For Conservative Movie Lovers: Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ Part 1
by Leo GrinThese days, big-city philistines posing as cultural elites call it “flyover country.” From the comfort of a private jet, it looks like a vast ocean of emptiness. And yet, every election day, media newsrooms find themselves grudgingly painting that part of the map red — blood red.
To them, the American hinterland is part Deliverance, part Raising Arizona. Toothless gas-station attendants. Frumpy diner waitresses. Motor-home brothels hedging the highways. In the Heat of the Night racist police officers on the prowl, yee-haw! Ignorant picnicking churchgoers spewing toxic barbecue fumes into the pristine blue sky. Country-music lovin’ high school students destined to grow up into unwashed, uncouth, uneducated truckers.
Coast-bound libs fancy the South as kinda like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but with Wal-Marts. Flyover country. A nightmare realm.
Well, back in the summer of 1977, flyover country was pissed. The nation they loved was being run into the ground by the jet-setters. Skyrocketing inflation. Rampant unemployment. Plummeting GDP. Crushing misery index. Multiple oil crises. Vanishing trade surpluses. A wretched President. Ordinary people were scared and angry, looking for — what’s the word? — oh yeah, “change.” Spare or otherwise.
So it was like manna from heaven when that May an ex-stuntman and his cadre of good-ole-boy pals offered audiences a silly, funny, blissfully outrageous movie, one that stuck a middle finger in the collective faces of the ruling culturati. Hot cars! Hot girls! Hot stunts! Cold beer! Even a hound dog! All of it rollicked across drive-in screens throughout this great land, in a story notable for its complete irreverence and utter lack of pretension. Nanny-state road safety? Eat our dust, you sumbitch! Humorless feminism? Soon as I get home, the first thing I’m gonna do is punch yo’ mama in da mouth! FDA-approved diet recommendations? Let me have a Diablo sammich and a Docta Peppa, and make it fast, I’m in a goddamn hurry! Global cooling? Stick the tailpipe of this flamin’ chicken, Starlight black, gold-pinstriped, snowflake-rimmed, T-topped special edition Trans Am in your mouth and smoke it!
By the end of the summer, the country had given the film a big 10-4 and made it a cultural phenomenon, and the big-city mandarins suddenly had a new sneering name for America’s blood-red hinterland: “CB country.” The critics viewed this orgy of laughin’, cussin’, and lovin’ with incredulous disdain, dismissing it as a piece of lowbrow cinematic fluff. But in CB country, Smokey and the Bandit (1977) had become one of the top box-office smashes of all-time and a veritable Robin Hood outlaw myth for an entire generation of disaffected Americans. Thirty-two years and a horde of mediocre pastiches later, the original’s raw appeal remains undimmed.
Keep your foot hard on the pedal.
Son, never mind them brakes.
Let it all hang out, ’cause we got a run to make.
The boys are thirsty in Atlanta
and there’s beer in Texarkana.
And we’ll bring it back, no matter what it takes!
The man who gave us the legend of the Bandit was Hal Needham, a guy perfectly suited to his role in our popular culture. Born in 1931 in Memphis, he spent his boyhood years raising hell in the backwoods of Missouri and Arkansas. Always rangy and athletic, in his late teens he spied an Uncle Sam poster featuring U.S. Army Paratroopers kicking butt in Korea. Promptly signing up with the 82nd airborne, he began the training that would ultimately lead him into the risky, high-wire world of professional Hollywood stuntmen. During one jump his primary chute failed, and he fell for thousands of feet trying to work his reserve chute free as comrades looked on in horror. Losing consciousness, he woke to learn from his buddies that he had freed the chute seconds before hitting the ground, slowing his fall just enough to survive. It was the first of thousands of stunts he would perform throughout his life.
After leaving the Army (when pressured to re-enlist, he told his Captain, “I gave a dog a can a C-rations the other day, and he went around for a week licking his back-end trying to get the taste out of his mouth”) he took a job lumberjacking. One day, at the very top of an enormous tree, he happily sawed through the trunk — only to realize with classic Road-Runner timing that he had just cut off the part he was securely strapped to. Another death-defying fall ensued, this time sans parachute and attached to a bone-crushing hunk of wood. But again, God was looking out for fools that day — Needham fell a hundred feet into a large pile of springy branches and leaves, escaping with only some scratches and bruises.
He eventually migrated West, met some stuntmen at his day job, and began hanging around film sets looking to do anything to impress. Some daring parachute and wing-walking work for The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) made his name among stunt coordinators, and soon he had his first regular gig as Richard Boone’s double on television’s Have Gun, Will Travel. Chuck Roberson, the longtime stunt double for John Wayne, became his mentor, and Needham worked for John Ford and John Wayne throughout the fifties and sixties, developing a reputation for skill, fearlessness, and a lack of BS. Like many other stuntmen in the Ford/Wayne stock company, Needham would get small acting roles in many of their films. Here he is with John Wayne in McLintock!, all stuntman cool in a minor role as Wayne’s ranchhand:
YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen HD
–
Most of the stuntmen in those days suffered regular injuries jumping off buildings, doing horsefalls, and having various items smashed over their heads in fight scenes. But Needham took punishment to a new level and became a legend for the risks he took. He walked away from stunts with broken bones over fifty times, broke his back twice, punctured his lung, and lost some teeth, but none of it fazed him. “You’re not hurt until you have to go to the hospital,” he says about those years. “Broken arms and things . . . hell, that don’t count.”
Needham also separated himself from most other stuntmen as an innovator. By 1970 he had grown sick of the many outdated rules and regulations that came with membership in the industry’s Stuntman’s Association trade group, so with several others he broke away from that organization and formed Stunts Unlimited, a one-stop shop for all the stunts, equipment, and safety expertise a movie might need. He also opposed the no-minority/no women policy of the Stuntman’s Association, and black and female stunt experts found their first official home in Needham’s new company. “We thought we were pretty progressive at the time,” he says today.
Needham also won accolades throughout the industry for helping to invent the Shotmaker, a truck-borne rig that allowed a camera to swoop around a fast-moving car and get shots from any angle, a vast improvement over the static, old-fashioned way it used to be done. This LA Times commercial shows Needham and his invention at work:
YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen HD
–
By the end of the 1960s Needham had become not just a stuntman but a stunt coordinator, and in the 1970s he also began second-unit directing, learning the ropes of camera placement and lighting.
Back in 1959, at the beginning of his career, he did some work on the TV series Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin of A Christmas Story fame, where he met a young unknown actor and sometime stuntman named Burt Reynolds. Both men shared a down-South, blue-collar sensibility, a love of athleticism and stunts. They also realized that they were both more ambitious than their friends. “It’s that good-old-boy country kind of people that we come from,” Needham would later explain. “We were both trying to get a foot in the door and be somebody when we first met.”
They each noticed how driven the other was, even while their friends only made halfhearted attempts to score their next gigs, so they began helping each other. Needham taught Reynolds the intricacies of stuntwork, and introduced him to his many friends in the field. Reynolds, for his part, made sure that whenever he needed somebody to double for him, Needham got the job. When Reynolds’ first marriage broke up in the mid-’60s, he stayed at Needham’s house until he could get back on his feet. When Needham’s own marriage fell apart a few years later Reynolds returned the favor, letting Needham stay in his guest house out back. Movie piled upon movie and the good times rolled on until, before he knew it, Needham had been living in Reynolds’ backyard for twelve years.
On one Reynolds shoot in Georgia, the Coors beer Needham had received from a friend kept disappearing from his fridge. Some sleuthing revealed that the maid was stealing it. When he confronted her, she explained sheepishly that Coors wasn’t distributed east of the Mississippi — it could only be had by bootlegging it across state lines — so it was a rare treat in Georgia, one that she couldn’t resist grabbing for her Coors-loving boyfriend. This was all news to Needham — living in California, he had all the Coors he wanted. But the essential ridiculousness of the tale amused him, and he thought: what a wonderful hook on which to hang the plot of a redneck movie!
For years, you see, as age and injuries took their toll, Needham had thought about attempting a segue into directing. Now, a chance encounter with a thieving maid had given him an idea. He began crafting a screenplay in the seclusion of Reynolds’ guest house, working by hand on yellow legal pads. Through the whole process he remained focused on exactly the kind of picture this was going to be, and the audience he intended to make it for. Screw Hollywood, he thought — this flick was going to be for his kind of people, “The South, the Midwest, the Northwest, all the flyover states.” He wrote each scene, and dreamed up each stunt, with the intention of making the film his first directing gig. He knew that the Buford T. Justices of the studio system would balk at his asking to direct, judging him to be just a dumb stuntman. So he wrote scenes that could be shot on a micro-budget, and convinced his friend, country music singer and sometime character actor Jerry Reed, to agree to star as the Bandit.
When reading the early drafts of the script, one is struck by how — for all of its action elements — the basic mood is one of reverence for the people who live in isolated clapboard houses in the deep South, struggling to get by day-by-day, far away from big-city life. Here’s the description of Snowman’s living room from the script:
Most of the furniture is old and what isn’t, is covered with plastic. No fancy carpets or objects d’art. On the coffee table is an open, colorfully illustrated Bible. A blonde wood television set sits in a corner of the room. There are a lot of toy trucks lying around and over the mantel is an oil painting of a fancy eighteen-wheeler with an epitaph under it reading: “I’d rather be a truck driver, than be a millionaire…”
There’s also a more fatalistic, Vanishing Point style ending, with the Bandit and the Snowman surrounded and captured by the police after they make it to the fairgrounds. As the police drive off into the sunset with their quarry, lights flashing but sirens eerily silent, “we pull further and further away, watching the whole event become history.” And then, as the screen fades to black, two lonely voices are heard over a CB channel:
VOICE ONE
Did ya hear they nailed the Bandit?
VOICE TWO
Yeah, I heard. But they won’t hold him for long. Anyway, he sure gave them sumbitches a run for their money.
Many of the hilarious shenanigans present in the final film aren’t to be found in Needham’s original script — they would be added on the fly during production, by a pair of comedians separated in age by a generation but destined to become a wonderful on-screen comedic duo. The enormous popularity of Smokey and the Bandit was the result of a number of fortuitous pieces falling into place for Hal Needham. The next of those pieces turned out to be the unwavering loyalty of his best friend.
Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we delve into the career of Burt Reynolds, and see how his respect for Hollywood’s old school and its traditions helped turn Smokey and the Bandit from a low-budget “hick flick” into a pop-culture phenomenon.
FURTHER READING and VIEWING
Here’s a cool video of Hal Needham that focuses on stunt driving, with a great scene showing Needham lassoing a moving car:
YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen HD
Read an early draft of the Smokey script here.
The Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills has a great oral interview transcript with Needham that runs many hundreds of pages. Conducted by Mae Woods in 2004-2005, it covers all aspects of his career in detail, and includes many great stories about working behind the scenes with John Wayne, John Ford, Burt Reynolds, and many others. If you live in Los Angeles (or are visiting) and have an interest in Needham, it’s well worth the trip to the Library to read.
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331 Comments
I watched this film for the first time just six months ago and I thought it was a lot of fun! And even though I've seen maybe half a fraction of his films, it's easy to see why Burt Reynolds was such a big star. Talk about charisma.
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Why oh why does my mind drift into the gutter? Excellent article on the movie and Mr. Needham. I am sorry to say that all I can think of regarding this movie is how much fun Sally Field would have been. And I mean that in the way you think I mean it.
When the VCR came out in the early 80's, I probably watched this movie 50 times. And while I could recite the whole thing verbatim, I wouldnt understand half the jokes until later in life. "You sounded…taller…on radio"
Does anyone remember Dirty Harry's (John Nolte) "how to write a screenplay" blog entries from a few years back? These are almost…almost…as good.
Yes, she was.
I'd say these are pretty good, too.
If you're referring to the old Libertas blog, then yes I remember. There must only be a dozen of us or less who've followed him from that site to his own site to this one.
I love "Smokey and the Bandi." Saw it in the theatre as a kid and still find it wildly entertaining. A pure pleasure of a film with a ridiculously sexy Sally Field.
My favorite moment in the film –and one of my favorites in all films —is when Reynolds is being chased by cops, pulls some wild stunt to get a way, turns to the camera, looks right into the eyes of the audience, and smiles a "aren't I good?" smile.
Brilliant.
I've always wondered if it was an ad-lib.
Another terrific Southern-dripped Reynolds film is "White Lightening." Not a comedy, a revenge mystery with a solid good ole' boy vibe co-starring The Mighty Bo Hopkins with Ned Beatty kicking all kinds of ass as a redneck sheriff from hell.
Very sexy scene in a swimmin' hole, as well.
Thanks Leo! You love of movies is infectious!
It was the last great vehicle for the great one – Jackie Gleason to shine in. As Buford T justice, the foul mouthed numbskull and his pansy son, Jackie stole the show. Indeed Leo, this flick was lot of fun. Sadly, 2 & 3 were pretty awful and overkill (as most are)
Hal Needham also directed the movie Megaforce. While the movie was a bomb, I remember articles at the time of it's release said that military consultants who worked on the movie had some interest in the equipment they created, including the dune-buggies, and I noticed that the military was, in fact, using dune-buggies during the first Gulf War.
A low class film no matter what your political persuasion may be. There's Sally "Please love me" Field in the first photo giving us the finger.
Klassy with a capital "K".
Burt Reynolds – arrogant SOB. Glad he is largely gone.
The great Jackie Gleason in this turd of a film – what a shame.
This movie had such an influence on all us Southern young'uns entering high school. We all wanted to drive a black Trans Am (I had about 3 friends who had one), we all learned the CB lingo, quoting Sheriff Buford T. Justice was an art form, and all us girls had crushes on Burt Reynolds. Good times…
"Fun movies" always look fun to make. Cannonball Run, Gator and the daddy of them all, Smokey and the Bandit.
I'm NOT a movie guy and have maybe seen a dozen in sixty-odd years. At least half had Burt Reynolds in them.
Great scene in Smokey when Jackie Gleason is talking to a black sheriff who sounds like he's white over the radio. When Gleason arrives upon the scene he screaming for the sheriff. When the sheriff identifies himself, Gleason looks puzzled and said " you sounded a little taller on the radio". Too many funny scenes in this one. A classic funny movie!
I live in a trailer and drive a pick-up truck. I used to love beer until I fell in love with JESUS. I married a girl way sexier than Sally so I guess you can call me "low class' too.
This is one of my favorite movies because it documents a lot of what it was like to grow up and live in the south in the late 60's and early 70's. As a native of the Atlanta area I particularly love the freeway chase scenes shot on GA 400 – nothing but trees on either side of the freeway and no businesses at any of the exit ramps. Those that have been on that stretch of freeway in recent times know that it's wall-to-wall development now.
Watching this movie is like taking a time machine back to my youth. And for those Northeastern snobs that stared down their noses at us then (and still do to this day) I'm reminded of a popular bumper sticker from that time: "We don't give a damn how you did it up North."
Here's my chicken and the egg moment. I saw "Smokey and the Bandit" when I was about ten and loved it. But did I love the movie because of the stunts and cars? Or do I love the stunts and cars because of the movie? I also saw the sequels and even though they were bad enough that Reynolds was nowhere to be seen, I still loved the stunts. Later, when old enough, I liked to do stupid stuff in cars, sometimes when the car wasn't even moving. I had a MG when I was young, although it was a piece of crap mechanically, it handled like it was on rails. I would test how far I could push the handling. I remember, taking a four way stop at about 30, never touching the brake, pumping the clutch, the back end slipping out, counter steering, and letting the clutch out, sticking my foot in the gas. Off I go.
That's a great video of Needham lassoing the car. Which highlights that we used to be a culture based on the horse as transportation and now a culture based on cars and trucks and the internal combustion engine. Nothing like 350 horses keeping up a cloud of smoke. At least for the time being.
John,
Yep, it was an ad-lib (virtually every funny moment was, as we'll see), and it was Needham's. When Reynolds first heard what Needham wanted him to do, he tried to be all film-school logical about it. "But Hal — you're a first-time director and probably don't know this — if I did that, I'd be breaking the fourth wall."
Hal — the blue-collar, damn the rules stuntman to the end — scratched his head and said, "The fourth what? It's gonna be FUNNY. Just do it." As Reynolds tells this story on the DVD featurette, he starts laughing and says, "You gotta know Hal to know how funny that was" — meaning that Hal's quizzical statement is kind of like Paris Hilton saying, "Wal-Mart — ain't that where they sell wall stuff?" Again, that complete lack of pretension, of caring what the tight-assed critics were going to think. So Reynolds did it in one take, and thirty years later he sighs and says, "I looked into the camera, smile, and Hal was right — it was BRILLIANT."
Audiences were given one of the all-time great character moments, and the only payment was Hal Needham having to endure reviews like, ". . .an infantile car-chase movie . . . Needham will never receive much praise for subtlety or depth. He may not want it: Shallow is probably what he thinks movies should be." (David Denby, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, August 28 1978. Note the date — they were still hating on the film A YEAR AND A HALF after it came out, because it was still doing business and that smile into the camera was still working its magic.)
Other movies that later emulated Needham's "shallowness" include A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983 — Ralphie smiling and winking at the audience after he knows he's got Mom fooled), and FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. Hal Needham, Bob Clark, John Hughes: that would be one great film festival, David Denby notwithstanding.
AuthorJack,
Yes, The Great One ended up being the key to the film's success — an old master striding back into the arena to show the kids how they used to do things downtown. The critics, of course, excoriated him, calling it a travesty that Gleason would go slumming as a racist clown in a filthy movie well beneath his talents and reputation (see Mr. Mayer's disdain below). All typical, predictable, and oh-so-tired politically correct critical bluster. We will deal with these objections in due course over the next several weeks.
jaymil323 says:
"I miss the days when movies were fun."
Leave it to a perceptive commenter to sum up in a single sentence what's taking me weeks of articles to "prove" critically. That's why SMOKEY works: audiences react viscerally, they don't have to think about it, they just KNOW it's a great film. And all the while critics turn themselves into knots trying to explain why you shouldn't be having fun: don't you know it's not appropriate to laugh and enjoy such lowbrow cinema? The reactions of the intelligentsia is one of the chief pleasures of the film, it's the gift that keeps on giving. And the important thing to remember is that is was PLANNED to be that way by Needham and the gang. As conservatives, it's kinda like our EASY RIDER. We owe it, and its makers, a lot more respect than we habitually have given them.
Florida T says:
". . .while I could recite the whole thing verbatim, I wouldnt understand half the jokes until later in life."
My Mom still tells me about how the family used to watch Mel Brooks' HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART I circa 1980, and the part would come on where the Roman legions are chasing Brooks and Gregory Hines dressed in theatrical ILIAD gear. The head Roman goes up to a toga-wearing pharmacist and asks, "Have you seen a pack of Trojans?" and the pharmacist snaps his fingers in disappointment and replies, "Aw, we just ran outta 'em."
And, according to Mom, nine-year-old me would turn to my confused younger brother and patiently explain how the joke centered around the Brooks gang being dressed like ancient Greeks instead of contemporary Romans, you had to know your mythology and history to get the gag, boy you're a dummy, et cetera.
L.B. "Oscar" Mayer
"A low class film no matter what your political persuasion may be."
But you say that like it's a BAD thing, man.
"There's Sally 'Please love me' Field in the first photo giving us the finger."
Naw, she's not flicking us off — we're in the driver's seat next to her. That finger is metaphorically being hurled at someone else. Smokey. The Law. Every two-bit bureaucrat who's ever made our lives miserable with their insufferable intrusions into our lives, their endless litany of soul-killing rules and regulations and complaints and petty thefts.
Burt Reynolds said in a recent interview that his beloved Dad, a former police chief, started off hating the movie for much the same reasons you did. Made cops look dumb, et cetera. His pop died at 96 years old, and it wasn't until the last two years that he began to grudgingly admit to his son that he liked the movie. So we've still got a few years to bring you around, L. B.
You get a presidential salute, I am scratching my cheek with my middle finger as I type. I knew all that one handed typing practice would come in handy one day.
Sam says:
"As a native of the Atlanta area I particularly love the freeway chase scenes shot on GA 400 — nothing but trees on either side of the freeway and no businesses at any of the exit ramps. Those that have been on that stretch of freeway in recent times know that it's wall-to-wall development now."
For anyone interested, you can see a comprehensive set of then-and-now photographs from SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT here:
http://atlantatimemachine.com/smokey/poster.htm
Shows how all the locations have changed in the intervening three decades.
You do not describe what the left calls ""the Flyover Country". You are describing how they view Southerners. Period.
Wonder if its time for a remake with Priuses and Smart Cars. They could be pursued by cops on mopeds. Instead of Cb's everyone could be texting back and forth. Snowman could be driving a Cube Naa it wouldnt work no room for the beer.
That scene showed that Mr. Gleason was a master at the subtile art of comedy. You can't learn what he did, you had to be born with it.
We will never see a talent like Mr. Gleason's ever! EVER!
You want Flyover movies:
Any Christmas movie
Any old Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western
Anything involving Doris Day
Anything heartwarming /sportsy like Coach Carter or that new film about Ohr
Flyovers are are sugar cookie. Southerners are red velvet cake.
Lefties fail to appreciate either's fine qualities. I wonder where Leo (the post's author is from).
I love this movie – it's what movies are supposed to be – fun.
All this talk of Sally, Burt and Jackie – none of Jerry Reed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Reed
He's among the most underrated musicians and character actors of his day.
That said, this is perhaps the best scenery in the movie – http://atlantatimemachine.com/smokey/18.htm
And that before the ubiquitous thong!
I had a 78 Trans Am. Bought it in the Carter days as a kid. Interest rate of 20% or so. Used.
Blew up the motor. Now I have a 68 Charger I had always wanted and a 68 Barracuda. Mopar or no car.
I loved the TV cars, Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit. Some of my favorites along with Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.
JBnlD says:
"I'm NOT a movie guy and have maybe seen a dozen in sixty-odd years. At least half had Burt Reynolds in them."
Hahahaha. . . .that's fantastic. Love hearing stuff like that.
I have to ask — if you're not a movie guy, how the hell did you stumble across this site, and what do you like about it?
Great movie. Current Hollywood could learn a lot from this film.
Jackie Gleason was wonderful in this movie. I can't tell you how many times someone in my family has yelled, "The Germans got nothing to do with it!"
How about Cannonball Run? I imagine the extra feattures on that DVD are priceless.
Burt Reynolds sez he was by the book? Why am I having trouble believing that?
I saw it at a drive-in in the summer of '77 with my family–I was 8 years old at the time. Back in the late 70s, Burt Reynolds, believe it or not, was considered the coolest guy in the world.
The female would have to be popping pills and making yoga appointment and shrieking as soon as the speedometer tops 55 (because you waste gas above that). Also, she would have to sleep with EVERY male in the film to prove how empowered she is.
It'd be perfect!
Wanda_Fucan,
I grew up in Northwest Indiana (virtually a suburb of Chicago, in that idyllic small-town netherworld between the steel mills and the cornfields), and we looked (and were seen and treated) no differently than Southerners. Anyplace outside the cultural centers gets looked at as an alien world, and all the time they pat themselves on the back for being so worldly and tolerant.
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT is brilliant at mischievously poking the exposed white underbelly of such people. Think about it: there's not a single big-city liberal in the whole movie, and yet the average big-city lib reacts to the film like a vampire to garlic, simply because of its underlying, unspoken assumptions about Life, Freedom, Humor. I say again, it's to conservatives what EASY RIDER is to liberals.
Jeez, are you sitting, sipping a latte somewhere in NYC, adding your two cents here? You seem lost and out of place. I don't want to spoil the mood here, so let me respectfully ask you to please don't be a dumb-ass, ok pumpkin? Thanks for your consideration.
JustLurkin
I'm a Conservative and Breitbart is a favorite news source.
Big Hollywood has 'my kind' of people in it, but I had no idea there were 'conservative movies' in the world.
Your John Ford series got my attention last week. I've never seen one his movies, except the gun pictures in Midway.
I skip 'acting' entirely, never understood the fascination with fiction, but I can enjoy watching someone have a good time with cameras rolling. 'The Gods must be Crazy' is my kind of 'movie'. I also love the 'background humor' in the Leslie Neilson movies. (Can't remember the names of them.)
I'm probably reading too much into this but I think we can all agree that there's no problem with movies that make the audience think (provided it's done well).
One think Smokey has going for it is that the characters are clearly having fun and enjoying themselves and too many movies forget that. In the hilarious DVD commentary for Used Cars, Robert Zemeckis quotes Hitchcock (I think) saying, "An audience will always like the hero if he's good at his job" and I think that applies here.
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Many slobs love Jesus. Jesus loves the high class and the low class, so why play the J-card?
Is it written somewhere that Jesus and beer are mutually exclusive?
"I married a girl way sexier than Sally so I guess you can call me "low class' too."
Why would I call you "low class" b/c your wife was/is sexier than Sally Field?
I don't know you, but I salute your power of self-realization.
Jerry Reed was one of my all time favorite people (through his music). I saw him in Reno just after the F-16 ride. He was hilarious.
The interview where he talks of playing back-up guitar for Elvis on 'Guitar Man' (which Jerry wrote) is a classic, as is he and Jerry Clower together on the same song.
I guess Southern birds flock together no matter how far away we fly.
Cool don't ever leave the truly cool.
"I am scratching my cheek with my middle finger as I type."
When you pull your hand out from under your 'brain', wash it off and then get back to me.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize this had become the Lock-Step forum over night. I'll check my dissenting opinion with Nancy Pelosi and have it ignored.
Most of the South is "flyover" as well. On the way to vacation in Florida.
"But you say that like it's a BAD thing, man."
I don't celebrate or revel in the low class elements of life or culture. S&B is a trashy film with trashy characters doing trashy things.
"That finger is metaphorically being hurled at someone else. ……"
I don't feel that put-upon and some and some gidget of a girl hurling the bird (chicks throwing the finger are skanky) doesn't make me feel better about any ills that have been visited upon me.
Shocked to read that someone actually read a Burt Reynolds interview and cites the demon seed of the hell-spawn as a credential of the film's quality.
Oh, well….it's only a movie. Now to grab me a Budweiser, find me a tart and slide out a fart. Ahhhhh…Life is complete!
L.B. "Oscar" Meyer,
I'm curious: which elements of the film you consider "low-class" and "trashy" aside from Sally's finger? And: what sort of films do you consider acceptably high-class comedies? I'm not trying to set you up, just honestly curious.
To my mind, BANDIT has no nudity, comparatively mild swearing, no one dies (the filmmakers went out of their way to show EVERY cop who crashes crawling out of the wreckage dazed but unhurt), and the sex scene is handled with an almost 1940s demureness and innuendo. Set against most of the comedies released in the years since, it's good, clean fun.
Wanda_Fucan,
Burt Reynolds is a great lover of classic black-and-white films, just like most of the people here. And he's forgotten more about "the book" of filmmaking than most of us will ever know. We'll get into all of that a lot more next Saturday.
I'm reminded of a popular bumper sticker from that time: "We don't give a damn how you did it up North."
There's a saying in Arizona: It's Snowbird season — too bad we can't shoot them.
I have never been to Indiana. The only state in our union I have not been to. But I had a friend in college from S. Indiana. She had a Southern accent er… a twang. Southern Ill. has it too so maybe it extends thru the state. I found that strange (since I consider it Northern).
Leftists may share the same disdain for the two groups, but they seem to believe that ALL Southerners are stupid, Ned Beatty Deliverancers, pickin-and-a-grinner, yokels. Think Coal Miners Daughter meets Garden of Good and Evil meets Deliverance. They see middle country people as hayseed, corn cob, survivalist nutters. The Timothy McVay states. There is a difference.
I went to college in CA and they called me the debutante. They hadn't any idea what a debutante was. I have a slight Southern accent (my family is Southern) – but was from FL and CA! How many times did I have to hear their thoughts on the fly overs and Southerners? OH…. at least a couple hundred times. Good thing I did not go to school in the NE. I do not think I could have abided those pricks (sorry NE people). God I am as bad as they are! LOL
Excellent! I love Burt. All of him. I mostly miss the parts he seems to have snipped away from his face. Why Burt? WHY????
[...] original here: For Conservative Movie Lovers: Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ Part 1 This entry is filed under America – Blogs, Big Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this [...]
Indeed. While I never had the chance to see him – all I know is what I read and see – he seems like he was a WYSIWYG kind of guy. His contributions to music are hardly known to most yet he touched so many.
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT made me think, which is why I'm writing about it. By the end of the series, I hope it will have made some of you think a bit more about it and its cultural implications, too.
Hitchcock, by the way, loved SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. Toward the end of his life he named it as his favorite movie in an interview, and at the time Burt Reynolds (a keen fan of the old masters who kept up on their careers) assumed he much be joking. Years later, when Reynolds met Hitchcock's daughter, she assured him it was true — Hitchcock would screen it again and again, each time staring in fascination at the camerawork, and between belly-laughs intoning in his instantly recognizable drawl: "How did they get those people to do those things!"
Hitchcock's admiration for such a film becomes clearer when you learn how he was reputed to announce ACTION on his sets: "Entertain me." Hitchcock's films, of course, were also frequently damned for the crime of being too much fun. One of the all-time great comedic lines occurs in Hitch's last film, FAMILY PLOT, when Bruce Dern is in a car careening down a steep winding road with no brakes, and after he has defied death at a number of hairpin turns and is still hurtling down the street he ad-libs, "Man — I gotta get off of this road!" The line had the elderly Hitchcock rolling on the floor, and he kept it in.
Needham knew how to keep those kinds of things in, too. Many, many, many other directors would have cut it as too goofy. Take whatever lessons from that you wish to.
There were a lot of lines like that in Mel Brooks movies, which made it fun to watch over and over again.
"Trans Am! What's your pleasure?"
Such a life time ago and how that Trans Am was in the culture of the late seventies. I married a boy then that owned a 78' Trans Am and how that car flew! The marriage gods were not on our side. Being too unwise to fight for our relationship didn't help. I remember he accused me of marring him for the Trans Am. I retorted the car couldn't keep me warm at night and under my breath mumbled he was no Burt Reynolds. Thanks for the great article. PS I left the car also. Still miss it.
I lived in the northeast for most of my life, and can assure you that we're not all like that. No doubt there a lot of people that are snobby, as a matter of fact many who live, but are not from Manhattan, look down on the people from Staten Island. Anyhow, I lived in Virginia for a couple of years and loved it and hated leaving, alas the DOD relocated us overseas, and after that to Conn, which was without a doubt the worst place I have ever lived, and have never missed being away from.
This hot dog MUST live on either the northeast or southwest coast.
I loved this movie as a child and still do. It had a HUGE impact on everyone I knew in a little town in Illinois in the late 70's. CB's, "handles", fuzzbusters, trans-ams (or substitutes, cameros), Burt Reynolds and Bufford T. Justice- well, everyone drank all that up and LOVED it. The jokes are still great today!
It's less a geographical attitude than it is an ideological one. No matter where someone lives, there's always someone else from the "wrong side of the tracks". And for too many, that makes them feel a whole lot better about themselves.
"Flyover country" has become a description of any place the elites would only think of landing if their flight had an emergency and couldn't make it to the coast. And I think it actually started in the TV/film executive and star circles as they flew from NY to LA and back.
At least he's not yammering about John Wayne anymore.
I drove my new '77 "Bandit" Trans Am off the dealers lot for $7800.00 . My how prices have changed (LOL)
"he woke to learn from his buddies that he had freed the chute seconds before hitting the ground, slowing his fall just enough to survive. It was the first of thousands of stunts he would perform throughout his life."
After that 'stunt' they must have all been easy after that one.
Watched Bandit not too long ago and I was busting up still after all these years. What I didn't understand back then as a kid and still don't understand now 1) Why in the hell back then could you buy Coors in half the country and not the other? 2) Why in the hell would anyone risk so much over Coors beer?
I know it was about the thrill but if prison time could be involved I'm thinking something Belgium.
I think I've got the Wiener's number. He's what you call a "snob."
In central Florida we were fond of letting the (critical, snobbish, rude, insufferably superior acting yankees who had no more class than to wear socks with dress shoes) northern visitors know that the highway runs both ways….
I remember the period. I think Leo has it right: people were sick of Vietnam and Watergate and the Arab oil embargo and just about everything they read about in the news. Everything seemed to be going wrong. Once Vietnam and Watergate were over, I think a lot of people needed a rest from all the bad news. I think the popularity of movies like Smokey, TV shows like The Waltons, performers like the Eagles and John Denver, as well as the CB/trucker craze and some aspects of environmentalism, were due to people looking for more "innocent" aspects of America. I think we were looking for the roots of our basic goodness, and we thought we found them in rural America. Didn't last long, though – the Northeastern urbanites kind of stole the show with Disco: another escapist phase the pop culture went through.
You can have a dissenting opinion, just understand that we're going to skin you alive for it.
It's the American way, you know. Snobs become human jerky.
I am one of the brotherhood; I first read John as Dirty Harry on the Libertas site. I miss Libertas and the Dirty Harry site. This is my first comment on BH, but I have been lurking since it opened. I can't remember seeing too many of the regs from those other sites commenting. Too bad, those were great communities. Any other Libertas/DH regs from back then reading this?
Needham also co-owned a successful NASCAR Winston Cup team with Burt Reynolds in the 1980s. Harry Gant was the driver and Skoal was the sponsor. They won a dozen or so races.
The movie did get a little more "respect" than your average southern rural comedy would have due to both Reynolds' past film success during the decade and (more importantly to the east coast elites), Gleason's presence in the movie. It was hard to dismiss "Smokey" out of hand while their favorite CBS variety show host from Brooklyn was holding down the No. 2 star billing in the movie.
I will never get tired of movies like "Smokey and the Bandit" or "Hooper". I miss the days when movies were fun.
Sounds like Hal has b*lls both physically and professionally – a very enlightening read!
I keep thinking of Adrienne Barbeau in that movie
Needham movies are just fun.
I'm thinking "troll."
I hate it when everyone calls everyone who is rude a troll, but honestly… would someone really admit in public that they are that much of a snob if they were telling the truth?
How do you feel about pick-up trucks?
This movie was also great for CB radio way back when.
Granted, Kristofferson couldn't sing as well as Mickey Newbury, but at least he had the beautiful Ali McGraw at his side now reunited with director Peckinpah.
I also remember everybody trying to come up with the coolest 'handle' in case they got to talk on a CB radio…lol
I loved this movie! So many quotable moments. "You sounded so much taller on radio." "There is no way…NO way…you have come from my loins. When we get home I'm gonna punch your mamma in the mouth!" And my favorite part, the Japanese truck driver in a cowboy hat screaming "BANZAIIIII!" when crashing into the sheriff's car door.
Fun, fun movie!
BANZAIIII!
Really? Or as Will Smith once said, "Slow down, girl. You ain't got to hit the gas like that."
Didn't your mommy tell you that if you didn't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all? That applies here as well.
Or in this idiot's case, troll jerky.
Yeah but the giant screaming chicken decal on the hood was always a turn-off for me…
Well, I can even remember stories of Henry Kissenger visiting Nixon in the Western White House (San Clemente), and going back east with a case of Coors. The just didn't market east of the Mississippi (capacity I suppose).
The beer took on a mythic status -
"The Gods Must Be Crazy" is a real treat! A clash of cultures – shown from the POV of an innocent. A wonderful, entertaining movie – the like of which we will probably never see again. <sigh>
My husband and I grew up in California but always loved Smokey and the Bandit. To this day my husband still wants a classic Trans Am. I lived for a few years up in Oregon when I was a teenager and the local Indians had been given a bunch money (reparations, that sort of thing) and they went out and bought Trans Ams in droves. I've never seen so many cars with birds on the hood.
It wasn't till I was older, and working in Hollywood no less, that I really began to appreciate the real class the people who live in flyover country have. They are the most gracious people ever. I loved that the men I would talk to would say "yes ma'am" when we'd talk on the phone. I always looked forward to doing stories that were centered either in the Midwest or the South because the people were an absolute pleasure to work with.
Dave Rooney,
I've heard lots of reasons for why Coors wasn't sold east of the Mississippi:
1. It wasn't pasteurized and so needed to be refrigerated when transported, so it couldn't be sold too far from their distribution centers, which at that time were only in the Western states.
2. Some states had laws against pasteurized beer, period.
3. They had some sort of deal with another beer company that one would market in the West and the other in the East.
4. They simply didn't have the capital to establish a nationwide distribution network yet, and transporting mass quantities of beer across state lines without the proper business licenses is technically bootlegging.
Whatever the reasons, it wasn't available East of the Mississippi, although it was easy enough to tuck away in your car or luggage and no one was going to get you in trouble for it. Transporting 400 cases like in the movie, however, would be a different story. The reason they risked so much in the movie was for the money, $80,000. A telling sign of how bad President Carter's economy was: by the time SMOKEY II came out a few years later, inflation had prompted the filmmakers to increase the next prize to $400,000.
"At least he's not yammering about John Wayne anymore. "
Oh look, it's back with its "I hate John Wayne" obsession.
Jerry Reed was great in American Graffitti as the leader of the Pharoahs.
Only if I can drive.
You want to see Jackie Gleason's real talent shine for an entire film…… GIGOT that says it all
Well he might have been but Bo Hopkins played that role.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005019/
I first saw this movie when I was 17 and loved every minute of it! Everyone wanted a car like Burt Reynolds and a mouth like Jackie Gleason's. I watched Smokey and The Bandit on cable last year with my then 11 year old son. He kept asking me questions throughout the movie, such as:Why is everyone driving those old cars? Why do they keep talking on the radio? Why are they all using fake names? What is the big deal with Coors? Why is the speed limit 55?Those are great special effects!
You win.
'what kind of car you drive?' 'Trans am up on blocks.' 'Bring a bottle!'
"The 'GONE WITH THE WIND' of good old boy movies". I can't remember the critic who coined that phrase regarding Smokey but I thought it summed it up perfectly. It used a classic Screwball Comedy set-up with Sally Fields as a runaway bride("It Happened One Night" comes to mind) and also starred former sixties Tarzan (and pro football linebacker) MIKE HENRY as Jackie Gleason's child-like son.
I miss the old sites too. they seemed to be more about movies (from a conservative bent) while this one is conservatism in the movies – if that makes any sense.
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