Smokey AndThe Bandit

pretty amazing there's never been a Smokey.. thread or poll. i mean considering all the discussions we've had about
the Police Academy series (at least 9 threads)!

how's about this for worst movie idea ever; Smokey IS The Bandit?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4Ht2opvqY

We haven't even had a Hal Needham thread!

Although we did come close with this:

Cannonball Run: Classic or Dud?

did Hal Needham invent the idea of the 'blooper' as a popular 'thing' i wonder? i don't recall seeing movie out-takes anywhere until i saw the end of Canonball Run. seemed like a really cool, fun thing to do at the time but now everybody does it on DVDs, tv specials etc.

I appreciated how Anchorman went right ahead and threw in a Smokey blooper in its end reel.

Bufurd T. Justice is one of the underrated comic movie characters. The sheriff dude from the two Roger Moore Bond movies is just a pale imitation.

No Burt Reynolds thread, so I'll hijack this one.

Deal: I like poker films and found this one in a dump bin. I've never really understood the straight-to-video market--do they usually make their money back, or were there actually designs on getting this into theatres in 2008? Pretty terrible, but not without interest. Blatantly plagiarized from The Color of Money; at least once (when Reynolds becomes a player again), the story is elided because I think the filmmakers are hoping you've seen The Color of Money and can fill in the missing motivations and explanations yourself. Reynolds is sort of still in Jack Horner mode, and he's not flattered by the camera. Vince Van Patten plays himself; only knowing him from Rock 'n' Roll High School, I didn't realize he was a poker-tour guy. Charles Durning looks very, very old, which he was (85). Dreadful Blueshammer-style soundtrack.

In a teaser trailer for the film (billed as Smokey is the Bandit), Gleason appears in character as Justice, explaining to the audience that to defeat the Bandit he would adopt the attributes of his prey, "becoming (my) own worst enemy". A publicity still of Gleason apparently shows him in costume as the Bandit.[5]

Seriously, this had potential to have become the Fight Club of the 80s.

Freud says the fears we're running from are actually the things we desire. What if we're our own fears in the first place?

Also missed opportunity: Jackie Gleason starring in Manhunter.

I'd never seen this movie, but a confluence of inspirations led me to finally watch it last night. What a relic. I guess you had to be there? But it's kind of fascinating all the same. Clearly made for pennies, barely has a script, sure doesn't have a plot, pretty sure it's mostly improvised, basically the dumbass template for even dumbassier "Dukes of Hazzard" (but 90 minutes long), 90% Burt at his most charismatic (and smug, though now I finally get the Norm impression) and Sally (playing ditzy) or Jackie blowing his top, the rest car crashes or Jerry Reed goofing with his dog. Just a weird movie all around. And yet I guess it does zip along. There's one random shot, after Snowman gets beat up in a bar (no doubt they decided to stage a bar fight that morning, just to give us more action), where the camera tracks him slowly through a parking lot, bruised and bloodied, and it might be the only moment of actual craft in the whole film, and one of the few times you can see a '70s anti-establishment me-against-the-world drama pop out from under the slapstick Looney Tunes hood.

Anyway. Smokey and the Bandit. The entire time I kept thinking if this movie were made today he'd be shot by some cop with a canon five minutes in.

Knowing that it was one of Alfred Hitchcock's favorite films will have you contemplate ideas about what entertainment is and what is the nature of the filmmaker's craft.

Kinda like how so many chefs, when asked about their favorite foods, answer McDonald's (or similar).

When I watched it a few years ago I kept reminding myself, all of this is about smuggling Coors beer east of the Mississippi. And within a couple of years of the film you could buy Coors nationwide, which must make the plot of the film seem extraordinarily frivolous and pitiful to the contemporary viewer. I guess that is a McGuffin of sorts.

I came across this all-around pretty good essay:

https://www.salvationsouth.com/the-south-we-thought-we-saw-in-smokey-and-the-bandit-ed-southern/

One thing it mentions is that Coors was apparently unpasteurized, and the reason it was (maybe) not allowed east of the Mississippi was that it could spoil and make people sick. So it was for their own protection! Which makes it all the more 'Merican to have people disregard the warning and smuggle it in regardless.

If the movie were less (endearingly?) half-assed it might have made a great screwball revival comedy. There's something sort of innocently old fashioned about it as it is.

I still don't get it, and probably never will.

i first watched this a couple years ago during early covid lockdown and actually thought it was a blast. innocently old-fashioned is a good description

I grew up on this but haven't seen it in decades - watched a YouTube of the bar-fight scene and now want to see it again. Am wondering if I'll end up liking Jerry more than Burt if I rescreen it now.

That essay by Ed Southern is really good! Good observations about the 1970s South vs. today's South.

My dad was a big car guy and had a CB radio in the early 80s (and later a radar detector) so the whole Smokey and the Bandit/Convoy/Dukes of Hazzard milieu was just part of the air we breathed back then.

I remember on one of our family trips my dad having to turn off the CB radio because the truckers were talking too blue for our conservative Christian ears.

A big part of why Hitchcock loved it was by the time of its release, he was a major shareholder in Universal Pictures and he made a lot of money off of it. (He also probably enjoyed all the "HEEHAW FUCK THE LAW" aspects too.)

This movie cost $5 million to make and made over $200 million. In today's money that's a budget of $20 million and a take of $500 million!!!!! Incredible.