Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In is the first book by John Bloom under the pen name Joe Bob Briggs. It consists of his movie reviews written between 1982 and 1985.
Joe Bob was Bloom's satirical creation, allowing him to spoof stereotypical "redneck" Texan values while giving genuine praise to schlock films. It was not widely known until he was fired in 1985 that Briggs was not, in fact, a real person.
Joe Bob exclusively viewed movies in drive-ins, in his Toronado with any one of several girlfriends. According to his column, he has four ex-wives, and is always on the lookout for "ex-wife number five". An entire fictional cast of characters popped up over the period of the column, who would often be mentioned in the story along with the movie reviews.
The entire book is made up of columns and shorter segments called "Joe Bob's Mailbag," when Joe Bob writes back to his fans, and often his critics. The only two people who actually appear in the first person are Joe Bob and, interestingly, Stephen King, who saw several of his books made into movies during that period and actually wrote the introduction to the book when it was compiled and published in 1987.
Joe Bob/Bloom lived in Texas during the duration of both this book and its sequel, Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive In. At first his column appeared solely in The Dallas Times-Herald, but was eventually syndicated before Joe Bob was dropped completely. This event actually signals the end of the book, when Joe Bob states that he had been 'killed'.
Famous quotes containing the words joe, bob and/or drive:
“We saw a pair of moose-horns on the shore, and I asked Joe if a moose had shed them; but he said there was a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not shed their heads more than once in their lives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Upon entering my vein, the drug would start a warm edge that would surge along until the brain consumed it in a gentle explosion. It began in the back of the neck and rose rapidly until I felt such pleasure that the world sympathizing took on a soft, lofty appeal.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)