Burt Reynolds

Here I was, wondering what my topic would be, and sadly, it fell into my lap when the veteran actor passed away on September 6, 2018.

Florida State.  He played football for them in college but was injured, which ended his career.  Would he have pursued an NFL career had this not occurred?   Alternate history writers, get cooking.  You’ll have to figure out who will play Bandit in place of him.

The Deliverance (1972).  This camping trip gone wrong film is well known, but I never liked it that much.  Ned Beatty sodomized by Trump supporters is really not something we really need to see over and over again. 

The Longest Yard (1974).  He plays a football player who went to prison and organizes the inmates’ team to compete against the guards.  As his character had a notable scandal of throwing a game, the issue re-asserts itself when the warden cynically offers him a similar deal.  He also showed up in the remake with Adam Sandler miscast in his original role, Reynolds acting as the team’s coach.

Note: as seen above, both films predate his famous mustache. 

Smokey & The Bandit.   The 1977 Pontiac Trans Am Special Edition will forever be immortalized – to the extent a car can be described as such, not being mortal – by the movie and its sequel. 

He and Snowman (Jerry Reed) have to drive from Jawja to Texarkana, pick up 400 cases of Coors, and drive back in 28 hours.   Snowman drives the rig itself with his dog, Bandit drives a brand new Trans Am to draw off attention from Snowman – for the most part, successfully.  Remarkably, the westbound leg of their trip is completely uneventful.  But when Bandit picks up Carrie the Frog (Sally Field) by the road wearing a wedding dress, her scorned groom and would-be father-in-law, Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) chases after him, well outside his jurisdiction – as the local authorities repeatedly point out to him.

Oddly, some have pointed out that the route back includes various weigh stations which Snowman would have had to stop at – and doesn’t.  But this is even stranger, since the very beginning of the movie shows a truck seized at such a station.  I suppose the only way to reconcile this is to note that Snowman has to avoid those stations to make the deadline and avoid inconvenient inspections.  But if it were this easy, it wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.  In any case, the beer gets where it’s supposed to go, and Snowman only pulled over once in the whole trip.    

The sequel features an elephant.  As such it was somewhat of a disappointment as the mercenary aspect went missing.   Then again, you’ve got a flotilla of Justice’s various comrades, including a Mountie well south of Canada, gives us an impressive climax.  The first film merits permanent Blu-Ray ownership, the second just a brief view on Netflix.  I’ve never even seen the third one which doesn’t even feature Reynolds himself, except in a brief bit.  Snowman takes the lead role in a third generation Trans Am, i.e. a chubby black & gold version of KITT, minus the talking computer.

   

Bandit T/A.  The funny thing is, an actual 1977 Special Edition has a 400 cubic inch Pontiac V8 putting out 220 horsepower.  That was my preference back in 1988, but by 1992 I’d acquired an actual Firebird (170 HP 5.0L V8) and soon learned the sad truth.  By the time the S/E came by in 1977, the power numbers were way down.  Were I to get a 70’s Trans Am, I’d avoid the ’77 S/E and get a 1974 Trans Am SD455 in dark blue.  Even so, there’s no denying that with its T-tops and CB radio, plus Carrie in the passenger seat, as featured in the first movie the S/E is an amazingly cool car. 

Not only that, up until then, the Firebird was pretty much a poor younger cousin to its Chevrolet F-body equivalent the Camaro.  But no Z/28 from 1970-81 (and they weren’t even sold in ‘75-‘76, as Chevrolet had dropped that particular version of the Camaro for those two years) comes close to the notoriety of the Trans Am.  It takes the ’69 Camaro to even get there, and who can name a major film or movie star giving the ’69 Camaro as much publicity as “Smokey and the Bandit” and Burt Reynolds did for the Trans Am?  Hell, that also applies to the ’82-92, ’93-02, and current Camaros.  There’s no Camaro equivalent of KITT, essentially a black-on-tan modified 1982 Trans Am.   The brilliant thing is that Reynolds’ character, the movie, and the car, were all equally awesome.  To his credit, Reynolds held on to many of those Trans Ams and never forgot his relationship with them.  Amen. 

More movies.  As you might imagine, those four movies weren’t his only ones, but I can’t say that I’ve seen them all.  The ones I have seen are Gator (1976), The End (1978) (somewhat cynical), Hooper (1978), Cannonball Run (1981) and its sequel (1984), Sharkey’s Machine (1981), Stroker Ace (1983) (about a NASCAR driver in some questionable endorsement deals because he didn’t bother to read the sponsorship contract), City Heat (1984) (with Clint Eastwood), Stick (1985), Striptease (1996) (premiere of the “HOT” Demi Moore), and Boogie Nights (1997).  He played himself on Archer, which often features Archer himself in mustache driving a ’77 Trans Am.  

Cosmo.  In 1972 he posed naked on a bearskin rug for Cosmopolitan magazine.  His arm was strategically placed and you can’t see his Mr. Johnson & the Juice Crew.  As a handsome guy with a nice body, it proved highly popular.  I’m not aware he did it again – let alone recently.  As yet Cosmo hasn’t asked me to do the same.

Sally Field (1977-82).   For the life of me I have no idea why his relationship with her fizzled out.  They seemed perfect for each other.  She remains a dazzling, beautiful and classy woman even today.  I seem to recall him recently expressing profound regret that he let her get away.

Loni Anderson (1988-1993).  This Loni is NOT from Shanghai, best known as the busty receptionist from WKRP in Cincinnati.  They were a visible couple during this time. 

COOL.  The #1 thing about Reynolds is his cool-ness.  Here’s a guy who was remarkably handsome and desirable, and as noted below, had some prime female companionship over the years.  But he always kept a sense of humor which was suitably self-deprecating.  I say the definition of cool is not being an arrogant bastard when you have every reason to be, and by that standard I’d say Reynolds clearly qualifies.