Peter Boyle was a comedian trying to climb up the Hollywood ranks when he landed the role of Joe, a character whose political viewpoint was diametrically opposed to Boyle's. Still, he managed to portray him in a way that left many an American agreeing with him, claiming that Joe was just like them, a man sick of the youth that were destroying their beloved America. In Joe , Peter Boyle's titular character is a racist factory worker who meets businessman Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick) in a bar, where the yuppie admits to Joe that he killed his daughter's boyfriend, a junkie Compton had blamed for corrupting his sweet Melissa (first-ever appearance by Susan Sarandon). The two form a bond over their shared hate for the counterculture that is all the rage and go down a rabbit hole of violence and destruction.
The screenplay was written by Norman Wexler, who was a marketing executive and unproduced playwright at the time. Wexler’s script focuses on the relationship between Compton and his daughter, but thanks to Boyle's performance that left everybody in awe, the final version of the film was re-edited by director John G. Avildsen so as to make Joe the leading man and to shift the focus of the story in order for it to parallel the real situation in America—workers and businessmen becoming main Republican voters, disgusted by what they think America has become.
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