Berserk Aftermath

After Billy goes berserk in the ice cream parlor, he fights off Bernard and Bernard’s bodyguard/pal/goon Dinosaur. Billy karates Dinosaur into submission and out the front window of the soda parlor. This move is actually one of the very first ideas for the film ‘Billy Jack’ that popped into Tom’s head back in Winner, South Dakota, in 1953. With almost two decades of anticipation built up, they wanted to capture the scene the way Tom had been seeing it in his head for almost twenty years. But the budget was low and time was precious, so the set was tense. And, as would happen, it didn’t work right the first time. The window was broken but the whole staging didn’t work. They had to get someone to replace the big pane of glass (real glass) asap.

No one contemplated that it wouldn’t work, so there was a made rush to find a glass service that could replace the glass while the time (and cash) clicked by. (You can visually see the time difference when you look at the first picture and the second with Dinosaur () lying in place. See how dark it is outside. We just made it. Another half an hour and it would have been pitch black and would never match the original shot. And this was the last day in the soda parlor.