When wealthy Southern Magnate Big Enos Burdette decides he needs a truckload of Coors Beer to celebrate his race car driver in the Atlanta Southern Classic, he has only one problem…... Coors Beer is illegal in Georgia. He needs a driver who can smuggle it from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta in 28 hours. Enter the Bandit, a driving legend. Along the way he picks up a runaway bride is prusued by Sherrif Beauford T. Justice and the stage is set for one of the greatest car chases in cinematic history and the second biggest box office draw in 1977.
Smokey and the Bandit came into being when legendary stuntman Hal Needham wanted to break into directing. He wrote Smokey and started pitching a script to studios as a low-budget B-movie starring Jerry Reed. Needham ran into roadblocks as he was known as a stuntman and not a writer/director. That’s the weird thing about Hollywood…to this day, a studio and producers would rather take a chance on a person who barely knows the roles and duties of a director than give a job to somebody established in another role
Fortunately, for us Needham had been living in Burt Reynolds's house for nearly 10 years. In 1977, Reynolds was the biggest box office draw in America, having found success in movies like Deliverance and The Longest Yard. Reynolds committed to star in the movie and Universal gave them $5.4 million.
THE EDGE
The movie is best described by Burt himself, as "a good popcorn movie. After you're done watching it, you're gonna want to watch some more."
Alfred Hitchcock called it one of his favourites because it's just fun. It's not pretentious and doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is....a giant car chase. Everything leads up to it and everything comes off the action in the cars. The script does nothing but serve to get the audience into the cars and those cars to fly through the air.
Without the talents of Burt Reynolds, Sally Field and Jackie Gleason this movie would have been very forgettable. Their ability to perform with very little material carries this movie. According to Needham, all of Gleason's dialogue was improvised on the spot, including this scene:
The unique combination of on-screen talent, great stunts and a soundtrack that works as well in Smokey as the Godfather theme works in the Godfather, you've got a great movie. "Eastbound and Down" by Country music star and #2 on the callsheet Jerry Reed works perfectly in this movie. Try to imagine this scene without the title song:
It would still be cute, but Jerry Reed's Eastbound and Down makes this scene move! It makes you get out of your seats and jump!
THE LOWDOWN
Making Smokey would have been a slog as it takes place entirely on location and doesn't go back to the same place twice. Every day you are unpacking trucks in the morning, shooting all day, and packing them again at night so the trucks can move to the location of the next day's shoot. You'd probably have a move in the middle of the day too. They started shooting on August 31, 1976, so your days are pretty long and you’d be shooting sun up to sundown. After a few weeks of this, you’d be ready for it to be over.
This is what you'd be building:
These are tow rigs. Any time you see a scene that takes place in a car, it's usually rigged up like this or on a low flatbed truck called a process trailer. But it looks like with Smokey, all the work in the Trans AM was done on tow rigs. Take notice while watching how fast they are going, probably 70-80 mph, most shows, they go a lot slower.
It should be noted that a stunt coordinator is not some dummy with a death wish or reckless abandon — they are highly skilled tradespeople. A stunt coordinator, in a lot of ways, is a director. They have to know about how the camera works, able to direct actors, and they need to create the illusion that something is dangerous while executing it in a way that keeps the cast and crew safe. No easy task. When a stunt is being performed, the director is usually sitting back and watching, it’s the Stunt Coordinator running the show.
This movie is essentially a huge car chase. By far the most dangerous, terrifying, exhilarating, and incredible thing to shoot is a car chase. When you are on set and see a car flying through the air with your own eyes it’s awe-inspiring. But it’s gotta be done safely and everybody needs to walk away. Hal Needham was the best in the biz as a Stunt Coordinator, but accidents still happen…
All in all, ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ would be an exhausting, but great movie to work on.
THE JIST
Smokey and the Bandit is the perfect movie to watch with friends on a rainy afternoon. It has the right combination of clever humour and high-quality stunts.
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