"For the money, for the glory, and for the fun...mostly for the money. ": A Burt Reynolds Memorial Poll

caught him in an "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (he was 24) not long ago, also featuring Harry Dean Stanton and Murray Hamilton

https://goo.gl/images/Vx1TkR

oh hell, anyway

https://goo.gl/images/Vx1TkR

and I'd forgotten the Bill Forsyth film, Breaking In, was written by John Sayles.

I rewatched Cannonball Run last night out of sheer nostalgia having not seen it since I was a kid.

ILL ADVISED

Ha! I watched it last night too. Not a good movie by any means, but kind of endearingly slapdash?

The commentary track by Needham & Albert Ruddy has to be heard to believed.

I mean, Gumball Rally showed you can make a coherent and funny movie about the Cannonball Baker race. So it's very obvious Needham & Co. threw their hands in the air and instead had a Match Game/Hollywood Squares party at 110 MPH on Fox's dime and just remembered to film it.

not even ~endearingly~ slapdash for me

Jackie Chan having to play Japanese was O_o

that's like the only thing I remember about that film

XP Apparently he was really angry about that.

Some interesting trivia is that both Cannonball Run and Stroker Ace were developed as action properties for Steve McQueen, and only became comedies after Reynolds signed on.

Voted Sharky’s, such a beautifully-shot, eerie, romantic, occasionally brutal film

Sharky's is pretty damn exploitative. What I remember after my watching it (on VHS!) years ago is an extreme close-up of Rachel Ward's ass, shot from the POV of Sharkey, after we've seen her get abused, and how terrible, TERRIBLE, the Ward-Reynonlds sexy banter is -- it's Airplane!-level worthy of parody.

But he's solid, actually, in a TV cop sort of way.

I was a bit taken aback by the skeeviness of Sharky's as well. It does have some great photography and other virtues but I'm not eager to rewatch it any time soon.

Is it as slimy as, say, 52 Pick-Up? 'Cause I love that kind of greasy early '80s thriller that makes you want to take a shower after you watch it.

Reynolds WAS a TV cop in a show called Hawk (part Native, of course). I think Dan August was a private eye.

I'm sure Burt was no day at the beach as a person, but his romantic relationship of a couple years with Dinah Shore suggested he must have good qualities. You don't hear bad words about Dinah, and she was about 20 years older.

I make no judgments about Reynolds as a person and don't care. He did admit in an interview I read years ago that Sally Field was the one who got away.

Is it as slimy as, say, 52 Pick-Up? 'Cause I love that kind of greasy early '80s thriller that makes you want to take a shower after you watch it.

― grawlix (unperson)

Soaking in it!

Is it as slimy as, say, 52 Pick-Up? 'Cause I love that kind of greasy early '80s thriller that makes you want to take a shower after you watch it.

Burt beats the hell out of her mid-movie, followed by a romantic interlude, and then at the end pushes her like a child on a tire swing, ymmv

Rachel Ward, also in in Against All Odds, set the bar for terrible femme fatales in the early Reagan era.

Burt beats the hell out of her mid-movie, followed by a romantic interlude, and then at the end pushes her like a child on a tire swing, ymmv

― Scam jam, thank you ma’am (Sparkle Motion),

Ah yes! Then carries her to bed to the accompaniment of syrupy strings where he gives her a bit of stroker ace.

I also remember the governor character in Shakey being a homosexual?

The scenes in the vice squad room at the beginning (with Charles Durning as the chief) reminded me of Fort Apache, unperson, if that helps.

Fort Apache, now THERE's a sleazefest

Yeah, Burt & Dinah were like the Ashton & Demi of that time. He was also once married to Judy Carne which is somewhat intriguing.

Are there any fans of White Lightning here? It's pretty tight and watchable. Good cast including Bo Hopkins, the James Dean of the good ol' boys.

Haven't seen WL... Bo Hopkins is also in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, a western w/ a decent pedigree (script by Eleanor Perry, Sarah Miles as co-star) that some people like.

Anything to recommend Best Little Whorehouse besides Durning? (i've seen his "Side Step" dance, that's a hoot.)

I have memories of my parents being mildly scandalized that we third graders were saying the title aloud. I know Durning got an Oscar nod. I just looked it up: a box office hit!

well, Dolly Parton was fairly new to films at that point too.

Another intriguing title is W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), which hasn't gotten a video release, was directed by John Avildsen immediately before Rocky, and has Burt as a con man pursued by a cop played by... Art Carney. Get it?

(i'm more a Carney than a Gleason fan, so i'd rather watch that one than Smokey)

Write in for Win, Lose, or Draw.

If Burt was able to grow a mustache starting at 16 years old, and he lived to be 82, and his mustache renewed itself in full every month or two, then by my calculations he grew his mustache nearly 500 times over the course of his life.

White Lightning also Laura Dern's debut, at age six.

Now, I'm not going to say Shamus (1973) is a great film which it's not, but it's a solid private eye flick, it has Dyan Cannon, and I love watching it because it features lots of location shots of my neighborhood. Burt plays a detective named Shamus, which is a funny coincidence.

Going back to Bo Hopkins, he was also the crazed outlaw who gets blown away in the first shootout in The Wild Bunch.

I always thought it was funny that Hopkins gets unceremoniously whacked in every Peckinpah film he was in.

White Lightning is a terrific Southern action flick, Gator less so (Jerry Reed walks away with that one playing a redneck mobster).

Between Deliverance, White Lightning/Gator, and Smokey, Burt pretty much nailed down the Southern market in the '70s

Burt was THE southern alpha male of his era. Many of those movies are big part of my childhood. I saw Cannonball Run in a drive in with my folks as a kid.

This is at Spinelli's Pizza in Louisville.

http://l.yimg.com/g/images/spaceout.gif

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3803/9674933558_6962d41c78_z.jpg

Lol

There's a lot of good and bad on this list, but Smokey & The Bandit works on every level and is infinitely rewatchable. So that.

I only saw it a few years ago. I'm assuming it was one of those "you had to be there" things, or at least you had to have seen it when you were a kid to still appreciate it, but not only didn't I laugh once, I didn't even understand what I was theoretically supposed to be laughing at.

the Bill Forsyth film, Breaking In, was written by John Sayles.

Reynolds was totally miscast in that film and basically ruined it. It was when he was several years past his big box office run and he thought it was enough to just be Burt Reynolds in front of a camera and he'd done his job.

what did you think of Forsyth's film with Robin Williams? (recut by the studio, barely released)

I didn't see that one

re Southernness, Reynolds lied early on that he'd been born in Georgia, not Michigan

Believed he was born in the same town as Gram Parsons, I believe.

Believe he claimed, meant to type

Important day in my moviegoing life was a double feature of Cannonball Run II and 9 to 5 when I was 9 or so.

I watched Hooper last night for the first time - definitely enjoyable, much more in the Smokey & the Bandit vein.

Although I gotta say: Hal Needham’s movies look like fkn local news, they are SO workmanlike it’s almost depressing sometimes. The stunt sequence at the end was so cool but it was shot in such a “fuckit whatever” way that you miss the scope. Everything’s either close up or too far away, lol. But I do love how much room he gives Reynolds & the other actors to just be natural. Lots of personality, even if there is minimal (read: zero) flair

i think Burt's flaw (tied in w/him turning down a number of projects that wound up being exceptionally good) was thinking his talent was for the wisecracking mustache ladies' man thing (which let's face it was probably perfected and made actually likable by Selleck w/Magnum P.I.) when i think he was actually much better as a more serious actor. I think he marginalized himself to the point that he wound up doing Golden Girls cameos and making jokes on Carson and starring in Stroker Ace, when you see him being a bit more tough and even brutal in Deliverance and Sharky's Machine, or just what he did in Boogie Nights (which is a genuinely *great* performance across the board) you see what kind of opportunities he caused himself to miss. I mean it clearly paid off for him, but I think he had an "it" factor potential for other genres he never completely fulfilled.

I didn't know until I read the obit on Alfred's blog that hated the experience of making Boogie Nights, didn't like PTA, and hasn't even seen the whole film!

*Burt hated

As he made clear, the plaudits from the Hollywood community -- he really wanted that Oscar nod -- touched him more than the work itself.

Jackie Chan having to play Japanese was O_o

This. I saw Cannonball in the theatre with a friend and was mortified how the audience laughed at that "Asian music cue" EVERY damn time the film cut to Jackie's car. :/ (Cinemagoing evening was a disappointment from the start - sneak preview of Spielberg's "Raiders" we'd originally intended to see was ultimately canceled or sold out or something)

omar otm. he was clearly talented enough to be more than a big fish in a small pond. he was good at being Burt but you gotta wonder at the “what if’s” if he had spread his wings, acting wise

can't believe no one has mentioned . . . a place called evening shade

<3

i also really like him in Gunsmoke. I dvr the reruns & i like when his episodes pop up now and then. Such a strapping young man <3

Film noir homage? Maybe Aldrich reused a shot from Kiss Me Deadly?

I watched Hooper last night for the first time - definitely enjoyable, much more in the Smokey & the Bandit vein.

Although I gotta say: Hal Needham’s movies look like fkn local news, they are SO workmanlike it’s almost depressing sometimes. The stunt sequence at the end was so cool but it was shot in such a “fuckit whatever” way that you miss the scope. Everything’s either close up or too far away, lol. But I do love how much room he gives Reynolds & the other actors to just be natural. Lots of personality, even if there is minimal (read: zero) flair

saw Smokey And The Bandit for the first time at a $5 screening this week: at first I was taken aback at the sometimes "set and forget" staging of some of the turnaround chase scenes, but it's not like there's no dynamics in other moments (the sense of propulsion in the Bandit / Cledus CB scenes!), and I ended up figuring that Needham was giving the viewer a perspective of what an IRL viewer might be startled by in those moments.

yeah maybe he started out shooting stock film or something — it’s pretty funny once you start to notice it

Watched Sharky’s Machine tonight. Kinda fun, definitely skeezy (though to answer a question from upthread, it’s not nearly as ugly as 52 Pickup; the scene where Burt slaps Rachel Ward around aside, most of the implied depravity is offscreen), but a bit overlong. This is actually time that I’ve managed to not like Charles Durning in a movie, which is a pretty dubious accomplishment. Henry Silva’s sicko villain was interesting, and there are some nicely staged sequences: I especially liked the mid-movie evidence processing montage sequence for it’s efficiency; Burt finds a nice way to avoid an info dump.

*actually THE FIRST time

ha ha! wow

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, September 10, 2018 1:25 PM (one week ago)

Film noir homage? Maybe Aldrich reused a shot from Kiss Me Deadly?

― Josefa, Monday, September 10, 2018 1:29 PM (one week ago)

saw Vertigo on 70mm yesterday: San Francisco outside Midge's apartment window is a B&W still by day, colour film by night.

Just found out (via the 80s All Over podcast) that Burt turned down Terms of Endearment to do Stroker Ace, home of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bRrhldHyfo

Jeezus.

it's a WFMU show of Burt-related movie music

http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/81415

At Long Last Love is an "overlooked masterwork," says Richard Brody in this week's New Yorker. Hm.

director's cut showing in NYC along w/ Nickelodeon's

Of interest: https://www.indiewire.com/2013/06/at-long-last-the-definitive-version-of-at-long-last-love-131623/

Also fwiw that BluRay Bogs talks about is oop.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I don't say this often but

Oh for fuck's sake

whut

rmde @ ilx

Found Fuzz in the library. (A Kino Lorber DVD--a couple of days after seeing Kino Lorber's The Image Book. Eclectic company.) It's not nearly as bad as you might fear...but after a promising start, not as good as you want it to be. MASH must have been the most influential film of the early '70s--you could probably list at least a couple of dozen attempts to duplicate all the stuff people liked about it. (The claustrophobic-movie-poster thread is a good place to find such films, including Fuzz.) Fuzz starts with Altman regulars Tom Skerritt and Bert Remsen; also, pre-American Graffiti Charles Martin Smith. Two really weird things: Raquel Welch is barely in it--10 minutes, maybe--and she and Reynolds have virtually no interaction at all, even though they're working out of the same precinct.

Odd trivia: the writer of White Lightning and its sequel Gator once spent two years in a French prison for attempting to smuggle guns to the IRA in Northern Ireland. William W. Norton, who also co-wrote Big Bad Mama.