High school students struggle for social status and acceptance from the opposite sex in Out Of It. Paul is the shy boy who asks the blonde cheerleader Christine for a date. The two see Romeo and Juliet, but Christine tells Paul she is feeling ill. After he brings her home, he discovers she made the excuse to keep a date with Russ, the quarterback on the football team.
Director: Paul Williams.
Writer: Paul Williams (original screenplay).
Stars: Barry Gordon, Jon Voight, Lada Edmund Jr., Gretchen Corbett, Peter Grad, Martin Gray, Oliver Berry, Leonard Gelber, Richard Coyle.
1970 Berlin International Film Festival – Nominated for the Golden Bear.
At first this film seems like a low-budget teenage beach picture but the performances and the intense camera set-ups evolves the sturm und drama of a young man trying t0 get laid into something more thoughtful & stirring in the human experience. Gordon’s Paul is a class intellectual whose charm & wit is sometime alleviated by his own desperation horniness. And by his deep questioning why someone (like Jon Voight’s football captain) get all the luck, beauty, & coolness. It is a film about all the badgers who wished they could be foxes. Thanks Jon for posting this on the site.
Nicely shot and great cast made this a film I have sought to see again since I first saw it in my mid-teens in the early 70’s. Loved this film even more this go round. Glad to see you are back up Jon and bringing these hard to find gems to those of us who have a more refined cinematic palette.