Thursday, July 1st, 1976

Saw Paul mistake Geraldo for Chico on GMA and it's still continued again tomorrow.

I was determined to go see a movie today but it literally took me right up to the last minute to decide which one. Even though I was almost late I chose ODE TO BILLIE JOE and I'm sure I didn't make a mistake. It was one of--if not THE best--I've seen all year! With the movie out they've been laying the song on the radio a lot. I heard it this morning and then again after the movie. Tonight I salvaged the review from yesterday at SS as it was better than Jerry Stein's.

Watched THE WALTONS tonight for the first time in over a year. Kind of continued my Southern mood.

Quite a good day. A very good day.

NOTES: Paul McCartney tends to be nervous in interviews even after all these years and it sounds as though on this day he jokingly mis-identified GOOD MORNING AMERICA's reporter Geraldo Rivera as CHICO AND THE MAN star Freddie Prinze. Geraldo would become somewhat controversial over the years and his infamous debacle of opening Al Capone's vault would lose him some of the great respect he had as a reporter at this time.

In retrospect, ODE TO BILLIE JOE, based on Bobbie Gentry's hit record and directed by Max Baer, formerly TV's Jethro Bodine of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, was NOT really a very good movie. Not a bad movie but not good either. Questions were left unanswered and a bizarre back-story about a homosexual experience was added to the song's characters for no apparent reason. At the time though, since I was an angsty teenager, I loved it. In fact, I would later choose it as the best film of the year out of all I saw that year! Yikes!

THE WALTONS was one of the great, award-winning family shows in TV history, a long-running family saga set on a Virginia mountain. I enjoyed it for several years but had gravitated away from it in time. Its instrumental opening was one of my favorite TV theme songs.