Head Canon: Lifeguard (1976)

Welcome to Head Canon - a collection of weird and wonderful films that live rent-free in my brain. Nobody's saying these are the best movies ever made, but every week, I'll deliver some thoughts on a new title that, for one reason or another, has set up shop in my consciousness for the foreseeable future.

For the inaugural entry, I give you Sam Elliott's `late stage coming of age minor masterpiece, Lifeguard (1976)...

Everybody has their moment.

If Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days" taught us anything, it’s that there are those of us who move on from that moment, striving to achieve something beyond a mere instance of being carried in the arms of the cheerleader - a possibly pretentious belief that we were destined for something greater than the rest of our pack. Then there’s the pack: wallowing in the beer soaked reveries of a bygone era, where we were once the light of a young girl’s eye, fires extinguished with a wink and a barrage of time (not to mention the responsibilities that arrive with that passage), toiling away and looking back on those fleeting victories as we exist in the cold shadow of a youthful peak, hoping beyond hope that it'll return one day.

Because that’s what life is, right? The shit that happens while you wait for moments that never arrive.

Don’t tell that to Rick Carlson, whose bronzed body and immaculate mustache have been a staple atop the white tower at his sleepy SoCal sand cove since seemingly the Dawn of Man. Anyone who’s ever spent a summer in a beach town has known a Rick: effortlessly charming, brilliantly tanned, and possessing the ability to drink you under the table on a Tuesday. Just be sure to never leave your girlfriend alone with the Ricks of the world, as even though they live by a code of their own making, your happiness isn’t included when considering which woman they’ll take to bed on any given evening.

Unfortunately for this Rick, he’s got more sunsets behind him than ahead of him in his life-guarding career (such as it is), as he’s tempted away from a life of slow afternoons and fast stewardesses to sell cars for an old high school buddy. A trip to his class reunion doesn’t inspire much confidence in the future, as everyone he grew up with got fat, bald, had kids, and moved on to the more boring parts of adulthood. Their glory days, such as they were, are over, leaving Carlson to ponder just how soon his are about to conclude.

In the meantime, Rick seems to be stuck in Panama Jack slathered amber, peering out over the Pacific behind a pair of killer Aviators before going to sleep with an Endless Summer (’66) poster on his wall. The world moved on as this sage swimmer in the red trunks became a mentor to many who’d use “working for the county” - how Rick stealthily describes his profession to fellow alumnus - as their pre-collegiate lily pad. It’s not that Rick’s a burnout. Hell, the money’s still pretty good, even for a dude in his early 30s. No, he’s just comfortable where he is, doing a thing he loves, and possessing the confidence that he’s, honestly, really fucking good at it.

Coming-of-age movies are, stereotypically, shot through the lens of boys (or girls) becoming men (or women), yet that’s where Daniel Petrie’s Lifeguard (’76) zags from the beaten path, as Rick Carlson is already very much a man. Some would say too much man, as evidenced by both his ability to woo practically any lady who steps into his line of vision, but also by his burgeoning relationship with seventeen-year-old transplant, Wendy (Kathleen Quinlan, twenty-two at the time, yet very convincingly playing a teen).

It’s clear from the start that Wendy’s got a thing for the local legend, and immediately begins applying what little game she’s got to get the guy into bed. “Would you make love to me?” She bluntly asks, and we watch Rick consider the proposition for a second, betting our houses on the fact that there’s no good goddamn way he’s going to take that little girl into his sand shack and deflower her.

Spoiler alert: you just lost your shirt in that bet, as Rick does just that. We’re spared the sweaty details of the act (thank goodness). Still, the implication is enough to possibly cause some of the flakier members in the audience to change their name to Karen and ensure their daughters are never allowed to purchase a tiny purple bikini until they’re roughly thirty-five years old. What was in the water in 1976? As between this and the now similarly under-seen/valued Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (’76), depictions of underage teen sex were percolating in studio-distributed pictures that’d be playing right down the hall from massive blockbusters such as Jaws (’76) or Star Wars (’77).

Rick’s tenderness is the most disarming element of this tryst. Were he a drooling Lothario, cat-calling the lonely girl with rich parents until she submits to his advances, Lifeguard would probably be rendered unwatchable. Yet Rick approaches hooking up with Wendy almost as if he’s doing her some favor; bestowing her with a life lesson the same way he does while training his seasonal temp, Chris (Parker Stevenson), or while keeping a brotherly eye on “Machine Gun” (Steve Burns), the local beach rat who masturbates at a rate that defies the laws of nature.

Because Rick seems to view his duties as extending beyond simply pulling out of shape suburbanites from rough surf. He’s a masculine breed of Zen sentinel; a watchful protector who’d rather this wandering soul feel safe in his experienced arms instead of fumbling around in the backseat with some strange boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Does that make it a morally sound decision? Absolutely not. Nevertheless, it fits with Rick’s character as a guy who observes his complacent, bored parents as the soul sucking alternative to being young, free, and unburdened by what a guy’s expected to do at his age. It’s all an act of passive defiance, whether Rick even acknowledges it while it’s happening.

That’s not to say there aren’t temptations beyond selling sports cars, attempting to lure him off his self-appointed post. Anne Archer is hotter than the dang sun as Rick’s former high school sweetheart, now a divorced single mother looking for someone to settle down with. However, reuniting with the town’s sexiest MILF will require Rick getting a “real” job; something his despondent, loveless parents keep begging him to do as well. Truly a tale as old as time: sell out, start putting on a suit every day, and forgo the waves’ wisdom for a far more practical approach to existence.

In the macho continuum of Sam Elliott’s career, Lifeguard is actually easier to place than one might initially think. Sure, Elliott and his now-iconic mustache are mainly recognized for portraying gunslingers in modern classics like Tombstone (1993), or (in recent memory) for yet another installment of Taylor Sheridan’s near constant well of Yellowstone Dutton family lore,1883 (where he’s wagon-master, Shea Brennan). In fact, Rick Carlson shares similarities with rogue NYPD officer Richie Marks (from James Glickenhaus’ Shakedown [1988]) or Wade Garrett, who also played mentor in the life of another legendary protector in Robert Harmon’s Road House (1989) - both outsider rebels who'd rather live by their own codes than submit to the sins of progress. “Sometimes, there’s a man…” Elliott's humble narrator croaks at the beginning of The Big Lebowski (1998), and could very well be talking about his own career as a performer.

In retrospect, Rick Carlson feels like a great starting point for what Elliott would come to represent, with his hooded eyes and gravely intonation. There’s a principled individualism that unifies his work as an actor, as Elliott’s been drawn to roles that allow him to showcase and celebrate a spirit that steadfastly adheres to a plan for existing in a cruel world and protecting those he cares about from its inevitable harm. Hell, his mere presence elevates the watchful sibling of washed-up crooner Jackson Mane (in Bradley Cooper’s re-imagining of A Star is Born [2018]), making us believe he’d take down anyone to keep his boozy brother safe. He's the rough-and-tumble older brother we all wish we had; a no bullshit companion doling out nuggets of truth whenever times get tough.

If anything doesn’t quite work about Lifeguard, it’s Daniel Petrie’s discordant direction. A television journeyman who’d guide Sally Field to an Outstanding Actress Emmy the same year in Sybil (1976), Petrie can’t quite nail the tone, allowing the movie to sit somewhere between disco-laced teeny-bopper romp, and New Hollywood sad sack character study. Dale Menten’s wah-wah pedal flavored score - accompanied by dual ballads from Paul Williams (“Time and Tide”) and Carol Carmichael (“Falling In Love With the Wind”) - does these tonal inconsistencies no favors. Were it not for Ron Koslow’s script being so committed to keeping Rick’s spiritual conflict at the movie’s center, it’d probably drown in syrupy melodrama completely.

Who defines when your moment is over? When are you “too old” to keep following your muse and join the rest of the pack, grinding it out, paying bills, until they lower you into the ground for good? The finale of Lifeguard could be read as bittersweet, with Rick rejecting the notion of hanging up his whistle for good in favor of continuing to do not only what he does best, but what makes him happy. He’s stayed true to himself, but at what cost? The problem with moments is that there’s always another following the one you’re currently in. Then another. And another after that, until we finally find ourselves at the end, examining a collection of choices that amount to a life lived. Whether Rick Carlson made the right decision can only be revealed in a time we as an audience won’t be privy to. But in this moment, right now, he is content with sun on his face and a new generation of red trunked saviors to guide down their own distinct paths.

Lifeguard is available now on Blu-ray from Fun City Editions.