52 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE TheCoastalBend.com o u r h i s t o r y B ig time Hollywood producers showed up at the newly opened Flour Bluff Junior High School in the spring of 1984 looking for kids interested, with their parents’ permission, in working as extras on a movie to be filmed in the area. Participants had to be willing to have their hair cut, and the pay started at $60 per day—big bucks to a 14-year-old in 1984. The Legend of Billie Jean was the first screenplay that became a feature film for the writing team of Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner, who went on to write Star Trek VI, Superman IV, Planet of the Apes, The Bever- ly Hillbillies, Flicka, and other major movies. The film is about siblings Billie Jean and Binx Davy, two high school kids growing up with their divorced mother at the Breeze Haven trailer park in Flour Bluff, who end up in a skirmish with the son of a surf shop owner. Hubie and his gang trash Binx’s prized Honda Elite scooter, and Billie Jean heads to the shop locals know as Dockside to confront his dad about the $608 repair bill. The lecherous shop owner tries to put the moves on teenage Billie Jean, and Binx shows up with a silver revolver, shooting him in the shoulder in defense of his big sister. The pair race back to Breeze Haven, where the daughters of the park manager commandeer their mother’s blue Ford station wagon, and the four go on the lamb, knowing that police will be hot on their trail. The foursome break into the mansion located at the corner of Ocean Drive and Doddridge (the one with the pillars, not the castle house), and while the house appeared empty, they are soon discovered by Lloyd, the college-aged son of the home’s owner, who hap- pens to be the Texas Attorney General. Having seen the outlaws on TV news broadcasts, and not unaffect- ed by Billie Jean’s striking beauty, Lloyd is sympathetic. The film’s most memorable scene is the emergence of the transformed Billie Jean, with a chopped, spiky haircut, and fightin’ outfit that started as a pink on tur- quoise wetsuit. Lloyd films Billie Jean’s statement of innocence and defiance, declaring, “Fair is fair!”—the film’s original title. Hundreds of kids work together to help their new heroine and her band of noble outlaws run from the cops, now led personally by the Attorney General, whose son is pretending to be kidnapped by the gang in an effort to stay at Billie Jean’s side. The Legend of Billy Jean is a running tour of Corpus Christi in the early 80’s. The Breeze Haven trailer park location is on Wheeler Avenue in Aransas Pass, but is located in the film around the corner from the original Sonic Drive-In in Flour Bluff, which was next door to the original Benjamin’s on SPID—a divided highway back then, not a freeway. In the drive-in scene at the beginning of the film, you can see the Pizza Hut and the old Sambo’s (now Taqueria Jalisco) across the road. Much of the film took place at Dockside in Flour Bluff, the oldest surf shop in Texas, which in the film was po- sitioned a few blocks from the beach—in fact, Padre Balli Park (where Bob Hall Pier is located) is ten miles away, on North Padre Island. Outdoor scenes were staged with the JFK Causeway in the background, the Harbor Bridge, and even the grain elevator on the north side of the Port of Corpus Christi. The movie reminds old timers that the shopping mall hierarchy used to be reversed—Sunrise was the nice mall, where all the kids hung out. Padre-Staples Mall (now La Palmera) was where Grandma went, and was falling apart. How that world has changed! Hundreds of extras gathered on the beach, at Padre Balli Park, for the film’s climactic closing scene, a place hard to recognize today for all its changes. Join us for a quick photo tour of The Legend of Billie Jean!
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