Dad in this case can loosely encompass older brother and Drunken Friend of Your Father (DFYF) figures... for Kris Kristofferson is not exactly in responsible father mode as Burt Reynold's football teammate, Zen quarterback and DESIGN FOR LIVING-style menage-a-trois member in SEMI-TOUGH. But, he's still warm, tough and dependable.
I recently re-watched the film (after 20 years) and was shocked at how badly its blocked and paced. Sloppy stuff these redneckish Reynolds vehicles, the 1970s equivalent of our Adam Sandler/Judd Apatow "crank 'em while they're hot" sports/sex satires. The cool thing about SEMI-TOUGH is that it's made in the 1970s, so unlike the Apatow age of puritan inhibitions masked by potty talk bravado, people do actually have sex, lots of it, with no guilt or pregnancies. Hell, we even see Reynolds--then "the world's sexiest man"-- resign himself to the "large fan," Mary Jo Catlett) still drinking around the hotel room late at night with her horribly curly short hair. Burt's characters horny, used to bedding a random fan at hotel bars after games, and she's the only one left.
Most dudes would just call it quits; Burt's ability to even want to keep the lights on while getting busy with her in his hotel room shows he's no diva, in fact his sexual appetites have turned him more into a European style swinger, where they enjoy having sex more than bragging about it. Imagine if Adam Sandler ever shagged a girl less attractive than he was! Horrifying, but deserved; yet even as a monosyllabic boy-man he scores off Winona Ryder and Christina Applegate.
But sloppy sex comedy chaos or no, Kristofferson shines, allowed to radiate all his Christlike calm and country rock mellow, a beacon of 1970s suave. He's been converted to a new age path shortly before the film begins; one of the largely forgotten fads of the 1970s-- est. As a result, everything he does is... "perfect."
Which brings me to the key scene that gets Kristofferson the Semi-Great Dad #2 nomination: The party scene where T.J. Lambert (Brian Dennehy), the misogynistic creep linebacker has gone nuts and is holding some bikini-clad chick from the party over the balcony, threatening to drop her on the concrete below, no doubt for rebuffing his date rape advances. No one knows how to talk him down, but Kristofferson does; he calmly climbs up onto the roof and goes to stand next to Dennehy and just looks at him with love shining in his Kristofferson-blue eyes. "If you want to drop her, if that's right for you. Go ahead," he tells Dennehy. "Because you're perfect." Dennehy's oaf--so used to abuse and ugliness--is so moved, realizing someone finally thinks he's perfect, he pulls the girl up and is all friendly and apologetic to her --his first step free of the trap of misogyny/self-hatred, all just because of Kristofferson's perfect faith.
I can't imagine any actor of the era pulling this hat trick off as well as Kristofferson does in this scene. In fact, I've talked more than one person off a ledge of one sort or another (in my LSD guru days) by imitating Kristofferson in this scene. He's just mellow and laconic enough to be able to say that sort of stuff without having to put hipster italics on it to keep from sounding corny or square.
But how can we condone a man who condones violence in others just because it's "their trip?" Well, see, a great dad has faith in his kid, and in his own ability to take care of his kid. He assumes the role of a benevolent authority figure, which is such a rarity these days we may even have forgotten what that means. It means "through me, thou art good." This is, ultimately, the true meaning of non-violent resistance, or "turning the other cheek." Even in the sense of actively engaging in combat this can still be practiced. One can bestow blessings on one's enemy even as one twists the knife into their heart (i.e. Adam Goldberg in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN).
The "loving" violence concept was huge in the 1970s, especially, as I've noted before, in Burt Reynolds movies like SEMI-TOUGH. This was the age of bloodless bar fights, where chairs break easy over heads, and people fly through storefront windows with the carefree abandon of a kid jumping into a summer lake. Everyone makes up outside in the parking lot, their macho fury soothed with some good old fisticuffs (another such example occurs in HOOPER).
The 1970s dad was peaceful enough to understand the need for these sorts of outlets for his children and friends. In our more "enlightened" times no one is allowed to fight or have raunchy sex without consensual agreement in writing beforehand, and gloves on all contacting parts, or even the compulsive need to boast, overthink, drain the spontaneous joy out of it, and feel guilty afterwards. For all it's tossed-off clumsiness, SEMI-TOUGH is a rare document revealing that if only for a decade, we had sex like the French.
So here's to Kristofferson, the mighty. Hell, he is such the man that he even manages to make his biker rapist character in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA sympathetic and cool. God DAMN. His is the mix of charisma and humility that tempers all judgment against him. Here's the kind of a man that you could get in a knockdown fight with but then you'd go get a beer together afterwards and know he was your friend for life. Kristofferson, in short, is the ideal 1970s older brother, which is why he's only a "Semi-Great" 70s dad, but still...by any stretch of the cinematic imagination... he's perfect.
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