Banjo boy

At just the right angle, the adult Billy Redden looks a bit like the late, great Robin Williams.

Whom, you might ask, is Billy Redden? He happens to be an actor who was in one of the most iconic scenes in motion picture history, playing the banjo boy in Deliverance. In a stunning moment, he winds up playing a musical duet, the now famous Dueling Banjos, with Ronnie Cox as Jon Voight, Ned Beatty (who has his own iconic moment in the film for an entirely different reason) and Burt Reynolds look on. Truth be told, it was a little Hollywood magic: it wasn't actually Billy playing. But that ain't no never mind.

As anyone who's in the industry knows, show biz can be a cruel tease. And the years and opportunities haven't been particularly kind to Billy. Few and far between, he has had other parts. He was in Tim Burton's Big Fish, and had a small part on Blue Collar as—wait for it—an inbred car mechanic who plays the banjo.

Currently, Billy is working in maintenance at WalMart, picking up trash among other things.

Like Andy Robinson, who did go on to a moderately successful career after playing the Zodiac-esque killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry, Billy was typecast fairly quickly at a young age. He reminds me of Ron Wayne, the third founder of Apple who sold his shares after nine days for $900. If he'd held on to them, they'd be worth $32 billion today. And while it's a fact Billy never flirted with that kind of fortune, I can't help think they're similar in that "what might've been" way. Given the right management, a little more training and a few lucky breaks, would he have been a household name, with a brilliant debut as a child actor?

In the few interviews I've read, it's clear I'm more bothered by it than he is.

The truth is he has a scene that any actor would kill for, one that will now and forever be an enduring part of film history. Every once in a while, I find myself in the mood to watch it. And it always brings me great joy when I do.

If he watches it, I hope Billy feels the same way.

The last picture show

Next to where the original Farmer’s Market was, where The Grove stands now, used to be an icon of a cinematic, automatic, hydro-matic time gone by. The Gilmore Drive-In.

When I was in high school, some friends and I would ride our bikes over to the back of the drive-in, and watch the movies from behind the chain-link fence (which could be easily hopped) for free on the ginormous screen. I’m not saying they were R-rated, but I’m not saying they weren’t. Besides, what was the point of rating anything if the entire city could see it on a 7-story screen.

I always got the feeling that on the list of things the Gilmore Drive-In was about, movies were somewhere beneath community. Socializing was the point, and there were just as many people in their cars as out walking around talking to friends.

I suppose it was foolish to think property that valuable wouldn’t get developed. And the slow death rattle of drive-in’s having the life choked out of them by actual theaters made it all but inevitable the Gilmore would one day be a faded Technicolor memory.

Still, I remember being with friends, watching Clint Eastwood’s violent directorial debut Play Misty For Me.

Even on bikes, even without sound, even though it was cold. It was still magic.