	Donna Davy
Bobby Jones	...	Kenny
John M. Jackson	...	Kenny's Father
Rodney Rincon	...	Police Sergeant
Caroline Williams	...	Woman in Pickup
Rudy Young	...	Man in Pickup

Storyline

Average Texas teen, Billie Jean Davy, is caught up in an odd fight for justice. She is usually followed and harrased around by local boys, who, one day, decide to trash her brother's scooter for fun. The boys' father refuses to pay them back the price of the scooter. The fight for "fair is fair" takes the teens around the state and produces an unlikely hero.

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Plot Keywords:

kneed in the groin | bare midriff | fight | boy | texas | 

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Taglines:

The last thing she ever expected was to become a hero.

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Genres:

Action | Drama

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Certificate:

PG-13

Details

Official Sites:

Sony Movie Channel [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

19 July 1985 (USA)

Also Known As:

Fair Is Fair

Filming Locations:

10306 South Padre Island Drive, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$1,466,884, 21 July 1985, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$3,099,497

Company Credits

Production Co:

Gomillion Studios,Delphi III Productions,The Guber-Peters Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The radio station in the movie C101 is an actual station in Corpus Christi.

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Goofs

Two slightly different groups of guys run into the dumpster in the mall garage when chasing Billie Jean.

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Quotes

Mini-Mart Girl: [to Billie Jean] Can I have your autograph? Please...
[Billie Jean signs the newspaper]
Mini-Mart Boy: [to Billie Jean] You know, my dad says you're gonna end up dead.

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Connections

References G.I. Joe (1985)

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Soundtracks

Rebel Yell
Performed by Billy Idol
Courtesy of Chrysalis Records

User Reviews

Billie Jean, "social bandit"

The British historian E. J. Hobsbawm developed the idea of the "social bandit," the peasant youth who becomes an outlaw after his honorable resistance to some outrage by the landlord ends with a landlord henchman dead. He calls to others who share his anger at injustice to follow him to the hills where they will lead the outlaw life, stealing only from those whose wealth comes from oppressing the poor, respecting the peasants and righting wrongs on their behalf, and seeking to restore a former condition when the great and powerful behaved decently and treated the poor equitably. (This equitable treatment is also close to what E.P. Thompson called "the moral economy of the poor:" the Honest Loaf, the Fair Day's Wage for a Fair Day's Work--a slogan of early labor unions--etc.)

The social bandit *isn't* a revolutionary--he has no vision of a transformed society, because his horizons are too narrow. He wants the Good Old Days back. He doesn't have a social or political theory; he wants simple decency and justice. He isn't Joan of Arc, fighting to restore a legitimate King, he's much closer to Robin Hood, resisting the oppression of a King who's forfeited the loyalty of the people by not acting as a good King should.

Billie Jean is a social bandit. The events that launch her "career," the actions she performs, and above all her simple watchword "Fair is Fair" clearly put her in the category that includes the Brazilian Lampiao, the Sicilian Salvatore Giuliano, and others. Hardly surprising, since this teenage cult script was written by a formerly blacklisted old Lefty in his seventies, Walter Bernstein, who surely had read Hobsbawm and Thompson and found, I think, a very ingenious way to illustrate their ideas in a 1980's US setting.