“I classify it as a rainy day Saturday afternoon movie. It’s a little like Chinese food… wait an hour and you may want to see another one.” – Burt Reynolds, from 1977 archival footage included on the Smokey and the Bandit 2006 Special Edition DVD.
1977 was an interesting year for moviegoers. One of the biggest cultural touchstones that year was a murder-mystery comedy that edited the murder-mystery out leaving the best comedy of the 1970s, Annie Hall. Women everywhere embraced Diane Keaton’s New York esthete, fashion, and “Lah-Dee-Dah, Lah-Dee-Dah” became a brief national catchphrase.
Another touchstone was the prequel to one of Neil Simon’s most personal scripts, “Bogart Slept Here,” which was to star Robert De Niro and Marsha Mason. When Simon and De Niro agreed to part ways over the script, Simon ended up writing the backstory of the characters, recast De Niro with Richard Dreyfuss, and The Goodbye Girl magically appeared. (If you ask me, Neil made the right decision. At the time, DeNiro wasn’t funny, and some would argue that’s still the case.)
To give you a hint of the cultural landscape of 1977, Apocalypse Now missed three release dates that year. And it would have been a contender for that year’s Best Picture Oscar. One member of the cast, Harrison Ford, the star of the biggest hit of the year, Star Wars, filmed his part in Apocalypse Now long before George Lucas even considered hiring him as Han Solo. By the time it appeared in 1979, the whole movie business had changed into a blockbuster-driven machine.
Into this world of Neil Simon and Woody Allen New York Jewish humor came a cornpone comedy starring three washed-up television stars trying to regain their footing in Hollywood. Burt Reynolds, the most successful (at the time) of the trio, had scored big with Deliverance, The Longest Yard, White Lightning, and Gator. Sally Field, long typecast as Gidget and The Flying Nun, had recently received critical attention in Sybil and had the Emmy Award to show for it. Jackie Gleason, removed from CBS in the great rural purge of 1971, had spent years relaxing in Miami.
The combination of all three personalities (and an expert editor) made Smokey and the Bandit one of the top-grossing films of the year, and it spawned two sequels, each depressingly less engaging than the prior one. To give you a hint of how bottom of the barrel Smokey and the Bandit 3 had gotten, it featured Cledus against Sheriff Justice, with only ninety seconds of the real Bandit. Originally, there wasn’t even that: it’d been filmed as Smokey IS the Bandit, with Jackie Gleason in both roles, but had to be reshot because no one could figure out what was going on. (Some, including me, would argue that the “improvements” didn’t help. You can’t polish shit, you know.)
Smokey and the Bandit was born out of Hal Needham’s spec script, written while he was living with Burt Reynolds. Needham envisioned Jerry Reed in the Bandit role, with a hit-and-run budget. In the heart of Hal Needham, an exploitation producer thrived. He gave the script to his roommate Reynolds, solely with the idea of helping him refine it.
Reynolds, while uncertain of the quality of the script, took notice of its potential, and told Needham he’d love to do it, if he could play Bandit. In those days, a thumbs-up from Reynolds meant a green light at the studio, and other roles quickly fell into place. Gleason was sent a copy of the script and called Needham. “He asked me if I believed in the script. I told him I did. ‘Then I’m in,’ he said,” Needham recalled.
Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed are two small-time gearjammers named Bo “Bandit” Darville and Cledus “Snowman” Snow. They make their money at state fairs and truck pulls. Into this walk Big Enos (Pat McCormack) and Little Enos Burdette (Paul Williams). They have a standing bet for $80,000 with all gearjammers to haul 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Ga. within 28 hours.
In 1977, it was illegal to sell Coors east of the Mississippi River. Also, the lack of additives and preservatives meant that if it wasn’t kept cold, Coors would spoil within a week (a fact I learned from Wikipedia… see, the Internet has its uses!). Bandit extorts money for a black Pontiac Trans-Am from the Enoses as decoy for any law enforcement so that Cledus can barrel through with the Coors unimpeded. Cledus has a basset hound named Fred who travels with him in the cab of the semi. Bandit and Cledus make it to Texas without incident. The film focuses on the trip back.
Bandit makes the mistake of picking up a hitchhiker, Carrie (Sally Field) who, in traditional screwball comedy style, is a runaway bride. Carrie is running away (wisely) from a betrothal to Buford Justice Junior (Mike Henry), an ineffectual twit. However, in doing so, she raises the ire of his father, Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), the embodiment of every southern Sheriff cliché ever invented. By picking up Carrie, Bandit has doomed his mission to failure by having a permanent law enforcement tail in his quest for getting some tail of his own.
* One question as far as the timeline of the film: Was the wedding at 7 a.m., because Bandit and Snowman get the Coors early in the morning (by breaking in, since no one’s around)? Picking up Carrie is almost immediately after.
Smokey and the Bandit is a film that is dependent entirely on the charisma of the three main actors to succeed. Wisely, the time element of getting the Coors back to Big and Little Enos is consistently emphasized, as is the pursuit (personal and professional) by Sheriff Justice. However, if it weren’t for Reynolds’ cocky lackadaisical attitude, Fields’ girl-next-door innocence and Gleason’s foul-mouthed verbosity, the film would never have succeeded. In the 2006 Special Edition DVD, Reynolds revealed that the studio didn’t want Sally Field because they thought she wasn’t sexy enough. He convinced them otherwise.
