{"id":46699,"date":"2025-03-14T08:30:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T12:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46699"},"modified":"2025-03-12T20:18:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T00:18:44","slug":"the-bootleg-files-sticks-and-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/14\/the-bootleg-files-sticks-and-bones\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Sticks and Bones"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 900:<\/strong> \u201cSticks and Bones\u201d (1973 television film directed by Robert Downey Sr.). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It is a complicated story.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: <\/strong>Not likely.<\/p>\n

This article represents the 900th entry in The Bootleg Files column celebrating films and television productions that can only be appreciated in either unauthorized presentations or in problematic public domain dupes. For those who are not familiar with this column\u2019s history, it began on Film Threat in 2003 and appeared there on Fridays through 2015, when the site went offline. Although it was one of Film Threat\u2019s most popular features, it was not invited back when Film Threat resumed publishing in 2017. Thankfully, Felix Vasquez Jr. \u2013 who was a colleague of mine on Film Threat \u2013 invited me to resume The Bootleg Files here on Cinema Crazed. And while the column has received some nasty comments \u2013 which is to be expected from any Internet publishing effort \u2013 it has received far more appreciative input from readers during these past 22 years. For those who turn up every Friday to read this column, I offer my deepest appreciation for your support and friendship.
\n<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s on tap for the 900th column? Well, I picked at a film that I probably should have reviewed a few hundred columns ago \u2013 Robert Downey Sr.\u2019s production of the David Rabe play \u201cStick and Bones.\u201d This film created a major controversy ahead of its premiere, but over the years it vanished \u2013 and if not for an unauthorized video posting to YouTube, it may have been lost to oblivion.<\/p>\n

\u201cSticks and Bones\u201d tells the story of a blinded, PTSD-afflicted Vietnam War veteran returning home to his suburban family, only to find his integration back into civilian life even more tumultuous to his time in combat. Rabe, himself a Vietnam veteran, wrote the play while he was a graduate student at Villanova University, where it was first staged in 1969. He envisioned the veteran\u2019s family as being in the vein of the cheery, bland clan of the sitcom \u201cThe Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,\u201d even going so far as to name the parental characters Ozzie and Harriet and their sons David and Ricky.<\/p>\n

Joseph Papp\u2019s Off-Broadway Public Theater staged the work in November 1971 before moving the production to Broadway\u2019s Golden Theatre in March 1972 \u2013 that production won a Tony Award for Best Play and for Elizabeth Wilson\u2019s performance as the veteran\u2019s mother. Papp had a contract with CBS to produce teleplays for the network, and he felt \u201cSticks and Bones\u201d would be a provocative work that would confront the nation\u2019s difficult relationship with the still-ongoing Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Papp recruited Robert Downey Sr. to adapt and direct the play. Downey was a hot commodity at the time, coming off the success of his films \u201cPutney Swope\u201d and \u201cGreaser\u2019s Palace.\u201d Tom Aldredge repeated his Tony-nominated Broadway performance as the father and Cliff DeYoung, who played the younger brother on stage, was given the role of the impacted veteran. Anne Jackson was recruited to play the mother and Alan Cauldwell played the younger brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cSticks and Bones\u201d was scheduled to be broadcast on CBS on March 9, 1973, but a few days before its premiere the network pulled it from the schedule. Papp would later accuse the Nixon White House of coercing CBS into making the cancellation while the network insisted the decision was the result of pushback from affiliate stations, adding that the film might be considered \u201cunnecessarily abrasive\u201d at a time when American prisoners of war were being returned from North Vietnamese imprisonment. CBS rescheduled the film for August 17, 1973, but 94 stations refused to run it and some moved it from prime time into the midnight slot. NBC mischievously scheduled John Wayne\u2019s \u201cThe Alamo\u201d to run opposite \u201cSticks and Bones,\u201d thus offering a big budget serving of patriotism against a small-scale work viewed as being critical of American values.<\/p>\n

In “Sticks and Bones,” Rabe skewers middle-class American stereotypes \u2013 the pipe-smoking father watching football from his living room club-chair, the housewife-mother ready to use comfort food to soothe ruffled feelings, the younger brother who is really a decent kid despite his long hair and penchant for playing rock music on his guitar. The emergence of the blinded older son returning from Vietnam shatters this sitcom setting, with his family showing little empathy for his damaged physical and emotional state while spouting wildly racist comments about his sex life while in Vietnam. There is a silent Vietnamese woman who permeates the production \u2013 she is supposed to be the veteran\u2019s lover, and her presence brings a strange fantasy element to the story.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never seen the theatrical version of \u201cStick and Bones,\u201d so I cannot say what was dropped from the text in the transition from the stage to the screen. I can state the Ozzie and Harriet references were gone \u2013 the characters have different names, which jettisons Rabe\u2019s satire of how the cruelty of Vietnam shatters a sitcom family setting. But what Downey brings to the work is incompetent direction \u2013 his actors seem to be playing to the last row of a theater\u2019s balcony rather than to the camera, creating overcooked performances that steamroll Rabe\u2019s concept. Sly and the Family Stone’s “Family Affair” and Randy Newman’s “Gone Dead Train” are briefly sampled, for no great effect.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t help that the camera magnifies some of the more thudding aspects of the text \u2013 the family speaks in short, snappy lines and the dialogue often feels like a skein of non-sequiturs rather than genuine conversation while the veteran spouts dialogue in sophomoric poetic verbiage. When the parents complain of \u201cyellow gook pigs\u201d in Vietnam, the veteran declares, \u201cThey are the color of the earth…Only the winter is white.\u201d Huh? <\/p>\n

Downey also doesn\u2019t seem to know where to place his camera or when to stop shooting, resulting in a film with too many tight close-ups and scenes that dribble on endlessly \u2013 most egregiously a sequence with the younger son playing the guitar in his bedroom and later with the father jogging through their suburban town. By the time the shock ending rolls around \u2013 no spoilers, sorry \u2013 the only genuine shock is realizing that so much time was wasted watching such a bad film.<\/p>\n

\u201cSticks and Bones\u201d was aired without commercials because no advertiser wanted to sponsor its broadcast. It turned up again in the 1980s on a barely publicized cable television broadcast before disappearing. There was a screening in 2012 at a gathering of film industry professionals with Downey present, but otherwise it has never been made available in any home entertainment format. A copy of the film with a time code at the bottom of the screen was allegedly pilfered from CBS and is on YouTube \u2013 how long it stays there is anyone\u2019s guess. For those who are curious about \u201cSticks and Bones,\u201d proceed with extreme caution.<\/p>\n