THE RETURN OF BANJO BOY.(The Talk of the Town)(actor Billy Redden)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 17-NOV-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Billy Redden is synonymous with a singular type of movie role: the banjo boy. He got his start in the 1972 film "Deliverance," which followed four urbanites on a canoe trip through rural Georgia. After a bit of exposition, the film really begins at a backwoods gas station, where Redden, as Lonny, sits with a banjo on a porch swing, arrestingly still, his pale, flat eyes and stony face those of a fledgling buzzard. (On a casting call at the local Clayton Elementary School, the filmmakers had chosen Redden for his insular look.) Ned Beatty's character, Bobby, glances at Lonny and murmurs, "Talk about genetic deficiencies--isn't that pitiful?" But when Drew, played by...

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