Bullet Points: Shooting Stars (1983)
It is fitting as we enter the season of giving, that Matt Spector gave me the heads up on a TV movie that I had never heard of… 1983’s Shooting Stars starring one of my all-time favorites, Mr. Billy Dee Williams.
- Star Wars: Shooting Stars wastes no time with a hostage situation unfolding inside a local Los Angeles area restaurant. Outside in the rain, two detectives (played by Billy Dee Williams and Parker Stevenson) debate on their game plan, before going in and saving the day. It turns out the entire opening scene was the final scene in the thrilling season finale of a popular television show. When the show is over, the star of the show, Robert Cluso, addresses the cast and crew, specifically calling out Billy Dee’s Douglas Hawk and Parker’s Bill O’Keefe and thanking them for making the show a success… moments later Cluso tells the producer of the show to meet him in his trailer and it is there that Cluso demands that Hawk and O’Keefe are not only fired, but blackballed from the business, pointing out that he is sick of the dynamic duo upstaging him and being favorites of the crew.
- Wish Upon a Star: Cluso gets his wish and after Hawk and O’Keefe receive a ton of negative press, they find themselves out of the acting game. Hawk decides that after two seasons of playing detectives on TV, they are more than qualified to become private eyes. Their first prospective client, Laura comes to see Hawk and O’Keefe at the Nantucket Light, their restaurant/private eye office, she tells them she is looking for her sister, but when she realizes they are the guys from TV and not actual private dicks, she bails. But when she is nearly run down in a parking lot and Hawk and O’Keefe save her, she officially hires them.
- Star Search: It turns out Laura wasn’t completely honest with Hawk and O’Keefe. The woman Laura is looking for is not her sister, it was in fact her husband’s secretary. Laura’s hope is if they can find the secretary, they can find the husband… but what Laura, Hawk and O’Keefe soon find out, Laura’s husband made some enemies, namely Woodrow Norton, a crooked politician, and two dirty cops including McGee played by John P. Ryan of Death Wish 4: The Crackdown fame. McGee and his partner end up in a car chase with the new private eyes and when the chase ends, they beat the crap out of Hawk and O’Keefe before blowing up Hawk’s car!
- Starry Eyed Surprise: It turns out the whole case revolves around Freedom Village, a real estate project that is being championed by Norton and a real estate project that is being built on land that had toxic waste buried beneath it. Hawk and O’Keefe manage to outwit Norton and get him to confess publicly that he was aware of the toxic waste… this causes Norton to flee by helicopter. What he did not expect was that Hawk was a helicopter pilot back in the Navy and this TV movie is about to end with a freaking helicopter chase and one that ends in explosive fashion… if you know what I mean!
There is one final scene before the end credits roll, where the highly decorated Captain McGee pays Hawk and O’Keefe a visit, warning them, that when the time is right he will eliminate them. With Hawk and O’Keefe firing back that they will bring McGee down before he gets to them.
A rivalry was obviously born in Shooting Stars, unfortunately a series was not as Shooting Stars joined a long list of failed TV pilots. In fact, I have to wonder if not for the box office success of Return of the Jedi that summer, if Shooting Stars would have never seen the light of day.
Shooting Stars may have failed as a pilot, but it did not fail to entertain me thanks in large part to the charm and charisma of Mr. Billy Dee Williams and the unexpected big action finale that the movie delivered. I am not going to fail to deliver the finale that you probably are expecting with these Bonus Bullet Points…
- TV Guide: Shooting Stars originally aired on July 28, 1983 on ABC.
- Familiar Faces: Frank McRae of Red Dawn and Licence to Kill fame played Tubbs, the chef at the Nantucket Light… Herb Edelman played the property manager at the apartment building that Nancy Harmon once called home. While Herb will always be Stanley Zbornak to me, I can’t forget his work in the Jackie Chan classic, Wheels on Meals… There were also two child actors in Shooting Stars who would go on to fame in the years that followed. David Faustino who would go on to play Bud Bundy, played Laura’s son Patrick. And a young Tori Spelling, credited as Victoria Spelling, played O’Keefe’s daughter Jenny.
- Directed By: Prolific television director Richard Lang helmed Shooting Stars. Lang also directed Kung Fu: The Movie starring David Carradine and Brandon Lee and another TV movie I’ve wanted to check out, The Road Raiders featuring The Barbarian Brothers.
