DIRTY LITTLE BILLY

US, 1972, 91 minutes, Colour.
Michael J. Pollard, Richard Evans, Lee Purcell.
Directed by Stan Dragoti.

Dirty Little Billy is a rather unattractive western that nevertheless engages audience attention. Never has the west looked so dingy, muddy and its poor inhabitants in need of washing.

The Mc Carty family migrates to Coffeyville to scratch out a living in a dreary town. Billy, already a punk from New York, has little else to do but hang' around the second-rate saloon and change into a potential outlaw.

Michael J. Pollard (C. W. Moss of Bonnie and Clyde and Little Fauss of Little Fauss and Big Halsey) fits this part well, but Richard Evans as a tough-till-you-push-him young gunman is excellent.

Worth discussing with other less debunking films about Billy the Kid.

1. How appropriate was the title for the significance and style of the film?

2. How did the mud and dinginess of the credit sequences set the tone for the whole film?

3. What dream did the McCarty's have about life in the west? Here they better off in Coffeyville than in New York? Why? Was McCarty? happy with his house and land? Mrs. McCarty? Why did Billy hate California?

4. What kind of man was Antrim? Did he exploit people? Did he uphold law and order where it was needed? Were his ambitions for Coffeyville well-founded?

5. Did the film create a 'realistic' picture of the conditions of the west and life there - mud, dirt, squalor, people needing a wash, blistering work, poor homes, dingy towns, saloon, whore-house, little to do except work, the potential boredom for someone who hated it? What details did the film use to communicate this? (Note the long sequence of the refugees from the infected town coming to Coffeyville.)

6. What kind of kid was Billy? Was he a punk right from the start of the film - his relationship to his father, (spoilt by his mother?), his relationships to the kids in the town, his being made to run away, (what kind of man was his father?), his walk up the street and challenge from the Coffeyville men and from Goldie about the knifed man? Billy's choice of Goldie?

7. How did the character of Goldie typify this kind of life - young and assertive, yet easily frightened, a self-made punk living off Berle? What had made Goldie like this - the west, conditions, family, people, his own weakness?

8. What kind of woman was Berle? Why was she beholden to Goldie? Why was she the town whore? Did she have any choice?

9. What effect did all this have on Billy? The significance of the fight with the card-players, the dangers with the shooting (and Goldie and Berle shouting for him to kill)? The knife-fight between the two women and its cruelty?

10. McCarty's death and its effect on Billy? His choices? Why did he stay in Coffeyville with Goldie?

11. What effect did his relationship with Berle have?

12. Were the townspeople right in getting Antrim to get Goldie and Berle out of the town? (How were your attitudes affected by Antrim's affair with Billy's mother?}.

13. What right did the people have to attempt to gun down Goldie and Berle? The irony of Berle's death? Did this determine Billy's choice?

14. Did Goldie intend to gun down Big Jim? Why did Billy do it? What satisfaction did it give them? The audience?

15. The film attempted to explain Billy the Kid. Did it - how much was he a product of the times and the conditions? What was he against? Why? How much was his own selfishness and greed?

16. How well did the dirty style and dingy colour contribute to this picture of the west?