A Night With Burt Reynolds & Smokey and the Bandit

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Hal Needham

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason

From: Universal

Now, here’s a 70’s film I’ve seen many times before throughout the years, but never on the big screen, and never quite like this.

Turner Classic Movies this month has done a deal where they go to 10 different cities and with a free pass printed out online, you can watch a classic movie on the big screen with an actor from the movie getting interviewed by a TCM host. The other 9 cities got more prestigious pictures, but Tampa got this movie (fitting, really) and the special guest star was Burt Reynolds. As it was being held in the Tampa Theatre-a joint I never visited before but I knew was huge-I figured there would be a lot of people willing to see Burt and the film live. I was correct.

I got there 2 hours before they started letting people in, and as I figured there was already a good-sized line. Overall, in a building that I hear has almost1,500 seats, many of them were filled. Some people got there in the late morning to wait in line! Me waiting for 2 hours to get in doesn’t seem so bad in comparison. There were many hardcore fans there.. to the point that people dressed as The Bandit and some ladies wore wedding veils. LARP’ing at this movie!

You can get a recap of what happened by reading this article, but I’ll try to be brief. Burt didn’t live up to his alleged reputation of not being the nicest person. He was on his best behavior here during the interview, and he got a great reception from the audience. They also loved the movie, laughing at all the funny moments/dialogue and cheering on the action. It was definitely a great way to see this flick.

The movie is not high art by any means (you don’t want to spend too much time thinking logically about the plot) but it’s definitely crowd-pleasing and you enjoy all of the characters, so that’s why it’s so beloved and was only out-grossed in ’77 by a little film called Star Wars. It’s a simple tale where The Bandit and Snowman have to go from Georgia to Texarkana, Texas and back to pick up a crapload of Coors Beer (back when Coors wasn’t sold out East); The Bandit finds a runaway bride, so the father of the groom, the gruff good old boy Buford T. Justice (Gleason, in a great performance) goes after him. I’m sure you know the rest, as I presume most people have seen this already. If not, check it out.

As Burt himself noted at the screening, it was good clean fun as while cops crash their cars, none of them ever got hurt. So, you can’t hate the movie; it’s just a lot of fun. The second and third movies, though… feel free to hate those crap films.

I’ll be back on Friday night, but that’s no April Fool’s joke.