The Reel Booze Podcast #19 - Smokey and the Bandit

For a description, I'm just going to copy and paste my notes then go back to bed.
I've got a wicked case of Ebola or something...


The Reel Booze Podcast #19 - Smokey and the Bandit

Taglines-
Time to take to the road, for a quiet little drive in the country...or not.

"What we have here is a total lack of respect for the law!"

It's Burt Reynolds, Sally Field and Jackie Gleason, in high gear and hot water!

Meet Bo Darville, aka, "The Bandit." Smokies (Cops) hate him. Guys dig him. And even girls can't get enough of him!

ALTERNATE TAGLINES

Coors - like having sex in a canoe; it’s fucking close to water!

A movie that is going to BBQ your ass in molasses!

Legitimizing rednecks since 1977.

ALTERNATE CASTING
Bandit - Norm McDonald
            Seth McFarlane
            Fuckin’ Clooney
Cledus - Danny McBride
Justice - Eric Stonestreet (Cam)
Carry - Kaley Cuoco

Jr - Steve Carell

ALTERNATE THEME SONG

Jesus Built My Hotrod
5.0 Ford

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• Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. born February 11, 1936 in Lansing, MI.

• Hal Brett Needham  born March 6, 1931 in Memphis then on October 25, 2013 he was murdered. By Cancer.

• Budget was 5.3 mil, then two days before shooting according to Needham in THE BANDIT,  “they sent a hatchman down and took a million away from me.”  subtract the million Burt got and they shot with a 3.3mil budget.
  
  Smokey and the Bandit was a runaway box-office hit, raking in more than $126 million as the second-highest grossing movie of 1977

          I have no idea what was #1 that year...the Black Stallion maybe? Horse   

movies do well, they tug at your heartstrings and make the ladies weep. Kinda like Jay.

• Hal Needham wrote & directed Smokey and the Bandit, him a Burt were good friends, he was Burt’s stunt double & roommate for something like 11 years. People were begging Burt to not make this movie. I can only guess because no one had faith in Needham.
  
  Where did the idea come from? On the set of Gator people kept stealing their beer cuz they were getting $20 a six pack. Couldn’t get Coors east of the Mississippi River

• In 1977, Coors was unavailable for sale east of Oklahoma. A 1974 Time magazine article explains why Coors was so coveted that one would be willing to pay the Bandit such a high price to transport it. Coors Banquet Beer had a brief renaissance as certain people sought it out for its lack of stabilizers and preservatives. The article says that future Vice President Gerald Ford hid it in his luggage after a trip to Colorado in order to take it back to Washington. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had a steady supply airlifted to Washington by the Air Force. The article also mentions Frederick Amon, who smuggled it from Colorado to North Carolina and sold it for four times the retail price.[13] The lack of additives and preservatives meant that Coors had the potential for spoiling in a week if it were not kept cold throughout its transportation and in storage at its destination. This explains the 28-hour deadline.[14]

• Scheduled as a 30 day shoot.
• Shot around Atlanta.
• A big movie back then shot 3 pages a day, Hal was shooting 16 pages a day.
• HOW MANY DAYS DID THEY END UP SHOOTING?

 

Filming Dates 30 August 1976 - fuck it, I just emailed Douglas County Film Trail

Release date‎: ‎May 27, 1977 grossed over $126million

From THE BANDIT “Universal said they wanted Sally...of course Burt took credit for that.”

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THE CARS!

• Snowman is driving a 1974 Kenworth W900.

Stories are all over the place!!

• From Mental Floss-.
  Needham saw a picture of a Pontiac Trans Am in a magazine and thought up a product placement idea. He asked for six Trans Ams, but Pontiac would only agree to send four. Needham also asked for four Bonnevilles for Jackie Gleason's cars, but he only got two. By the time they shot the final scene, they had wiped out three Trans Ams and the fourth wouldn't start after all of the stunts, so another car was used to push it into the scene. For Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Needham asked for and received 10 Trans Ams and 55 Bonnevilles with no trouble.

• From THE BANDIT - Pontiac gave them 4 sedas which they used as cop cars, and 2 Trans Ams. By week 2 both Trans Ams were destroyed and they had to go beg for more.

• From “The Filming of Smokey and the Bandit Part 1”
  They brought 8 Tans Ams in off a trailer
  ‘77 Special edition Trans Ams

          Heard between 3 and 20 T/A’s were used

          At least four Pontiac Trans Ams were used for the movie.

• At WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO a few years ago, Burt said they went through 12 T/A’s.

• The Pontiac Firebird T/As were actually 1976 models with the soon-to-be-released ’77 front ends.To catch viewers attention, Pontiac also put a decal on the hood scoop announcing “6.6 LITRE”. Previous to this, the engines were called out by the engine’s cubic inch size…using liters was both a way of grabbing people’s attention AND coving-up the fact that these Firebirds produced much LESS horsepower than the 1969 muscle cars.

• Needham saw a picture of the Pontiac Trans Am and knew it was the right car for “the Bandit” (Burt Reynolds). He came up with a plan to sell the idea to Pontiac as a great product placement idea AND he understood that they’d destroy them in the stunt scenes…so he requested six T/As but only got four.Sure enough, 3 of the 4 were totalled and for the final scene, they had to use another car to push the 4th in to the scene. Why? Because after that 4th T/A took a beating from the stunts, her engine just wouldn’t start.

• Jumping the bridge was the last shot filmed.

• The “bridge jump” pretty much destroyed the car - one attempt, stock car, and it fucked.it.up. Shit blew off all over, the wheels were bent up under the wheel wells.

• The original Pontiac engine wasn't strong enough to power the car for the bridge jump sequence, however, so a Chevrolet engine was installed in the jump car.

• Mr. Reynolds eventually got his own Trans-Am (1978). He had the 8.2-liter engine tuned and fully customized to bring power up from the original out-put of 220hp to a head turning 600hp. That same “tribute” T/A was auctioned off earlier this year for $275,000.

• From MAKING OF on YOUTUBE
  The only Trans Am that made it thru the movie had all the cameras on it

          Sheriff cars - can remember seeing 10 at one time.

• IMDB - Three Trans-Am cars were used in this movie. Director Hal Needham claims in the DVD documentary that they could barely run towards the end of the film's production.

__________________________________________________________________

VARIOUS MALARKEY

Rumor is there were 2 semi-trailers w/the horses.

“Old Hickory House” the biker bar fight bar

Fred the dog’s real name was “HAPPY”

Jackie Gleason had no lines. Before a shot Needham would say, “Ok, yer going to go over there and this is going to happen...what do you want to say?”

Gleason wrote the lunchroom scene because there was no scene in the script with both of them.

Then Burt said he’d never do another scene with Jackie.

The football field accident.
The car hit the dugout and hit a couple of kids. The field was wet and they didn’t know it until they tried to stop the car after the jump so they steered it towards the dugout.

Burt and Sally’s stunt doubles got married during the shoot.

Hal Needham - first human to test the airbag.

Universal originally removed the country music and replaced with an orchestral score.
Needham told them to put the other music back in!

Premiered the movie in New York City and it didn’t go over well.
It wasn’t made for that audience, it was made for southerners and the numbers proved it.

With the success of Smokey and the Bandit, Hal Needham was finally able to move out of Burt’s place.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK WAS A BIG FAN OF THE FILM.His daughter Patricia revealed that every Wednesday her father would screen films on the lot in his office. The last one he ever screened was Smokey and the Bandit, his favorite film of his last few years.

Sally was considered ugly that’s why she’s called FROG.

Or
Bandit calls Frog (because she's restless and always hopping around)

Jerry Reed was one of country music's most innovative guitarists. After befriending Reynolds, he made his film debut opposite Burt in 1975's "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings" and co-starred with him once again, in "Gator" (1976), before appearing in "Smokey."

"Buford T. Justice" sounds like a made-up name for a lawman, but "Smokey" lore has it that there really was such a person. The real-life Buford T. was supposedly a cop that Reynolds' father had known when he was a small-town Florida police chief

Bandit's real name? It's barely ever uttered in the movie, but it's Bo Danville.

Jackie Gleason would often ask his assistant for a “hamburger” while on set…that was his code word for a glass of bourbon.

In late 2017, Universal Pictures acquired Edgar Wright to direct a reimagining/reboot of the first film, due to the summer of 2019 release.