The Great Santini

A warrior without a war, Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meechum, a pilot known as "the Great Santini" to his fellow Marines, sets off with his reluctant family at 3 a.m., moving to the military base town of Beaufort, South Carolina, in peacetime 1962. His wife, Lillian, is loyal and docile, tolerant of Meechum's temper and drinking. Their teenage children, Ben and Mary Anne, are accustomed to his stern discipline and behave accordingly while adapting to their new town and school.

Ben's talent at basketball earned him a spot on the school team, and he became a dominant player on the court. During one-on-one games with Meechum at home, though, his father refuses to let Ben win, using unnecessarily rough physical tactics and humiliating insults and criticizing the rest of the family when they try to interfere. When Ben finally wins a game, Meechum unleashes a torrent of verbal abuse while bouncing the ball off his head. Later that night, Ben finds his father practising basketball alone in the driveway in the pouring rain. Lillian urges Ben not to be angry at his father and explains that Meechum is showing Ben that he will have to work to compete with his son now. During a school game, Meechum orders Ben to strike back against a rival player who has committed a foul. Ben tackles the player and breaks his arm, getting himself ejected from the game and dismissed from the team.

Ben is befriended by the young black man, Toomer Smalls, whose mother Arrabelle is the family housekeeper. After Toomer uses his beehives to defend himself from a group of racists who come to attack him at home, he is shot. Ben defies his father's orders to wait for more help and follows Arrabelle's pleas to go out and help Toomer but he dies by the time Meechum confronts them on the road. Ben stands his ground, and Meechum backs down. His CO later tells Meechum he should be proud of his son, because helping Toomer showed the moral courage that Marines strive for.

After seeing Ben and Mary Anne off to the prom together, and insisting on splurging on "the best" dress, Meechum goes out on a routine mission. His engines fail, and he chooses to crash his plane into the sea rather than eject and let the aircraft crash into the nearby town. The family leaves Beaufort after his funeral at 3 a. m. just as they had before, with Ben at the wheel.

{{castlist|

• Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Wilbur "Bull" P. Meechum
• Blythe Danner as Lillian "Lil" Meechum
• Michael O'Keefe as Ben Meechum
• Stan Shaw as Toomer Smalls
• Brian Andrews as Matthew Meechum
• Paul Gleason as 1st Lieutenant Sammy
• Julie Anne Haddock as Karen Meechum
• David Keith as "Red" Pettus
• Paul Mantee as Colonel Virgil "Virg" Hedgepath
• Theresa Merritt as Arrabelle Smalls
• Lisa Jane Persky as Mary Anne Meechum
• Michael Strong as Colonel Varney}}

Lewis John Carlino adapted the script from Conroy's novel. Carlino also directed the film. The title character, Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meechum, aka "The Great Santini", was based on Conroy's father.{{cite web|url=http://www.skygod.com/quotes/greatsantini.html |title=Colonel Don Conroy's Eulogy| first= Pat |last= Conroy|date=May 1998|access-date=14 March 2016}}{{cite web|url=http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=santini&redirected=true|title=His Winning Season| first= Wright |last= Thompson|publisher= ESPN |access-date=14 March 2016}}{{cite web|url=http://www.citadel.edu/root/conroy|title=I wear the ring |first= Pat |last= Conroy |year= 2001 |work= Commencement Speech, Class of 2001| place= The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina| access-date=14 March 2016}}

The story, for the most part, follows the book. The movie's major divergence is the absence of Ben Meechum's Jewish best friend, Sammy. The spelling of the family's surname was also changed from Meecham to Meechum. Also changed is Meechum's aircraft; in the book, he flies and commands a squadron of F-8 Crusaders, while in the film, the fighters shown are F-4 Phantom IIs.

Much of the film was shot on location in Beaufort, South Carolina. Tidalholm, the 19th-century house used for the Meechum residence, was later used in The Big Chill (1983).{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/search/title?locations=Tidalholm%20Mansion%20-%201%20Laurens%20Street,%20Beaufort,%20South%20Carolina,%20USA&ref_=ttloc_loc_1|title=Most Popular Titles With Location Matching 'Tidalholm Mansion – 1 Laurens Street, Beaufort, South Carolina, USA'|work=imdb.com|access-date=December 14, 2016}}

The film was shot in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio but was only produced in that ratio in the LaserDisc format. The VHS and DVD releases are in 1.33:1, also known as full screen or pan and scan.{{citation needed|date=March 2016}} To date the film has not had a release in the Blu-ray format.

Herman Raucher is often credited as a ghostwriter for the film.{{cite web| url= https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0712029/ | title= Herman Raucher| website= IMDB.com| publisher= Internet Movie Database}} However, Raucher did no work on the film; the misconception arises from the fact that, in the 1980s, Raucher was hired to write a television pilot based on the movie; he only wrote "a couple of pieces," he explained.{{cite web| url= http://www.cinedump.com/interviews/2016/9/13/hermanraucher |interviewer= Preston Fassel| title= Rediscovering Herman Raucher| first= Herman | last= Raucher| author-link= Herman Raucher| website= Cinedump.com| date= 13 September 2016|access-date= 30 January 2017}}

Raucher has stated that, into the 2000s, he continued to receive fan mail for Santini and that the volume of letters he received was surpassed only by those for Summer of '42.

Warner Bros. executives were concerned that the film's plot and lack of bankable actors would make it challenging to market. It premiered in Beaufort in August 1979 and was soon released to empty cinemas in North Carolina and South Carolina. Believing the film's title, which implied it was about circus stunts, was the problem, it was tested with other titles: Sons and Heroes in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Reaching Out in Rockford, Illinois, and The Ace in Peoria, Illinois. As it tested better in Peoria, The Ace stuck. Even with its new title, the film performed poorly. Orion Pictures pulled the film and sold cable rights to HBO and airline rights to recoup its losses.

Producer Charles A. Pratt still believed in the film and raised enough money (some from Orion) to release The Great Santini in New York City under its original title. It received positive reviews, and business was steady. Two weeks later, it debuted on HBO, and audiences stopped coming. Orion executive Mike Medavoy blamed the film's box-office failure on a lack of a traditional release: screening it first in New York and expanding markets due to word-of-mouth.{{cite book| last1= Medavoy| first1= Mike |author-link1=Mike Medavoy | last2= Young| first2= Josh |year= 2002| title= You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot| pages= 105–107| place= New York City| publisher= Atria Books}}

The film was well received by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 95% rating based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10.{{cite web | url=http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/great_santini/ | title=The Great Santini (1979) | work=Rotten Tomatoes | publisher=Flixster | access-date=August 19, 2021}} Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Like almost all my favorite films, The Great Santini is about people more than it is about a story. It's a study of several characters, most unforgettably the Great Santini himself, played by Robert Duvall ... There are moments so unpredictable and yet so natural they feel just like the spontaneity of life itself."{{cite web| first= Roger| last= Ebert| author-link= Roger Ebert| date= January 1, 1980| url= http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-great-santini-1980| work= Chicago Sun-Times| title= The Great Santini| access-date= May 29, 2019}} John Simon of National Review wrote that The Great Santini was "an uneven achievement that nevertheless contains enough of value to justify catching it".{{cite book |title=Reverse Angle: A Decade of American Film |last=Simon |first=John |author-link=John Simon (critic) |publisher=Crown Publishers Inc. |year=1982 |page=412}}

Movies and television have referred to the one-on-one basketball game from The Great Santini during which Bull Meechum repeatedly bounces the ball off Ben's head while asking, "You gonna cry?"{{Cite book|last=Rauwerda|first=Antje|title=The Writer and the Overseas Childhood: The Third Culture Literature of Kingsolver, McEwan and Others|publisher=McFarland|year=2014|isbn=9780786491063|pages=62}} Parodies of the scene appear in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and in episodes of The Simpsons and Roseanne.{{Citation|last=Mancuso|first=Gail|title=Punch and Jimmy|date=1994-11-09|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0688860/?ref_=ttep_ep8|type=Comedy, Drama|others=Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert|publisher=Wind Dancer Productions, Carsey-Werner Company, Full Moon and High Tide Productions|access-date=2020-09-07}} This movie was referred to in season 2 of the television series King of the Hill in the 17th episode "Hank's Dirty Laundry", where Hank mentions that he had rented and returned this movie 23 times.

The scene is invoked in the father–son tetherball match in Kicking & Screaming, a comedy in which Robert Duvall plays a tough-love father reminiscent of Bull Meechum.{{Cite web|title=Kicking & Screaming|url=https://ew.com/article/2005/10/11/kicking-screaming-4/|access-date=2020-08-29|website=EW.com|language=EN}}{{Cite web|title=Movie Review: Kicking & Screaming|url=https://www.austinchronicle.com/events/film/2005-05-13/270317/|access-date=2020-08-29|website=www.austinchronicle.com|language=en-US}}{{Cite web|last=Ebert|first=Roger|title=Kicking & Screaming movie review (2005)|url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/kicking-and-screaming-2005|access-date=2020-08-29|website=www.rogerebert.com|language=en}}{{Cite web|last=Holman|first=Curt|date=May 18, 2005|title=Hollywood Product - Kicking & Screaming|url=https://creativeloafing.com/content-187486-Hollywood-Product--Kicking-&-Screaming|access-date=August 29, 2020|website=Creative Loafing}} Another reference appears in Daddy's Home 2 in a scene featuring Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg.

• List of basketball films

{{reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|0079239}}
• {{tcmdb title|76921}}
• {{Mojo title|greatsantini|The Great Santini}}
• {{AFI film|id=56424|title=The Great Santini}}
• {{Rotten Tomatoes|great_santini|The Great Santini}}
• {{IBList|type=book|id=14625|name=The Great Santini}}

{{Lewis John Carlino}}

{{Pat Conroy}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Great Santini, The}}

Category:1979 films

Category:1979 drama films

Category:American drama films

Category:Films scored by Elmer Bernstein

Category:Films about dysfunctional families

Category:Films based on American novels

Category:Films set in 1962

Category:Films set in South Carolina

Category:Films shot in South Carolina

Category:Films with screenplays by Lewis John Carlino

Category:Orion Pictures films

Category:Warner Bros. films

Category:Films about the United States Marine Corps

Category:Films about American military personnel

Category:Films based on works by Pat Conroy

Category:1970s English-language films

Category:Films directed by Lewis John Carlino

Category:1970s American films