Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore describes America has having been founded on genocide and having gotten rich on the backs of slaves. This is egregiously false. Ayn Rand explained the truth: “Capitalism cannot work with slave labor. It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out—as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized world of the nineteenth century.” 

Moore kicks off his movie equating America to ancient Rome, running stock footage of Rome from bad B-movies, and draws all the wrong conclusions. Rome grew its greatest in its period of freedom as a republic, and collapsed after it morphed into an empire with the uncontrolled growth of government controls, including welfare state measures – bread and circuses. 

The growth of taxation and government control destroyed the Roman economy and caused the collapse of Rome – yet more taxes and government control are the very things that this fat bastard is advocating. He mocks America’s predominance in the auto industry by saying that we eliminated our competition, Germany and Japan, when in fact we saved the world from Germany and Japan not in order to destroy their auto industry but to protect the world from the tyranny and darkness they represented. Moore mentions that we destroyed Japan and Germany and claims that that’s why our auto industry became number one, but he neglects to explain why we destroyed Japan and Germany. And he says nothing about how we rebuilt Japan and Germany. In fact, we made it safe for Germany and Japan to dominate the auto industry. 

He holds Jimmy Carter up as the ideal president and holds Ronald Reagan responsible for our economic woes. Yes, the Jimmy Carter era of runaway inflation, 21% interest rates (up from the decades-long standard of low single-digit rates) is Moore’s idea of heaven. Worse still, he runs footage of Carter admonishing the American people for being too materialistic. I kid you not. 

It’s obvious that Michael Moore believes he is talking to idiots who have absolutely no concept of history or of reality. His entire movie is so fundamentally flawed that I actually thought that perhaps it was one big satirical piece, an outrageous parody. 

Moore devotes a large portion of the film to a group of protesters that won’t leave a factory that was closed. He has the audacity to bark about people power, and about how people power is all that really counts, while simultaneously millions (literally) are taking to the streets in the form of tea parties and town hall meetings in protest against big government, but about that he says nothing at all. He praises a member of Congress for encouraging open rebellion on the floor of the House against the Bush bailout. Would he encourage the same under Obama? 

There is absolutely nothing about individual responsibility in Capitalism: A Love Story. Moore tells tale after tale about this fellow being evicted from his home – a sad story, no doubt, but who put the gun to this man’s head to sign the adjustable rate mortgage? When I was mortgage shopping, I refused to sign an adjustable rate mortgage. They scared me. And while I agree with Moore that the banks are wielding an enormous amount of corrupt power hand-in-hand with the feds, the answer isn’t more government. The answer is complete deregulation. Period. No Fed. Just free men, free trade. Of course, the government regulatory apparatus that is currently in place would take years and years to disassemble. You can’t do it overnight, because everything would spin out of control. 

But ultimately, that’s the answer. The problem is government, not the rich. The answer is not more government, the answer is the individual.

Michael Moore, who has gotten rich in America attacking capitalism and America, is not only a liar; he’s also a hypocrite. Peter Schweizer, author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, said this about Moore in National Review Online: “Moore professes to hate capitalism (‘the last evil empire’), but practices it in spades. Moore condemns people for their racism and claims to support and practice affirmative action, but has a lousy record of hiring minorities. He outsources post-production film work to Canada so he can pay non-union wages. I could go on and on. I would ask his fans: is this really a sincere person?”

Moore isn’t. And he isn’t the first. Ayn Rand said it decades ago: “The flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual nature.” And she explained: “Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin, North Korea and South Korea is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man’s well-being is not their goal.”

Nor is man’s well-being the goal of Michael Moore. 

It seems fitting, poetic justice if you will, that Capitalism: A Love Story grossed a measly $14 million at the box office. You have to love the invisible hand of those pesky free markets.

Well, I disagree. A movie’s effect on the culture is often independent of intellectual considerations. The passage of years highlights a film’s vintage regardless of pedigree or awards. Father Time has a sneaky way of giving even erstwhile pop-culture artifacts a rich patina of nostalgia and meaning. And so it happens that light-footed entertainments like Smokey sometimes have lessons to teach, if only we can muster the wisdom to listen.

Let’s return for a moment to the film critic Gary Arnold, who in the summer of 1977 penned a lengthy appreciation of Smokey for The Washington Post. Along with Star Wars, Hal Needham’s film was dominating the domestic box office, especially at the drive-in theaters that were still fairly common in rural America. Given the movie’s success and the CB phenomenon, an article about the picture was a no-brainer. But what’s interesting about Arnold’s essay is how he goes beyond mere cinematic merit and expands his analysis into the realms of culture and politics:

Although it opened to indifferent reviews and business in New York two months ago, Smokey and the Bandit has already grossed close to $25 million in the South and Southwest. It will probably turn out to be one of the year’s most popular and profitable films, and the potential appeal should have been obvious, even from New York.

It might not be a bad idea if the Carter administration also took a look, because the film is in touch with certain deep-felt national preferences. Smokey and the Bandit seems both an authentic and exuberant expression of how much taking the wheel means to Americans.

“Taking the wheel” can be interpreted in both a literal and figurative sense. It is perhaps worth noting that by the time Reagan rescued the country from Jimmy Carter’s economic death spiral, the screenwriters of 1980’s Smokey and the Bandit II had taken Carter’s massive inflation into account by raising the Bandit’s prize money from $80,000 to $400,000. Even many partisan Democrats realized by then that things had veered dangerously out of control.

For all of their comedic, stunt-happy antics, Hal Needham and the makers of Smokey were all-too-aware of the growing fear and outrage gripping middle America. But unlike so many other 1970s films, their message to audiences was not morose acceptance and surrender. Smokey and the Bandit’s script didn’t resort to suicide by cop, or to Russian Roulette, or to wallowing in cynicism over our society’s failure to right every wrong.

Instead, Smokey breathed optimism.

Pay attention while watching the movie. In dozens of little ways, Smokey delineates a vast social network within rural Southern society based on charity to neighbors and longstanding notions of tradition and culture. “Screw the guys taxing and regulating and mismanaging us to death,” the film seems to say. “To hell with their speed limits and bootlegging laws and bottomless hunger for interfering in our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. We can take care of ourselves, using the unspoken laws of the open road. Independence. Common sense. Christian fellowship. All the stuff that came down from our forefathers.”

That appealing vibe is, to this day, easily felt throughout rural America. Go to any small Southern burg, and you are likely to see a downtown that has barely changed in over a century, with buildings that can often be matched up perfectly to photographs taken a hundred years earlier. It may surprise city-dwellers to learn that there are still many places in America where one has to motor down a two-lane highway for a half-hour just to reach the nearest library, movie theater, hospital, liquor store, Wal-Mart or McDonald’s. People in flyover country have access to amenities like satellite TV and cell phones and home-style restaurants, sure. But in other ways they can’t help but feel far removed from the government busybodies stealing their tax dollars and giving them nothing but draconian legal nightmares in return.

Against that tapestry, a character like the Bandit becomes nothing less than a modern-day Robin Hood, with Sheriff Buford T. Justice serving as a humorous reflection of the Sheriff of Nottingham. And of course, where would Robin Hood be without his Maid Marian (decked out in the tightest jeans this side of the Mississippi, natch) and his pals Little Snowman and Friar Fred — er, Tuck.

Smokey captures the mindset of the times in other ways as well. Hal Needham carefully presents a South largely free of the racism that has haunted that land’s history since the first slaves were brought to Spanish Florida in the 1560s. Among other characters, the movie prominently features a black sheriff, a black restaurant owner, and various black friends of the Bandit (such as a gas station attendant and a pair of mischievous hearse drivers). All of these people are portrayed as quite respectable in their milieu, and they have no trouble mingling with the good ole boys littering the landscape. It’s telling that — in a picture marinated in all things Southern and rural — the only racist line of dialogue comes when the villain discovers that another sheriff he has been talking to over the CB is black:

SHERIFF BUFORD T. JUSTICE

Hey boy – where is Sheriff Branford?

SHERIFF BRANFORD

I am Sheriff Branford!

SHERIFF JUSTICE

Ohhhh. . . heh heh heh. For some reason or another, you sounded a little. . . taller on radio. Heh heh.

Gleason, a master of nuance and timing, then turns away in embarrassment and mumbles, “What in the hell is the world comin’ to?” This scene regularly succeeded in eliciting good-natured laughs of recognition from mixed, racially sophisticated 1970s audiences, because it caters neither to the knee-jerk prejudices of city elites nor to the racism of unreconstructed Klan thugs. This is that rare film about the rural South that possesses a sharp self-awareness, and as such it does justice to the integrated society it so affectionately portrays, warts and all.

Toward the end of the movie, there is a perfectly executed montage that sums up the thematic subtext of the film, belying its reputation as a live-action cartoon possessing no redeeming artistic value. It comes after a motley convoy of truck drivers conspire to save the Bandit from a predatory Smokey by cleverly using their rigs to shield his Trans Am as the police pass by. As Reynolds maneuvers into the nest of semis, he looks at them arrayed on the highway like glittering knights and murmurs, “Trucks — I love ’em! I love ’em!” The Bandit pumps his arm up and down, the universal signal for “Trucker, blow your horn!”, and all around him the big rigs bellow and trumpet in answer. Even the orchestra accompanying Jerry Reed on the soundtrack fires off some brassy notes of solidarity. Reynolds smiles and marvels, “This isn’t a convoy, it’s a dream!”

Then, after the Bandit “puts the pedal to the floor, ’cause they’ve got his back door,” it’s the Snowman’s turn to motor his now-iconic semi past the convoy. As he chugs forward, director Hal Needham does a wonderful thing. He suddenly cuts out all extraneous sounds — the voices of the truckers, the roar of the engines — leaving just the music and the triumphant bellowing of Snowman’s horn as he flashes a wide grin and a big outstretched thumb at each rig. They return his salute, and the rousing music, the booming horn, the waving hats, and the broad smiles all create a cathartic, overriding sensation of camaraderie. It’s the grand culmination of Hal Needham’s artistic vision, whether or not he would ever admit it or even be conscious of it.

And at the end of Snowman’s journey through the convoy, Needham leaves us with a final nostalgic surprise that clearly comes straight from his heart: the last trucker we see smiling out of his cab is none other than the actor Hank Worden (1901-1992), who like Needham was a veteran member of John Ford’s Stock Company — you may remember him best as crazy ol’ Mose “Thank’ya kindly!” Harper from The Searchers (1956). His well-known visage popping up so unexpectedly here pays tribute to that group, and for me lifts an already great scene up on an eighteen-wheeled chariot to redneck heaven. “I’ve seen Smokey many times,” Burt Reynolds says, “and each time it makes me smile. Perhaps that’s the simple secret of its success.” Of all the hilarious, clever, exciting, and even lovely moments in Smokey and the Bandit, it is this one which never fails to put the biggest, warmest smile on my face.

In the end, Smokey and the Bandit just plain adores rural America in all of its messy, worn-down, spacious-skyed and amber-waved splendor. “What I want in my life,” Reynolds once said wistfully in an interview, “is to be living in a little town like Evening Shade, with a little creek in my backyard, and to fish with my son. I want to salute the flag and say grace before dinner, and I don’t want to get mocked or laughed at for that.” The cute, irreverent little film we’ve been discussing for the last five weeks shares those sentiments in spades. It’s a joyous and honest (if often uncouth) celebration of American values, with a profound sympathy for that large part of the country that habitually gets short shrift in Hollywood. In the final analysis, that’s what separates Smokey and the Bandit from so many of the trash films of today, and why it remains endlessly rewatchable after thirty-two years.

This concludes our five-part study of Hal Needham’s memorable 1977 directorial debut Smokey and the Bandit. Come back to Big Hollywood next Saturday for the beginning of an all-new look at an all-new film from an all-new year.

Previous posts in the series “Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and Smokey and the Bandit”:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

OK, you’ve learned a lot about Smokey and the Bandit. The lives of the director and actors. The political climate in which the film was made. The derision of the critics. The staggering support of the public. Even the subtext and values underlying what was on the surface a shallow chase and stunt film. It’s time to break open a brewski, settle comfortably into the La-Z-boy or on the couch, and let the opening strains of Jerry Reed’s guitar fill your living room with acoustic goodness.

You can buy the Smokey and the Bandit Special Edition DVD for around eight pazoors with free shipping, or you can spot that little beaver over at Netflix and pop it into your queue. The film was released on the now-defunct HD-DVD format a few years back, but no Blu-ray has appeared as of yet (and if the HD-DVD is anything to go by, when it does show up it won’t be an earth-shattering improvement over the standard DVD anyway).

Be sure to be well-rested before screening the picture, as by the end you’re going to be exhausted from 96 minutes of smiling and laughter.

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:

–

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:

–

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:

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.

There I said it. I feel better already. It’s time to fess up that it isn’t about our beliefs or principles, or morality or the Constitution.  It’s all about race. We conservatives have feigned our approval of Michael Steele, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder and a host of other Black conservatives for far too long.  We reject Ward Connerly, Niger Innis, Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams and Kenneth Blackwell. Who needs them!

The leftist are correct:

If Obama were a white guy we would all be in favor of a government takeover of our health care system and happy to stand in the government line and take whatever medical care the left deemed sufficient to dole out to us. We would favor “Cap and Trade” and be happy to kick in a bunch more dough for our heating oil to keep our kids warm in the winter. We would believe in global warming and wouldn’t mind that Al Gore has made more money off of carbon than all the coal mines in West Virginia.

If Obama were a white guy we would be in favor of turning our Constitution over to the United Nations; love it when our President bows to the King of Saudi Arabia and makes nice with minor dictators like Castro and Chavez; be in favor of the government takeover of GM and regulating private sector pay checks; happy to walk away from the war on terror; support getting the Gitmo detainees into this country and making all illegal aliens citizens tomorrow…

If Obama were a white guy we would even be happy to quote from the Little Red Book.

I’d like to say that I’m really happy for him…. but isn’t that what this is all about? Being happy for “him?”

Wasn’t that what the Olympics were about? Rooting for “him?”

Wasn’t that what the last presidential election was about? Electing “him?”

It’s never about us. Or the U.S.

Because if it was, no Nobel committee would have ever given him that prize. The fact is, you only win that prize if a particular transaction is made -that is, a weakening of America in exchange for worldly acceptance by madmen, maniacs and mass murderers.

But that’s not all.

The prize is not meant to award achievement, but to insult folks the committee finds distasteful – meaning those who refuse to share their assumptions about a deeply flawed – oh let’s face it, evil – America.

Meaning, you and me. And like I always say, when it happens three times, it’s officially a trend. The 2002 prize to Jimmy Carter was meant to humiliate President Bush for the Iraq War build-up. They even admitted that. Then in 2007, they handed the political prop to Al Gore – a message meant to slap Bush for winning the 2000 election, and also America for not embracing global warming ideology.

And that’s what this prize is all about now. It’s not just another slap at Bush (well, it is), but a prop to help beat back the simmering dissent Obama’s progressive agenda has caused, here.

The Nobel committee wants him to succeed, for they’re smitten with this “citizen of the world,” a man who puts the globe before his country.

Forget human rights activism: this is how you win an award, people.

It won’t help us, but It’ll look great on his mantle. Next to the Grammy.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Doug Giles, Sandra Smith, Mary Katherine Hamm, and Dick Valentine from the Electric Six! ]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggutfeld/2009/10/09/daily-gut-its-all-about-him-not-us/feed/ 423 http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dburge/2009/10/09/membership-has-its-privileges/ http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dburge/2009/10/09/membership-has-its-privileges/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:19:14 +0000 Iowahawk http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?p=244190 [ed. note: republished and amended from a 2007 post]

Dear   BARACK OBAMA  :

Congratulations! On behalf of the selection committee, I am pleased to announce that you have been named a 2009 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of your tireless efforts to   STRENGTHEN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY AND COOPERATION    .

I am also pleased to tell you that as a winner, you have been pre-approved for membership in the Nobel Peace Player’s Club, offering exclusive money-saving benefits available only to laureates like you. Please take a few minutes to look over the enclosed enrollment materials. At only $299.95 per year, I’m sure you’ll agree that membership is a bargain at twice the price! Here are just some of the benefits you’ll receive:

• A handsome 14-karat gold membership crest badge to display proudly on the grille of your limousine or official state aircraft
• A framed, hand-calligraphed certificate (add $19.95 for gold leaf)
• Special discount shopping bargains for for you and your family
• Great travel packages to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro
• Listing in “Who’s Who of Global Salvation” ($49.95 per copy)
• Great coupons for Olive Garden, P.F. Chang’s, Six Flags Theme Parks, and more!

Plus, you’ll receive the exclusive Nobel Peace Player’s Club GoldCard entitling you to discount air travel and 5-star hotel accommodations from Kyoto to Darfur. But don’t take our word for it! Listen to these testimonials from some of our current members:

“My career as an international peace activist means lots of air travel — and dealing with pushy Zionists and rude natives. With my Nobel Peace Player’s Club GoldCard, I finally get the respect I deserve – and it makes getting through Gaza airport security a snap!”
– Jimmy Carter, 2002 Laureate

“Whether we’re patrolling the Congo, Sudan, or Bosnia, one thing’s for sure — chicks can’t resist a Nobel Peace Prize Player!”
– United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, 1988 Winners

“My Players Club GoldCard lets me treat my friends and family to great perks.”
– Kofi Annan, 2001 Laureate

“I’m a take-action kind of guy. Whenever I fly to Tehran or Pyongyang, the first thing I pack is my Players GoldCard.”
– Mohamed ElBaradei (2005)

“I have to write a lot of honorary doctorate acceptance speeches, and writer’s block can be a problem. With the Player’s GoldCard I got great discounts at TermPapersLab.com!”
– Rigoberta Menchu (1992)

“The Player’s Club GoldCard is recognized everywhere — even in hell! I redeemed my Players GoldPoints at Club Satan for an exciting eternity of getting pounded up the ass. Thanks, NobelCo!”
– Yasser Arafat (1994)

“Don’t miss the boat like I did, comrade! I forgot to enroll, and now I’m spending eternity pounding Yasser Arafat up the ass.”
– Le Duc Tho (1973)

So what are you waiting for,    BARACK OBAMA  ? Enroll today and start enjoying the privileges of membership. Enroll today, and we’ll throw in a deluxe leather bound CIA intelligence report worth $1000!

Sincerely,

Ůmläut Ťïldëqvist, Chairman
The Nobel Peace Player’s Club Selection Committee

President of all Iranians — both living and dead in the streets — Ahmadinejad still wants to build a few nukes even though Mr. Obama has told him not to. Colonel Qaddhafi, or Gaddahfi or Khaddafi, or Kaddafy or however you spell it, isn’t on board the love train either.

This has not deterred President Obama! Moving swiftly, he said he will name a new Apology Czar, rumored to be either Jimmy Carter or Maxine Waters and set a schedule for more apologies to settle all past wrongs of the United States.

The President is planning a public World Apology Tour for the interventions, imperialism and mistakes the United States has made in the past. The President believes that only then will everyone hold hands with us and join in a rousing chorus of “Kumbaya.”

The Tour Schedule

November 1st – The President will travel to Berlin, Germany to make amends to the German people for our interference in domestic European politics during the First and Second World Wars. Our nation building efforts were unwarranted and resulted in unforeseen liberty and economic development. The President will recommend the return of Poland and France to German control in reparation.

November 4th – The President will stop in Pyongyang, North Korea to offer our apologies to Kim Jong-il for getting involved in what was basically a civil war. The unintended consequence of this action left half of the Korean people living a comfortable and successful lifestyle while their country stole untold millions of car sales from the Japanese.

November 5th - In Tokyo the President will announce the return of the Philippines and Hawaii to the Japanese for our unwanted interference in Asian-Pacific affairs in the 1940s.

November 11th – Set to coincide with Veteran’s Day celebrations, the President will travel to Appomattox, Virginia to apologize to the former Southern states for the Civil War.  He will apologize to the South for imposing the morality of the North and imposing their Judeo-Christian view of slavery on Southern plantation owners.

TBA - Trip to France for apology for taking advantage of them during the Louisiana Purchase.  Date for apology to the British for the American Revolution…

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: President Obama, United Nations, Muammar Gaddafi, Jimmy Carter, ACORN, Volkswagen Electric Car, Apple iPod, Steve Jobs, Victoria Rowell, Chris Matthews, and David Hasselhoff.

If the tables had been turned and a predominantly white cast and crew used such racially charged language to describe a black cast member, the Screen Actors Guild would have invaded that production and we would have seen headlines in the media “Racist Cast and Crew, Film Shut Down By SAG.”

In that film one of my scripted lines required that I use the word “nigger.” Before I shot the scene I pulled my fellow actor aside and assured him that this was not a word I took lightly and that I was aware of its historical implications towards blacks. He looked me over as if I were an alien and said “Give me a break, I don’t give shit, I’ve been a nigger all my life. I’m cool with it.” That response came to me as a mixed signal. Not one that said it was okay for me to use the word “nigger,” but one that said my efforts at trying to understand his side of race didn’t matter.

All us “white people” are now being told by the media, by former Presidents and now singer Dave Matthews that most whites have a negative racial element to their behavior, that we should monitor them and keep them in check, that our attitudes towards blacks should be sensitive. Okay, fair enough. However, lots of us so called “white people” live our lives with a sense of racial sensitivity and have for some time.

What could be helpful in having a racial dialogue would be specific feedback from the black community on what more they want us to do when it comes to understanding racism as they see it. That would be a more constructive approach to the topic than simply finger-pointing at “White America” as Dave Matthews did when he recently said this:

“Of course it is! I found there’s a fairly blatant racism in America that’s already there, and I don’t think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it’s sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here — I just see it everywhere. There’s a good population of people in this country that are terrified of the president only because he’s black, even if they don’t say it. And I think a lot of them, behind closed doors, do say it.

“Maybe I’m paranoid about it, but I don’t think someone who disagreed as strongly as they do with Obama — if it was Clinton — would have stood up and screamed at him during his speech. (Shakes his head) I don’t think so.”

Where is Dave Matthews meeting these “blatant racist Americans?” Is it amongst his adoring fans, or is this just happening inside his liberal head brought on by the white guilt he cultivated living in South Africa? We disagreed with Clinton over some of his policies, we also scream at him for lying to us when we discovered he’d used the Oval Office as his own private porn booth/cigar factory.

When are those in the black community and its leaders going to address the fact that the vast majority of “white people” in this country try to do what’s right when it comes to race, that when we disagree with it doesn’t mean it has something to do with the color of someone’s skin, but may have to do with the content of  the individuals character or views?

It’s time self-hating whites with big bullhorns like Jimmy Carter and Dave Matthews stop pointing the finger and start asking questions of the black community about what they’re doing to put a balanced eye on the topic, because if they are, I can’t see it.