My daughter made me watch “The Notebook.” My wife made me watch “Pretty Woman.” They both made me watch “Sweet Home Alabama” and “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.” I am pretty sure if Josh Lucas or Matthew McConaughey is in the movie, they will make me watch it.
I’ve endured more than my share of these chick flicks. Now and then they’re sad, too – “Steel Magnolias” kind of sad (just take out Old Yeller and put in Julia Roberts). I hate it when I didn’t want to watch the chick flick in the first place and then the darned thing goes sad on me and I end up all snorkled-eyed and mad at myself for the gullible lump in my throat.
I decided I’d had enough, so I asked my daughter to watch “Deliverance” with me one night. It was on HBO. She fought and squirmed like any 18-year-old girl who loves her old man but doesn’t want to have to share his fogey generation’s entertainment. But she sat down and we started watching.
It’s strange how a single piece of music can come to be identified with an entire region (and a worse bend-em-over-in-the-backwoods activity) but that music certainly was and did.
We watch. The men get into the canoe and things go South real quick, just like they did when I saw the move at the Fendley Drive-In when I was in 10th grade. My daughter looked bored.
“That’s the old guy from ‘The Longest Yard,’” she said, meaning the latest “Longest Yard” with Adam Sandler, not the original.
“Well, he is in that –”
She interrupted me. “And ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ with Jessica Simpson,” she blurted, bored.
“Say what?” I asked.
“His name is Bart or something,” she said.
“Burt Reynolds,” I said.
“Yeah, him,” she said. “He’s 90, right?”
“Just watch,” I said.
Deliverance” holds up pretty well after all these years. There was a very young Burt and Jon Voight and Ronnie Cox (of the awkwardly bent arm) and Ned Beatty (of the awkwardly bent over) squealing like a pig, just like I remember.
When it was over, my daughter said, “I have my chick flicks and you have your hick flicks. Please don’t make me watch ‘The Godfather’ I and II. Mom says you have those movies memorized. I’d rather see ‘Snakes on a Plane.’”
Hick Flicks? I liked the sound of that. This was before Scott Von Doviak wrote “Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema.” Ehh, one Google click later I found mentions of Hick Flicks all over the Internet, so maybe it’s been around for years. I regretted having not thought of it because with my background, I certainly could have.
She went back to watching MTV and I pondered the Hick Flick genre, trying to organize my criteria for inclusion.
I began to wonder how many other movies would fall into the Hick Flick category. Surely “Walking Tall” and all of those other Burt Reynolds movies like “Gator” and “White Lightning” and “Smokey and the Bandit” go there (by the way, check this movie bio out for Burt).
Other possible Hick Flicks:
“Ernest Goes To” … whatever
“Cannonball Run”
“Coal Miner’s Daughter”
“Tender Mercies”
“Forrest Gump”
“Ode to Billy Joe”
“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
“Urban Cowboy”
“The Green Mile”
“Bonnie and Clyde”
“The Long, Hot Summer”
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”
“Hud”
“Cool Hand Luke”
“Days of Thunder” and “Talladega Nights.”
Or better yet, just get Mr. Von Doviak’s book. He and my daughter both beat me to the punch.
