Word: tillers
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Burt Reynolds is the white running-back hero, Billy Clyde Puckett, Kris Kristofferson is his buddy, split end Shake Tiller, and Jill Clayburgh is the girl of their dreams, Miss Barbara Jane Bookman, a Phyllis George clone who looks to have maybe been Sigma Chi Sweetheart of 1962 at Ole Miss. And before this proceeds any further, the discriminating moviegoer should know that while Semi-Tough is at times an honestly funny film, it is also maddeningly sexist...
...just the same. Billy Clyde Puckett (Burt Reynolds) is still a natively shrewd running back with a gift for putting on people who think they're smarter than he is because they don't talk in a Southwest Conference drawl. His roommate and lifelong good buddy, Shake Tiller (Kris Kristofferson), is still a sticky-fingered end and an earnest naïf. They are still involved, more as pals than as lovers (though that, in time, develops) with Barbara Jane Bookman (Jill Clayburgh). She is a version of that most delicious of Hemingway's conceits-the intelligent...
...because there are so many of them [about 2.1 million military and 1 million civilian employees] and because the institution they constitute is not easy to change. The toughness of the structure is a strength. It will run even if nobody's hand is on the tiller, though it might go where you don't want it to go. But it's a weakness if you want to change the institution...
...tightness of his grip on the Pentagon tiller is most evident in his dealings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and its outspoken and sometimes ill-spoken chairman, Air Force General George Brown (no kin). Says Secretary Brown: "I've known the chairman for 16 years; there are generals who were captains when I first met them. That gives me a certain personal rapport." But the brass finds him a hard man to persuade. Says an aide: "He's not just an umpire in the building. He reaches down into the process and shapes policy at all levels...
Poor Kris Kristofferson. The former Pomona College football star, now 40, pulled a hamstring muscle while playing Shake Tiller, a good ole boy and pass-catchin' end in the movie being made from Dan Jenkins' novel Semi-Tough. Burt Reynolds, a onetime running back for Florida State, is cast as Shake's pal, the hard-drinking, womanizing hero, Billy Clyde Puckett. During the filming in Dallas Reynolds was constantly surrounded by groupies. What to do? Taking a tip from Puckett, he claims he "got 'em upstairs as quick as possible...