Smokey and the Bandit

1977 truck movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen fells asleep a little before Burt Reynolds' first appearance.)

Plot: The titular outlaw drives a Pontiac Trans Am as a blocker for truck-driving pal Snowman as they attempt to illegally haul a load of Coors 1,800 miles in 28 hours in order to win a bet. On the way back, Bandit picks up a hitchhiker who has just fled from her wedding, an act which will later inspire Garry Marshall to make The Runaway Bride. The father of the groom, a tough sheriff named Buford T. Justice, chases relentlessly. Because the Bandit is played by Burt Reynolds, there's time to stop for sex.

On the surface, this is a chunk of 1970's sleazeballery, your typical counter-culture truck drivin' action/comedy flick. But this is the Shakespeare of truck drivin' films, less a movie really than a transcendent experience, a film that comes from some place you could never understand. Watching Smokey and the Bandit isn't like watching another movie. Well, at the very least, it shouldn't be like watching another movie. If you watch Smokey and the Bandit correctly, you really have to leave your body and watch yourself watching the movie, and I'm convinced that only the most virtuous viewers can make that happen. I watched this movie back in the late-70's, probably because my step-dad was a truck driver. I'd been to church, but watching Smokey and the Bandit is what really convinced me there was a God. How else could one explain Burt Reynolds' mustache? The speed of these vehicles? The human capacity for coming up with the idea that drives the plot of this movie--a bet to illegally transport Coors across state lines in time for Big Enos and Little Enos's party? Burt Reynolds is a force. There's no way his laugh, his crotch, his smile can possibly be organic. There are a limited number of possible effects that the Bandit character can have on individual audience members. Woman will at the very least want to smell Burt Reynolds, and in more extreme but also more likely cases, they will will want to have a sexual encounter with Burt Reynolds. And men? They will either shit in their pants or, in more extreme but not all that likely cases, want to have a sexual encounter with Burt Reynolds' hat. And almost everybody watching Burt Reynolds in this movie will want to get in his motor vehicle and drive it as fast as he can, just praying that somebody starts chasing him. But as amazing as Burt Reynolds is in this movie, it's really Jackie Gleason that is the heart and soul of this movie. Gleason, mostly improvising, has dialogue that John Keats wishes he would have been alive to write. No, I'll take that back. John Keats wishes he would have lived long enough to even hear lines like these:

"Give me a diablo sandwich, a Dr. Pepper, and make it quick. I'm in a God damn hurry."
"There's no way that you came from my loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I'm going to do is punch your mama in the mouth."
"You sumbitches couldn't close an umbrella."
"Get off of there, you Schnauzer's tit."
"My name is Smokey Bear and I'm tail-grabbin' your ass right now."
"Do what I say you pile of monkey nuts."
"Duck or you're gonna be talking out your ass."
"Nobody make Sheriff Buford T. Justice look like a possum's pecker."
"This happens every time one of these floozies starts poontanging around with those show folk fags."
"I'm going to barbecue your ass in molasses."

Combine writing like that with the cinematography, Burt Reynolds' mustache, and the grace of Sally Field and you've got yourself something a little closer to poetry than just your average movie. The incomparable Jerry Reed plays Snowman so well that you wonder how much of his life was spent talking on a CB radio. He also contributed a song or two that you won't be able to get out of your head for a week or so after you watch this movie, especially if you're like me and had to watch it six times straight. Paul Williams plays Little Enos, and he's not really a little person but I'm using my tag anyway. He wrote "An Old Fashioned Love Song" which became a hit for Three Dog Night, the first band I ever saw in concert. He also wrote "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays" for the Carpenters and, most importantly for me, "Rainbow Connection" for The Muppet Movie.

Two bits of Shane trivia: 1) I stopped wearing jeans, for obvious reasons, after seeing this movie. 2) Sally Field was my first lover.