The Big Picture

Joe
is a dark comedy in which an alliance between an ad exec and a bigot leads to violent confrontation with the counterculture.
Audiences misunderstood Joe at release, with many cheering on the violent finale, missing the satirical message against close-mindedness.

Joe
remains eerily relevant today.

The 1960s and ’70s were a time of radical change for America, and reactions to that weren’t always favorable. Conservative members of the Greatest Generation — men who had fought in WWII and returned to a prosperous country — watched in disgust as hippies burned American flags in protest of the Vietnam War. Though peace and love were in the air, a growing number of conservatives who dubbed themselves “the silent majority” weren’t having it. The same year that Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, Richard Nixon ascended to the presidency promising to restore law and order to a nation that had descended into chaos — i.e. had seen a rise in demonstrations on behalf of civil rights and against American imperialism. It was during this time that John G. Avildsen’s Joe, a satire of anti-counterculture sentiments that was tragically misunderstood by audiences, was released.

Joe (1970) In this gritty drama, an advertising executive forms an unlikely alliance with a blue-collar factory worker named Joe, who harbors extreme views. Their bond leads to a violent and disturbing confrontation with the counterculture of the late 1960s.Release Date July 15, 1970 Director John G. Avildsen Cast Peter Boyle , Dennis Patrick , Susan Sarandon , Patrick McDermott , K Callan , Tim Lewis , Estelle Omens , Bob O’Connell Runtime 107 Minutes Main Genre Crime Writers Norman Wexler Expand

What Is John G. Avildsen’s ‘Joe’ About?
Dennis Patrick plays Bill Compton, an upper-middle class ad executive whose estranged daughter, Melissa (Susan Sarandon in her film debut), is hospitalized after a heroin overdose, and in a violent rage he kills her drug dealer boyfriend (Patrick McDermott). While at a bar, he meets Joe Curran (Peter Boyle), a bigoted factory worker who rants about his desire to murder a hippie. Bill lets it slip that he actually has killed one, only to walk that claim back. While watching the news, Joe finds out Bill was telling the truth, and uses this knowledge to blackmail him into a friendship. Bills finds himself oddly drawn to Joe’s bluntness, and even enlists his help in finding Melissa when she runs away. Their search leads them to a party with some hippies who later rob them. Joe and Bill track the hippies down at a commune and go on a murderous rampage, killing everyone, including, to Bill’s horror, Melissa.

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Although its plot description is grim, Joe is pitched as a dark comedy. Like Archie Bunker in All in the Family, Joe Curran was meant to lampoon close-minded individuals who reacted with hostility to the changing times. Yet when it opened in 1970, many viewers didn’t get the joke. In fact, more than a few audience members cheered on the film’s bloody finale, happy that someone had finally stuck it to the flower children. Boyle, a staunch liberal who attended many anti-war protests with his friend, Jane Fonda, was so disturbed by this reaction that he swore off roles in violent movies for years afterward, including an offer to play Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Yet more than five decades later, Avildsen and Boyle’s intentions have become much clearer, and the film’s satire is just as relevant today as it was back then.

A Real-Life Tragedy Shared Strange Similarities With ‘Joe’
Image via The Cannon Group

Reactions to Joe were further muddled by a real life mass murder with eerie parallels to the film’s finale, which occurred just two months before its release. The story of Arville Douglas Garland, a railroad worker who shot and killed his daughter, her boyfriend, and two others on a Detroit college campus, polarized the nation. During the trial, Garland received letters of support from hundreds of Americans who thought his actions were justified. Joe inevitably found its way into the trial, as the judge saw the film and forbade prospective jurors from watching it for fear that it might influence their verdict. Garland was given a light sentence, despite admitting to carrying a surplus of weapons and ammunition.

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Although Avildsen and screenwriter Norman Wexler, who earned an Oscar nomination for his original screenplay, could never have predicted Garland’s rampage, the two were undoubtedly responding to a threat of violence that was hanging in the air. Earlier in 1970, a group of conservative construction workers beat up a gathering of students protesting the Kent State Massacre, in what would later become known as the Hard Hat Riot. Resentment of the burgeoning counterculture had been brewing for quite some time, and was beginning to show itself in increasingly aggressive ways. For many Americans, the era of Free Love represented a threat to their way of life, one that required extreme resistance. So when Joe Curran enacts his savage revenge against a group of hippies who duped him into letting his guard down, he was expressing a view largely held by the self-proclaimed silent majority.

‘Joe’ Is Still Eerily Relevant Today
Image via The Cannon Group

One person who instantly knew Joe was a comedy was Quentin Tarantino, who, in his book Cinema Speculation, recalled seeing it on a double bill with Carl Reiner’s equally dark Where’s Poppa? As Tarantino wrote (and also said in his audiobook narration), the audience started laughing “once Dennis Patrick enters the tavern, and Peter Boyle’s Joe enters the movie.” He called the film “a kettle-black comedy about class in America, bordering on satire,” and said, “Boyle’s comedic performance alleviates the picture’s one-note ugliness.”

The truth is, many of Joe’s rantings are hilarious, thanks in large part to Boyle’s impeccable comedic timing (which he would later show off in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and TV’s Everybody Loves Raymond). And it’s Boyle’s ability to make us laugh both at and with the character that makes the film so insidious: by making us delight in Joe’s blustering, we are made to identify with him, and are therefore implicated when he goes on his shooting spree. Like all great satires, Joe doesn’t give the viewer an easy way out by allowing them to stand apart from the action onscreen, but rather forces them to deal with their own incrimination.

Although it was made explicitly to represent the America of the 1970s, Joe’s message resonates just as strongly today. There has always been Joe Currans, and many of the sentiments that spew from his mouth sound an awful lot like the views expressed by those who want to “Make America Great Again.” It shouldn’t be surprising that the film’s tagline is “Keep America Beautiful,” since resistance to change is perhaps the one constant throughout this country’s history.

Joe is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.

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