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2003 AWARDS Feb. 29, 2004 |
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JOE BOB |
 JOE BOB BRIGGS |
Joe Bob says the humor gives his reviews impact
of TheColumnists.com
Alongside the River Thames under Waterloo Bridge in London is a used-book fair every weekend, rain or shine, and I always spend an hour or so digging for odd titles when I’m in the neighborhood. How fitting that this dusty collection of unreadable stuff should include a little gem, Joe Bob Briggs’ “A Guide to Western Civilization.” I snapped it up for the equivalent of a dollar and 49 cents and hurried home to enjoy Joe Bob’s acid prose.
It was funny, but I was
slightly less enthusiastic than one reader who tells Amazon:
“Pee-your-pants funny--one of the best humor novels ever
written.”
I had lost track of Joe Bob since everyone’s favorite critic
Gerald Nachman had sent me a clip of the column “Joe Bob
Goes to the Drive-In” about 20 years ago, and I was curious
to see what the offbeat movie buff had grown into. The book turned
out to be vintage Joe Bob, observations on life from the thinking
man’s redneck.
This all happened a year ago, and then Joe Bob started popping up in the most unexpected places. I saw his long piece on Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi in the current issue of The National Interest--a profile that was half serious, half quite funny. Within days I spotted his latest book, “Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies that Changed History” in a London bookshop. Someone told me he had small roles in the movies “Casino,” “Great Balls o’ Fire,” “Face/Off” and “The Stand,” among others. This man was sprouting in all directions, and I was eager to know more.
A closer look at his career since he started life as a 19-year-old movie reviewer at the Dallas Times Herald made me realize he was turning into the renaissance man we rarely see any more--serious writer and critic, raconteur, standup comic, actor, talk show host and controversial self-made historian of the film industry. A journalist with legs, maybe wings.
If he has a weakness, it may be in his dual personality, for this man is actually John Bloom, New York based, Dallas-born, Vanderbilt-educated man blessed with Victor Mature good looks and the guts to act, for laughs, like a person of extremely low brow. Complementing his persona, he even has a limp from childhood polio.
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...calm, thoughtful, without chainsaw or blow-torch |
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Job Bob began in 1982 as a fan of the horror and sex film genres and created his own bizarre criteria for successful moviemaking. The Oscars bore him. Typical was his tongue-in-cheek summary of something called “American Nightmare”: “Four breasts. Eight dead bodies. One burial alive. Corpse-beating. Grave-stabbing. Slicing. Dicing. Filleting. Multiple stab wounds. Outdoor rave bikini-dancing. Drug-induced wife-stabbing. Gratuitous shower scene. Gratuitous Brinke Stevens. Voodoo Fu. S&M Fu.”
He picked the pseudonym Joe Bob Briggs for these pieces simply because it sounded funny to him.
His new book is more serious--so thoughtful, in fact, that some of his Texas fans are disenchanted. One writes in the Amazon review section: “You might want to use a dictionary for this one.”
From another former fan: “Too many goldurn words in very teeny tiny print that drone on and on about the significance of this and the importance of that.”
In fact he provides thoughtful essays on movies that he believes changed the rules or made an impact on society in a lasting way. His list is an eclectic survey that looks at mainstream cinema, horror and sex. The Joe Bob criteria require that the films be censored, banned or despised upon release, then go on to gather large followings and open new ways for other directors and writers.
His 15 history-making films include “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “Deep Throat” but also “And God Created Woman,” “The Wild Bunch,” “The Exorcist” and “Reservoir Dogs.”
After rummaging around in his website, his archives and his new book I decided I needed contact. John Bloom was busy performing in Florida but he agreed to an interview via an exchange of emails.
He had a reason for devoting much of his writing life to humor, he told me, although he has worked occasionally in the serious press for years, including appearances in National Review and Wilson Quarterly. If he is so smart, then, why not write like the academics and get some real credentials for your eventual obit? Be a solid citizen instead of a court jester?
“Because humor is 99 times more powerful than seriousness,” he responds. Not that his view of the world always appeals. “I've been rejected more times than a 350-pound street beggar,” he writes. “Usually they say, ‘Well, Joe Bob, I personally like it, but it's just TOO MUCH for our readers.’” The editors, he says, become moral guardians of the tastes of their readers.
The Qadaffi piece marked a departure for him. He managed to score there because his friend John O’Sullivan, former editor-in- chief of what’s left of UPI, where Joe Bob also writes, enjoys his work. O’Sullivan tells me he intends to bring more irreverent profiles of dodgy world leaders to The National Interest under the rubric “Despot Watch.” There is another first: this is the only time Joe Bob Briggs and Zbignew Brzezinski have appeared together in the same publication.
How did the first one go down? Joe Bob says guardedly: "The responses are sort of trickling in. Nothing too negative so far.”
Making the most of his talents seemed to me to have been the realization of some grand plan driven by a case of clinical workaholism, but no. “I had a thousand plans and none of them ever worked out. I would plan for months for what I thought I was going to do, and then circumstance would blindside me and lead me off in a new direction.”
He has never been idle. Besides his new book, tomes still in print include “Joe Bob Briggs Goes to the Drive-In,” “Joe Bob Briggs Goes Back to the Drive-In,” “The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob” and “Iron Joe Bob.” This last gets a classic clanger from Amazon, recommending that those who liked it might also like to buy an Avantis iron. Perhaps because it offers "vertical steam, variable steam, misting spray and steam burst."
For 14 years he hosted talk shows on movies for cable television channels. I’m sorry I missed all this, living across the Atlantic.
On his website, The Joe Bob Report, he provides weekly comment on the news. This was the first place I saw Janet Jackson’s right breast, having turned off the television during the Super Bowl show. Joe Bob’s comment: “The controversial right mammary was pierced and heavily bejeweled, provoking troublesome questions from children, like, ‘Mommy, why does she have a beer can opener on her chest?’”
Better was his advice to Mel Brooks on a possible tour of his Broadway hit: “Mel Brooks is thinking about sending a road company of 'The Producers' to Germany. Mel. Please. They won't laugh.”
His site includes longish serious pieces by his other ego, John Bloom. He is especially good on the media. His current piece questions the focus of television news on kidnappings but not on how they are resolved.
John Bloom reads six newspapers a day before lunch, and he has an interesting take on them all:
The New York Post: “Like having a stand-up comic
for a friend.
The New York Times: “Like having a wheezy uncle
who drones on and on … but you put up with him because he
teaches at the community college and people seem to trust him.”
The Wall Street Journal: Like sharing cocktails with a droll
but over-precise insurance salesman who can occasionally frighten
you with bursts of anger.”
The Daily News: “How ‘bout them Yankees.?”
Newsday: “The bespectacled guy in the next cubicle who
seems to have a boring life but can surprise you with his knowledge
of arcane 60s rock -and-roll trivia.”
I tried to get John (Joe
Bob) to tell me what’s next, like maybe directing his own
film. Silence. Maybe his email is jammed with messages from angry
fans who have no dictionaries.
©2004 by Michael Johnson.
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