Original subtitles

I guess you're asking yourselves why I came down those stairs,

walked across these boards, ambled past these props,

these theater trunks cluttered with memories of a thousand opening nights.

I guess you're asking yourself,

"What does that have to do with tonight's show?"

Well, I'll tell you. Nothing.

(COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING)

My name's Hal Needham. My face you will not recognize.

But I bet you've seen a lot of my work.

For 20 years I've been a Hollywood stuntman.

Not too bad, huh?

When a stuntman does that kind of driving,

he better have his act together

because there's no room for error.

But recently, I graduated.

I directed a movie.

And that movie starred a dear friend of mine,

my old roommate, a good old boy

that probably you people are gonna recognize like that.

MAN 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Burt Reynolds.

MAN 2: Burt Reynolds, the most exciting star on the screen today.

MAN 3: Burt Reynolds is Gator McKlusky.

Whether he's racing the law or chasing the ladies.

(GRUNTS)

MAN 4: Burt Reynolds, the quarterback who'll tackle anything.

You saw Charlie Bronson in the lens. (ALL LAUGH)

REPORTER: Now, you're Burt Reynolds' stuntman.

Where does Burt like to draw the line as far as

doing his own stunts are concerned?

Well, actually, I've never seen Burt draw the line.

He'll do just damn near anything you want done.

The insurance companies draw the line sometimes.

But really and truly he doesn't draw the line.

I've seen him do some things which is flat scary.

I mean, there's no other way to put it.

(GROANING WEAKLY)

INTERVIEWER: What is the job of a stuntman?

(CHUCKLES)

GARY COMBS: The objective of the stunt guy

is to come in and look as much as you can like the actor.

They dress you like him, even fix your hair, whatever.

And whatever they want to do, whether it'd be a horse fall or high fall

or who knows, a fight,

be able to do it as many times as you can do it without getting hurt.

BILLY BURTON: In the old days they would go out

and they would shoot four or five days with all stuntmen. No actors.

The wide shots were for stunt people.

And then they'll bring the actors out and they'd do the tight shots

and the medium shots.

If you're the biggest actor in the world,

you want to have the best stuntman

in the world next to you. Why not?

(GUNSHOTS)

Those goddamn bastards! Told me they weren't gonna shoot back!

(SQUAWKING)

Burt trusted Hal and knew

that Hal was gonna do the stunts

that would really make him look good.

(TIRES SCREECHING)

(GUNSHOT)

Hal and Burt were guys who appeared at a time in the '70's

when anything can happen.

Burt was an actor with all the accoutrements that an actor has.

And Hal Needham was a man of action.

MAN: Ready?

BARRETT: I've seen a lot of actors have good relationships with stuntmen,

but never like Hal and Burt did.

COMBS: That was the closest relationship

I ever saw in the picture business.

BURTON: But you don't wanna get too close to an actor. I don't believe...

(STAMMERING)

It's not gonna work out very good.

WOMAN: Okay, Hal. How did you meet Burt? Like, on Smokey and the Bear?

HAL: Smokey and the Bandit. And the Bandit.

Was that something that he's found as a property and then looked for you

to complete the movie or did you come first?

No, I wrote Smokey and the Bandit. Oh.

I understand you directed this movie. Yeah.

This is kind of an unusual case. Isn't it, Hal?

I mean, I've heard of actors turning director,

I've heard of writers turning director,

but never a stuntman.

HAL: I was doing a film with Burt down in Georgia called Gator.

That's the thread that put Smokey together.

We spent a lot of time in the swamp.

And I remember everyone said, "Weren't you scared in the swamp?"

Only Needham was from down there,

the rest of us were from other places.

He was like at home.

We had a lot of Coors beer we'd brought down from Los Angeles.

Because in those days, at the end of the work day

everyone got a beer.

Needham and I were talking about how the Coors kept

disappearing from our minibars.

So we finally realized that our housekeepers

were helping themselves to our beer.

So we asked them and they said, "What? It's Coors beer, man."

"What are you doing?"

She said, "No, I get, like, $20 a six-pack for this beer down here"

"'cause you can't get it."

Hal and I looked at each other and we said, "Well,"

"maybe we should make a movie"

"about getting Coors beer to the East Coast."

At the time, I really had some doubts

whether this was even true or not.

In other words, I don't know how you prohibit a beer company

from shipping beer from one geographical location to the other.

So we're like, "Let's just do a trucking movie"

"with Coors and fast cars"

"and let's see what we can come up with."

And at that time the trucking industry was very romantic.

Modern truckers and last American cowboys...

JOHN RADEWAGEN: He told me he was writing a screenplay.

Everybody said, "Nice pipe dream, Hal."

In between shots he'd be over in his room and he's scribbling down...

I said, "What are you doing?"

He'd say, "I'm writing a story."

And he told me a little about it

and I thought, "Okay, whatever," you know. (CHUCKLES)

They handed me this mash of legal pad notes

and scenes and characters and all this stuff.

I think my mother typed up the script for Smokey and the Bandit.

LEVY: We played with different names for the movie,

but I called it The Bandit at one point

or Bandit.

I wanted to do, hopefully, action comedy.

I just wanted to throw something on the screen

that people can be entertained with.

And I think that laughter is contagious,

and I think people enjoy action.

Not violence, action.

LEVY: We were gonna sell it to a company called AIP

which made small exploitative genre movies.

That was its first incarnation.

We wanted to do something on our own.

Look out!

(THUDS)

ENGELBERG: Hal Needham had made a living sort of falling on his head

for 20 or 30 years.

And he's a nice guy, not a Rhodes scholar.

RADEWAGEN: Hal said to me, "I'm getting too old"

"to bury my head in the dirt anymore."

In the back of his mind, he always wanted to be either a star or a director.

Every stuntman, every second unit guy, every cameraman,

everybody... You know the old joke.

Everyone wants to be a director.

He had the script that he had written

and he took it to Universal Studios

and he said, "I want to direct this movie."

People that ran the studios... (STAMMERS)

They, "He's a stuntman, he can't direct a movie."

"What are they talking about?"

Unless you have that movie star, that bankable movie star

that says, "I want to be the Bandit, " you're not gonna get it made.

RADEWAGEN: And they said, "It's a nice script."

"Do you think you can get your roommate to star in this?"

Hiya. How are ya?

Big star. Big star.

(CHUCKLES)

Burt and I were on the show together

and I came in one night and I say, "You know, Burt,"

I said, "I gotta find me an igloo, a teepee or something to live in"

"'cause I just got thrown out of the house."

And he said, "Hal, come on over."

"Stay at my place for a couple of days."

"I don't care."

My father moved in to Burt Reynolds' house.

He was gonna stay there for a week or two,

and then he was there for, like, 1 1 years. (LAUGHS)

I mean, if you could imagine putting together

a bachelor pad back in... It was...

I think of all the homes that Burt has had,

I think I like that one the best.

The first thing I think that people

would see when they go into the bedroom

is the mirrors on the ceiling.

BURTON: They were both single and had a lot of girlfriends

and a lot of fun.

BURT: Bathroom is big.

And it too has mirrors.

And tile, and I happened to...

Tile is my second favorite thing in life.

It just gives me joy. Tile.

If I could spend the rest of my life in a room,

it would be tiled and mirrored.

The dining room is early Indian.

I mean, Indian kind of design.

I think it's kind of classy.

Third favorite thing in my life is Indians.

If I could find an Indian with a mirror,

who did tile work,

I would probably be happy for the rest of my life.

(LAUGHS) (CHUCKLES)

I took the script home and gave it to Burt.

Burt looked at it and he said,

"Hal, that's the worst dialogue I've ever read in my life."

But he said the overall concept was pretty good.

He said, "If you can take my name power"

"and go get the money and if somebody is fool enough to let you direct it,"

"says you can direct it."

ENGELBERG: And Burt said, "You know there's only one man in America"

"who can direct this movie, it's Hal Needham."

ALL: We want Burt. We want Burt.

ENGELBERG: Had Burt said Adolf Hitler, I would've agreed.

Burt was a big movie star.

ALL: We want Burt.

MAN: Are you here to see Burt? Who else? Who else?

RUDDY: What happened was, there was so much goodness in Burt Reynolds

that he made people happy.

And that's a natural gift that he had.

Burt Reynolds, tough, sexy, superstar.

MAN: Is it a lot of pressure, Burt, being this kind of a sex symbol?

RUDDY: He struck such a chord with the American public.

We're so glad... I work alone.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

RUDDY: The humor and the joy, and the honesty, it was real.

So he became the number one star in the world.

Just one on the cheek? Huh?

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

I just think I'm the best Burt Reynolds there is.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

(APPLAUSE)

Hello.

Hello, sweetheart.

You like my bear?

MAN: If he gave you a few acting tips.

(ALL LAUGHING)

WOMAN: You should just come tonight

instead of running off to be with your girlfriend.

Where were the kids when you told them? Oh, I don't know.

MAN: What do you mean you don't know? Were they sitting there?

WOMAN: No, of course not.

You try carrying that around with you!

MAN: Son of a bitch!

I couldn't help it, damn it.

MAN: Scene.

BURT: It's wonderful to see somebody tackle something this difficult

and make it work.

Fear of failure is something that's ingrained in all of us.

You gotta fight through it

in order to be better.

INTERVIEWER: In a nutshell, could you tell me

what the story of Smokey and the Bandit is?

(BURT CHUCKLES)

I couldn't tell you what the story is of Smokey and the Bandit

if you put a gun to my head.

We had done two Burt Reynolds movies at United Artists,

a picture called Gator and a picture called White Lightning.

And it was the same movie over and over again.

He was the good old boy, slightly on the other side of the line

regarding law and order.

Gator. Gator McKlusky.

Shirley. Shirley. How are you, darling?

All right. Well, hi there.

BURT: I didn't wanna play good old boys for the rest of my life.

Same time I was offered a film that had "Get the tuxedo out"

written all over it.

It was a career-changing part.

I said no, and nobody could believe I said no.

My agent couldn't believe it...

It wasn't a question of money.

They were asking... They were offering me more money than Hal was,

but I'd promised Hal that I'd do this film.

HAL: And I'm gonna give credit to my roommate.

I mean, he put his career, his everything on the line,

so that I could have a shot at directing this.

Candidly, I could not determine

whether Hal had the ability to direct a movie or not.

Universal reluctantly agreed to make the picture.

LEVY: If you're gonna do a bootlegging movie, you need a blocker.

You got a truck driver and you got a blocking car guy. You got two.

I don't remember whether Burt or Hal

or both of them suggested Jerry Reed.

Hello.

(GRUNTS)

(SCREAMING)

LEVY: Jerry was a character.

Hello, ladies.

You know, and then you gotta have a girl.

Hi.

Who are you?

(HAL SPEAKING)

I wanted Sally Field and they had

a lot of people that were against that.

They kept saying she's not sexy.

And I said, "This nun is dangerously sexy."

And then we had to have someone chasing him.

My wish was with the Sheriff, let's put somebody in this movie that doesn't belong.

JACKIE GLEASON: And I made it just as incongruous as it could be.

First of all, I got a pencil mustache.

For a sheriff? A Southern sheriff with a pencil mustache?

When Hal left to do Smokey and the Bandit,

Hilton Green at Universal told Needham, he said,

"I hope you got your roller-skates on 'cause you can't do it."

They had no faith in Hal as a director.

RADEWAGEN: All the politics created a tremendous amount of pressure on Hal.

He'd put his reputation on the line

to get Smokey and the Bandit done.

DAVID: My father, he didn't play the game.

He wasn't a Hollywood guy. He was who he was.

He said, "If I didn't do Smokey and the Bandit,"

"I'd probably be picking up cans on the side of the road for a living."

WOMAN: We have some childhood photos of you,

and I thought maybe, Arnold, see if you can recognize.

HAL: I was a farm kid.

All I remember about that part of my life is using the mule's backside

as the compass up and down some cotton rows in Arkansas.

INTERVIEWER: Was there any time at all for hobbies or anything that

would give you pleasure or be fun? Hobbies?

Hobbies?

I can tell you've never seen a sharecropper.

Listen, just getting food on the table,

staying warm in the wintertime

was a major accomplishment.

My childhood, man, you gotta know

being a sharecropper's son is the bottom of the totem pole.

There's nothing lower than that.

DAVID: I think he told me they had dirt for floors.

But he was just very smart for somebody with a very limited education.

He told me one of his friends once said,

"I'd never seen anybody do so much with so few tools."

HAL: I was in the 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

But after about two and a half years

I could see that I got no credit

for my creativity or being a great soldier.

And I was a good soldier.

I said, "Gotta be a better way."

"I'm going west till my hat floats."

And next morning I was in my car heading for California.

I never worked in a movie, but I had all that experience.

I decided I was gonna be a stuntman.

When I got my first chance, I was ready.

I did a thing where I'm in an airplane,

the guy's riding along on a horseback

and I dive out of the airplane, or jump out the airplane,

and knock him off the horse, called a bulldog.

They paid me a lot of money.

People said I couldn't do it 'cause I was too small, too dumb.

I always had to prove otherwise.

Hal Needham.

(APPLAUSE)

HAL: We had 30 days to make a great movie.

The film commission has been very aggressive

in terms of luring not only us,

but a lot of film companies here.

It's very helpful.

They've closed highways for us,

they've torn up part of an old bridge for us

that we're gonna throw a car across.

It's just terrific.

MAN: (ON BULLHORN) Mark. Hold all the noise,

all the talk, everything. Quiet.

ENGELBERG: The entire picture was shot 16, 17 miles away

from the center of downtown Atlanta.

In the motion picture business, you put up a sign

that says, "Entering Mississippi,"

and you're entering Mississippi.

But with respect and affection for Hal,

this was as new to him, really, as it was to me.

When we went to work the first morning,

I got up, sort of, stood around waiting for things to happen.

The production manager asked me what we should do,

and I didn't have a clue.

LEVY: I remember the first day.

Hal had pulled up to the location.

Sitting under a tree in a director's chair

with his Fleetwood stretch gold limo next to him

was Jackie Gleason.

Jackie was sitting in this director's chair

wearing a black Gucci leisure suit

with a red carnation.

No one was there.

He was the first person on the set.

(LAUGHS)

INTERVIEWER: Was directing anything at all

like you thought it was going to be?

HAL: Well, I had no fear going in,

I mean, we're not doing Gone with the Wind or Fiddler on the Roof.

It's action comedy.

Just light it for the color and let's shoot it.

Speed, speed, speed.

BURT: In a big movie, you may do three pages a day.

Hal would shoot 16 pages a day. MAN: Yeah.

We did things that were insane,

right on the edge of insanity.

COMBS: Hal Needham directing Burt,

this was a brand new process for them.

I think he just wanted Burt to be Burt.

I had no qualms about going in there and saying, "Action."

(HAL SPEAKING)

(INTERVIEWER SPEAKING)

(HAL SPEAKING)

INTERVIEWER: Oh, my God.

(HAL SPEAKING)

PAUL WILLIAMS: We'd walk on the set,

and there's the Panavision camera and all the lights,

and there's Burt Reynolds.

BIG ENOS: Old legends never die. They just lose weight.

Seems like a legend and an out-of-work bum look a lot alike, Daddy.

And you go, "Oh, my God. How did I... How did I wind up here?"

(LAUGHING)

Now, gettin' to Texarkana and back in 28 hours, that's no problem.

It ain't never been done before, hot shit.

Watch your language, little lady.

The problem is that Coors beer.

You take that east of Texas and that's... That's bootleggin'.

BURT: There were a lot of things about the south

that I was embarrassed about,

but there were also things about the south that were wonderful.

I had hoped to make something out of that

in a way that nobody had seen.

Nobody thinks of Florida as being south,

but if we had enough time on this show,

I could take you places where you'd realize that this is the south.

I wanted to make it so bad when I was growing up here.

I mean, I really wanted to make it bad.

But great, great memories.

Really great memories.

My dad is a cowboy.

He's tough and leathery and the most honest man I've ever known in my life.

We had our little off and ons, but he was a normal kid.

He got in just as much trouble as anyone else.

BURT: He put me in jail one night for getting in a fight.

I remember he came in and he says,

"You kids, uh, your father's here."

"You can go home now."

"Your father's here. You can go home now."

And he looked to me and says, "Your father ain't here."

So I stayed there all night.

There's a saying in the south that,

"No man is a man until his father tells him he is."

BARRETT: I think his dad expected a lot out of him.

He was, kind of, the golden boy in football,

and it looked like he was gonna have

a great pro-career and college career.

BURT'S FATHER: He got tore up in his senior year in high school.

Tore the cartilage out of both sides of both knees.

WATSON DUNCAN: Well, he was sort of lost.

All he'd ever done was play football.

I was getting ready to cast and direct the play Outward Bound,

and Burt sat in the front row

in my English Literature class,

and he looked like the guy that I wanted

for the role of an alcoholic.

And I said, "You're out of your bird."

And I said, "I've never been in a play in my life."

I somehow went to that room

and walked in there, and he looked at me and he said, "Read."

I opened the book and I went, "The..."

And he said, "That's it. You got the part."

I saw something in Burt.

I saw the spark.

I hated Riverboat.

I hated doing it.

I had this character I called Dumb-Dumb the Whistleblower.

(IMITATES BLOWING HORN)

MAN: Boiler deck!

Carney, cut it to half speed.

Aye, sir! Half speed!

BURT: They would bring in the stuntmen.

They were the men, we were the boys.

(GUNSHOT) (SCREAMS)

The stars always migrated to the stunt guys.

They saw some realness.

There was no acting.

BURT: They were the jocks,

and that's what I've been.

(INAUDIBLE)

BURTON: Burt was very capable.

He could do it all,

but you can't do it all.

You gotta have a... You need a double.

HAL: Over at Universal, they just hired me

to come in and double somebody.

They'd say, "Yeah, here's your outfit."

I said, "Who am I doubling?"

They said, "Go down to the set and find somebody dressed like you",

"and that's who you're doubling."

I got down there and it was Burt.

Hal came in to do a stunt and he was gonna be doubling me,

and I thought, "Hell, I can do that."

(HORSE WHINNYING)

(MAN GRUNTS)

(HORSE WHINNYING)

BURT: He said, "You could be really handy."

"Handy" is a super-compliment for a stuntman.

He always said, "Actors are candy-asses. I don't wanna be an actor."

I've always felt that Burt

kind of wanted to be doing what Hal was doing.

HAL: He'd come out to my place on Saturday and Sunday,

and there'd be 18, 20 stuntmen out there practicing.

Most people are in less than top physical condition.

The first and foremost for every stuntman is a good warm up,

as it should be for you.

MAN: Cut! Cut, cut!

LEVY: They were the pirates, running around having a good time.

When I first saw that group,

reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang.

And we were kind of all the Hole-in-the-Wall gang.

That's a great line in that movie, Butch says,

"Listen, I've got vision, everyone else is wearing bifocals."

Hal Needham was the Butch Cassidy character.

COMBS: Hal was... He was an innovator, you know?

I've never seen him back off from nothing.

They say, "We want you to get in this car, go down there",

"turn it over at 90 miles an hour,"

"blow it up, come out on fire,"

"run across the street and die."

I say, "Okay."

BURTON: He, more or less, got a group of guys together

that could do anything.

HAL: We just started our own organization called Stunts Unlimited.

BURTON: Right when we started Stunts Unlimited,

we had our office on the lot of Paramount.

Paramount didn't even know we had an office there.

HAL: For four years,

we were the biggest, best-known organization in the world.

BURTON: Got up early in the morning, went to the set,

went through wardrobe, makeup, hair, got a burrito,

jumped on your horse, went to work.

It was just the best.

And then at night, when you get back to the hotel,

you stop at a bar, you have a couple of belts,

have a couple more, say, "Let's go, man!" (LAUGHS)

Off to the 1 7th Bar and Grill, close it down.

We would come in, the wranglers would be

going to work to get the horses ready for us.

We'd grab a shower and go to work.

It was... It was mad.

And Hal really had a rule that you didn't bring your wives on location

because of that, it would cause problems, you know.

Well, we went through a lot of wives.

What do you two do in the movie?

Well, we drink a lot of champagne in the movie.

We're sitting at a table and just

more or less talking with Pat McCormick and Paul Williams.

And then Burt Reynolds walks up to the scene.

Does Burt try to put the make on you?

No, we wish, but no. (BOTH LAUGH)

No, we're more or less hoping

that he'll let us put the make on him.

(TIRES SCREECHING)

MAN: Watch out! Everybody move back.

What you just saw was a scene from a new Burt Reynolds movie,

Smokey and the Bandit being filmed here at Lakewood Fairgrounds, Atlanta.

HAL: Pontiac division of General Motors gave us four sedans

that we used as police cars,

and they gave us two Trans Ams, and that was it.

By the second week of the picture,

both the Trans Ams had been destroyed,

and we had to go back and beg to get a couple more.

It's beautiful, huh? Honey, hush.

Jerry Reed went, "Honey, hush."

The way that he said it, it was the greatest looking gal you'd ever seen.

(TIRES SCREECHING)

You bet I love it.

I mean, I really get a kick out of driving a Firebird.

(INAUDIBLE)

There seems to be a thing about that bloody Trans Am.

As a symbol of your getaway steed,

the male animal,

it is the wannabe warrior who's now working at a factory somewhere

connecting with that character, that car.

Maybe it's the element of escape.

I mean, it's an escapist movie,

but it's a movie about escape.

That was a great answer.

INTERVIEWER: What about all the nutty stunts in cars?

You ever have a really far-out car run?

Oh, yeah. (CHUCKLES)

First of all, see, I love cars.

I can make a car talk.

Slant it sideways, spin it completely around 360 degrees,

do all those things with it.

I know exactly where that car is at.

MAN: Why do you drive like that, Hal?

Why do I drive like that?

Well, there's a couple reasons.

Number one's money, and the second one is we're making a movie.

BURTON: Fast cars, that was dangerous stuff.

Whether we're jumping a boat, or jumping a car, or jumping a horse,

it was all the...

It all stemmed from the basics of stunt work

where it all started with the horse and the fight.

(SHOUTS)

HAL: I believe, personally, that when you work with animals,

you stand a better chance of getting somebody hurt

than you do with automobiles

'cause the automobile doesn't care about

the explosions or the bullet hits

or the whatever it is,

it will go wherever you steer it,

and it'll only go as fast as you mash the accelerator.

It's like, the westerns just slowly faded out,

and here come all the car pictures.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, fearless, let me ask you this.

Has there ever been a stunt that somebody wanted to do in a movie

that you said flat-out, "No"?

HAL: (CHUCKLES) I've never turned down a stunt.

I said, if you can put a man on the moon,

you can damn sure figure out a way to do a stunt.

BURT: Couple of times, Hal did get in over his head.

There was a stunt where I should've said something,

but I thought, "Wait a minute."

"He's Hal Needham. Keep your mouth shut."

When you're doubling a leading man,

you wanna make him look like a hero.

LEVY: White Lightning, there's a scene where

Burt Reynolds' character being doubled by Hal Needham

is trying to escape police officers

when he sees a big old sand barge

pulling out into the middle of the river.

So he turns the car sideways and then

goes down the dock and jumps the car.

Think it was probably 70, 80 feet across to the barge.

Even though he was banged up pretty good, he got out of the car

and continued to play the part.

And after we cut, he fell down. (LAUGHS)

But he always finished the shot.

Well, I'll be damned.

BURT: Busted his spleen.

Damn near died.

You know, stuntmen, (CHUCKLES)

you can get hurt right there, and they just haul you off and keep shooting,

but the actor goes down, you're done.

HAL: We were shooting The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing,

he had a hernia down in the bottom of this canyon and it was

200 feet up.

I couldn't even get a chopper in there.

So I turned to Burt and I said, "Tell you what, son," I said,

"If you can hold onto my back,"

"leave some of that rope down here,"

"I can carry you out of here."

So I carried him up the hillside on my back.

(LAUGHING) We got to the top.

They had a chopper which I threw him in

and they forgot to get me,

and I was rolling on the ground, all out of breath.

(HAL LAUGHING)

That's just a shot of Burt and I down at his ranch in Florida.

It says, "To the best roomie a guy could ask for",

"and a hell of a man. Love, Burt."

BURT: We had this crazy schedule, that I used to wake up

in the morning and would be stumbling down the hall,

and there'd be a note on the bathroom door that said,

"The place is yours, but I need it for the next three days."

"Hope you don't mind. Love, roomie."

And that meant I got out. And I did.

LINDA MCCLURE: I don't know that I fell in love instantly,

but I sure did like the guy.

My first date with Hal was at his house with Burt and Dinah Shore.

(LAUGHS)

It was an interesting time.

BURTON: Burt and Dinah were lovers.

She was a cougar at the time, I guess. (LAUGHS)

I'd like to make it eminently clear that there are many areas in which

Hal does not double.

(ALL LAUGHING)

Okay?

(APPLAUSE)

HAL: I want to know something.

He and I started almost simultaneous. What happened?

I mean, I'm better looking than he is, I'm... (AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

What? What?

I'll explain it to you.

Okay. I wish somebody would.

Yeah. It's very simple.

You don't have any problems... Okay.

...because you're a real choreographer.

I mean, those fights are staged...

HAL: I'll tell you what. I don't care who it is,

I always say the biggest thing about a man is his ego,

and I'm no different than anybody else.

All right. Ready?

RADEWAGEN: Hal wanted to be a star.

I think, secretly, he would've liked to be Burt Reynolds.

On the other hand, I think Burt wanted to be Hal Needham,

but knew that his bread was gonna be buttered on the movie star's side.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

HAL: For a little PR we put an ad in the paper

that Burt Reynolds is gonna be the judge of a dog show

to pick a dog to be in the movie and everything.

MAN: Go ahead and bring him on by.

HAL: The next day, there was not a dog in the dog pound.

It was in a park and it was just a sea of dogs out there.

Burt said, "That's your dog," and that's how he got in the movie.

Now, Bo, I'm tellin' ya, Fred here ain't gonna be no problem.

Well, I can see he's gonna be a major asset.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

MCCLURE: Jerry Reed hit it off with everybody,

and on the set, he had his band there.

Hal and I were invited up to his suite

and they played this little song called Eastbound and Down,

and asking Hal, "Do you like it? What do you think of it?"

(LAUGHS) "It was fabulous!"

And it's the song of the movie.

Break for that Bandit One. Break for that Bandit One.

Yeah, Snowman. Come on back.

This is Sheriff Buford T. Justice again.

I lost that Trans Am. Set up a roadblock.

Good idea.

Bandit, this here's the Grave Robber.

Put the pedal to the metal, good buddy,

and we'll hold this county mountie as long as we can. Come on.

Bandit, honey, this is the Good Witch of the North speakin'.

You'd better not come this way.

(HORN HONKING)

This is the Bandit, darling.

And how can I help? Bring it back.

BURT: I knew the music before I knew the man, and the music got to me.

I got that all worked out.

BURT: This Bandit character loved Jerry Reed.

We have a relationship that's very similar in some ways between me and Hal.

He was crazy, but crazy good.

LEVY: What is a good old boy?

Someone that you really like hanging out with and you can trust.

Doesn't take life too seriously, but always gets the job done.

There's not a lot of angst in the good old boy. Put it that way.

I suppose a lot of people say that people become actors

because they're unhappy with themselves

and they get to hide in somebody else's skin,

but that's not true.

People become actors, I think,

because we're people pleasers.

And the only thrill for us, really,

is your getting some enjoyment from what we do.

Oh, my God.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

I like to be considered somebody

who paid their dues and is a good actor.

I think that there's a school of acting which,

I'm a great believer in this particular school of acting,

which is called effortless.

And I worked 20 years to learn how to make it look easy.

Quite honestly, it's very easy to do, what I call,

the constipated school of acting

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

which is where you let every vein show in the neck

and you just go for it with every take,

and everybody says, "What a brilliant actor he is."

Well, he gets an Oscar in Preparation H and I get a smile.

That's an actor?

But he was brilliant in A Streetcar Named Desire.

A Streetcar Named Desire.

What was he? A conductor?

That was the time when everybody wanted to be Marlon Brando.

INTERVIEWER: And who were you?

I didn't know who the hell I was.

Question, Rocky?

Yeah, I mean, what is my, uh, tertiary motivation here?

I mean, like, I walk through the door and, uh, I see her.

Why?

Why what, Rocky?

What's the question?

Exactly.

What is the question?

BURT: I wanted to play the rebel.

The kind of label they'd given me at the studio.

RUDDY: I said, "Jesus Christ. He looks like Brando."

BURT: When I first went to Hollywood,

everybody wanted me to meet Marlon,

and I'd heard so many Marlon Brando stories.

There's a coffee house on the strip called Cyrano's

and at the time, it was the in place.

All... Everybody went, to see or be seen.

We walked in,

immediately, there was a director named Hubert Cornfield,

who ran over to me and grabbed me and said, "He's here!"

And I, uh...

I said, "He is?"

And he said, "Come on!"

He was pulling me by the shirt.

We came around and we stopped in front of a table.

And I suddenly realized it was Marlon.

And Marlon...

Everybody was looking at me except Marlon.

Marlon was looking right about there.

And Hubert Cornfield said,

"Marlon, isn't this fantastic?"

And like a dummy, I was going like this

'cause I thought I'd been brought over to be introduced.

But he never looked up.

He just went, "Mmm."

And I still had my hand out.

And it was deathly silence in the place.

And I suddenly...

I had the urge to kill.

I mean, to reach across and kill.

I want to be mean. Who the hell does he think he is?

RUDDY: Burt had that thing that you have to have to become a leading man

and he could go after you.

If he lost it, and I've seen him lose it with some people.

So he'd... You couldn't fuck around with Burt too much.

I wanna go on killin' white men.

(SPEAKS OTHER LANGUAGE)

He says you will have to prove yourself.

I'll prove myself.

Just give me a chance.

LEVY: Burt wanted to be a star, and I think he'd have done most anything.

(SPEAKING IN OTHER LANGUAGE)

Sometimes, you learn more from a bad film than you do from a good film.

In that case, I should be a very good actor. (CHUCKLES)

(WHINNYING)

(BOTH GRUNTING)

I got a lot of parts because they didn't have to hire

a stuntman, you know.

They'd say, "Get that guy. He falls down the stairs and he talks okay."

So I fell down the stairs and talked.

As the years went by, I fell less and talked more.

Thought you were an authority on architecture.

I didn't know your hobby was boating.

(GROANING)

I think I've probably chosen worse than any actor

in the history of films.

(CONVERSING IN OTHER LANGUAGE)

BURT: Some films, I said, "What's the location?"

They said, "Tahiti."

And I said, "I'll take that picture."

I did Deliverance which was my deliverance out of bad films, I thought.

(PANTING)

Sometimes, you have to lose yourself before you can find anything.

(CHUCKLES)

Any snakes around here?

INTERVIEWER: I think Georgia is kind of a good luck charm for you.

Do you look on it as a real good place to make films?

I'd like to shoot four out of five pictures here, which really wouldn't

sit too well with a lot of people who want to do desert movies.

Deliverance was kind of like coming home, you know. Mmm-hmm.

BURT: Changed everything for me.

I had never done a part that good,

but I understand this guy.

(WHOOPING)

I could play him.

We gotta get rid of that guy.

Just how are you gonna do that, Lewis?

Where?

Anywhere.

Everywhere.

BURT: I asked the director, John Boorman, what parts he'd seen me play

that would make me right for this picture.

And he said, I didn't see you in a part,

but I saw you on The Tonight Show.

Hello.

Nice, you look so sharp, again tonight. You're dressing so well...

Thank you. I was just pressed.

They just pressed me. The whole thing?

Did you get into your clothes? They pressed my entire body.

Burt Reynolds was the catch on a talk show.

Everybody liked to be around Burt.

It's nice to see you haven't changed a bit.

No, I haven't.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

MAN: Listen, Deliverance is a really...

It's from a novel. It's quite serious.

It's got rape and murder in it and all those things.

Mmm-hmm. And here you are, cavorting like a jackass.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

Not being a jackass, just cavorting like one.

Hmm.

BURT: I gambled, I really gambled.

I mean, Deliverance was BC. Before Cosmo.

The gamble was would I ever be considered a serious actor after that.

When I died, on my tombstone would they say,

"His contribution to the world was,"

"he was the first male nude centerfold."

What it's like to be pastor of a man

who posed nude in Cosmopolitan?

This is what we Baptists call a problem.

I don't know, I didn't tell him to take his clothes off.

And I wish he hadn't done it.

But at the same time, he did it.

He's free and I'm free.

I feel free to wear my clothes,

and he feels free to take his off.

RADEWAGEN: Posing catapulted Burt Reynolds to household name.

He became, then, the guy.

(ALL LAUGHING)

That's literally true.

(AUDIENCE EXCLAIMING)

How many people like him, with the mustache?

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

And then, without the mustache?

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

This is a hell of a time to tell me. (ALL LAUGHING)

I think you should stick with the mustache, Burt.

Definitely stick with the mustache.

BURT: The Cosmopolitan came out 30 days before Deliverance.

It was very difficult for 98% of the film critics

to disassociate

this character who, you know, laid down on a bear rug, like an idiot,

you know, and did this strange thing

with an actor who took his craft seriously

and took the film business seriously.

And a lot of people who,

I trust their instincts,

felt that it might have cost me a nomination that year.

RUDDY: It was a bad choice 'cause it trivialized him.

And I know he was sorry about it,

and I was unhappy to see it myself.

He didn't need it.

Most serious actors don't do that.

A clown would do it.

BURT: In fact, a lot of people never forgave me for that.

I'm one of them actually. (CHUCKLES)

What now do you look for? What does a role have to have

for you to really consider it?

Well, I'm looking now for humor.

Because I happen to think that,

of my contemporaries, I have to look around and say,

"What's the competition?"

I can't stand in the doorway better than Paul Newman.

And I can't have blonder hair than Robert Redford.

But I can do comedy better than

either one of them, I can eat them up.

(SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY)

Hold it! The beer! Watch the beer!

(BOTTLES BREAKING)

(LAUGHING)

You all right? Very funny! Very funny!

I thought it was funny.

To move people to laugh, it's extremely difficult,

crossing a lot of different cultures.

And there's no question, you ask anyone,

anyone who is in the creative end of this business

and they will always tell you, you take a guy like Jackie Gleason.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)

GLEASON: There wasn't any script for me, believe me.

I never had a line of dialogue written.

The director would stick his head in the window of the car and say,

"Now we have to go up the thing and"

"you'll see him there, what do you want to say?"

And I'd think for a second and I said,

"How about something." He says, "Great."

"Okay, let's go."

Good shit!

I got the evidence! Put the evidence in the car.

But, Daddy...

Put the evidence in the car!

I'm gonna barbecue your ass in molasses!

I am not going to attempt

to give any messages to the people out there.

I can do two things, and I think I do 'em extremely well.

Action, I know I do well, and my comedy isn't too bad, all right?

INTERVIEWER: No, it's three things.

What's that?

You just sit there and look good, that's a third.

(CHUCKLES) You sweet thing, from now on you can say anything you want to.

Let's play tag. Tag! You're it! (LAUGHS)

Tag?

HAL: I was 1 1 years old when I saw my first movie.

INTERVIEWER: What was it?

HAL: It was called Pop Goes the Weasel,

and I mean this is way back, okay.

To me, I was amazed.

Now, I relate today to what I thought then, all right. And I said,

"Hell! That's what I wanted to see,"

"and I believe that's what people want to see today."

(GASPING)

Oof.

HAL: I will never win an Academy Award.

But I'm gonna be very rich, so...

And I think I put out entertaining films,

and I think that's what it's all about.

What happened, Daddy?

ENGELBERG: Both Hal and I realized that this was gold,

and neither of us wanted to touch it.

I had never had a scene with Burt Reynolds,

I had to sit down and write one.

That was the scene in the lunch room.

JUSTICE: Just keep your eye out for that Mr. Bandit bastard!

Let me have a diablo sandwich, a Dr. Pepper.

Make it fast. I'm in a goddamn hurry.

ENGELBERG: In the original screenplay,

there were maybe six or seven scenes

where the two of them were together.

We shot that scene in the restaurant

where Burt knows who Jackie is,

Jackie doesn't know who Burt is.

You must be in a hell of a hurry, huh, Sheriff?

You bet your ass on that, boy.

Oh, you got a little mess there. Let me...

Let me help you out here, get that off of there. That's...

Yeah, yeah. Much obliged.

When we finished that scene, Burt came to Hal and me,

he said, "I'm not gonna work with Jackie anymore."

Somebody chasin' you?

Nobody chasin' me, boy.

I been chasin' a goddamn maniac.

And of course, I had no idea what this was about,

but we started re-writing.

(INAUDIBLE)

Did Burt feel that Jackie was upstaging him, stealing from him?

You know, I really don't know.

FEMALE REPORTER: Do you feel that you are in competition to Burt Reynolds?

Oh, no, no, no, he plays comedy, I'm in the lead in this.

Oh, let me pay for it. Let me pay.

Oh, no. No, no. You're an officer of the law.

I'd... I'd be honored. Much obliged.

Where's the can? I gotta take a squirt.

Oh, right back there. Just used it myself.

GLEASON: I think that Burt could be a very great comedian.

He can look at you and say something

and then he gives you the attitude that he's saying, "Who me?"

And that's a great quality for someone who wants to do comedy,

I believe he could be a great comedian.

LEVY: Every time you make a film, it's a battle. Hal, he always had a plan.

He was always willing to take that chance

to do something special and different.

(WOMAN SPEAKING)

(HAL SPEAKING)

MCCLURE: Alan was doubling Burt.

Looks like Burt when he's riding in the car.

And Janet Brady looked exactly like Sally

and just continued to double her.

She could do the fight, she could do the falls,

but her specialty was cars, no question about it.

She and Alan Gibbs met,

they decide to get married.

And they get married during the filming of Smokey and the Bandit,

and Hal gives Janet away,

as the father of the bride.

FEMALE REPORTER: Is it true that there was nearly an accident

shooting the scene where the car crashes on to the football field?

GIBBS: Oh, boy, there sure was.

(SCREAMING)

We got shots that didn't go in the film

'cause they were so scary.

When the car jumped and I saw everybody

start running out of the dug-out.

I saw one guy just stand straight up

and the car just hit the dug-out.

ENGELBERG: A couple of kids got hit.

Fortunately no one got hurt badly,

but you know, there were one or two kids in the hospital.

When the car hit, two things happened, number one was...

I was not aware that we had watered

this last night or they had watered it

and even though we put on Pirelli tires to try to compensate for it,

we just couldn't get stopped, that's all there is to it,

and I just thank God that one of my

stunt men had enough sense in there to...

And the stunt girl, both to turn that car

and get it outside of these people.

I said, we're gonna hurt somebody bad, I want this stopped now.

You know, you can do anything in the world in a movie, but you can't stop.

The absolute decision is mine because...

I mean, I am the boss in that case because

it's my tokus that's on the line

and nobody can tell me how I want to risk it.

Did you do the actual driving in Smokey and the Bandit?

I did all the driving, except the jump over the bridge.

I was under a tree then, hiding my face.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

When people go to a movie,

they get engrossed with the character,

the lead character and everything.

They don't think about us stunt men, and I don't think they should,

but when an actor is confronted

on national television or something,

seems to me like he should have enough

huevos to say "No, I didn't do that."

BURTON: Most actors can't do their own stuff.

An actor went on Johnny Carson,

"Oh, yeah, I did all my own stunts."

And we didn't care, we didn't want any recognition.

It was all about working and making money

and going to the next show and the next deal.

The stunt community was kind of a cloak and dagger thing,

I mean, there was no publicity, there was nothing

because the public didn't know what a stunt guy was.

Ironically, it was Hal who let the cat out of the bag.

(UTENSILS CLATTER)

Hi there, David, how are you?

Nice of you to drop in.

Thank you very much.

You okay? Oh, I'm fine.

DAVID: Nobody had a bigger shadow than Burt Reynolds,

and my father was really more than ready to step out from behind it.

RADEWAGEN: When Hal first met me, he said,

"This is the guy who's gonna make me a star?"

Let's get this thing rolling.

My assignment was to make Hal a household name.

And wow! How do you do that?

WOMAN: Next you'll see Hal Needham.

Hal is wearing an awning-striped caftan.

I'm not crazy about that.

WOMAN 2: Oh, I think it looks great on him though,

it's got a hood, you can cover all up in it.

RADEWAGEN: I think he realized that acting wasn't his forte,

but certainly stunts were.

ANNOUNCER: It's good weather for flying,

but Hal Needham doesn't have a plane.

What he does have is a truck.

The distance between the ramps

comparable to a 12-story building laid on its side.

How are you gonna do that, Hal?

HAL: Well, I'm gonna stick a rocket in the back end and jump the river.

I spent all day everyday looking for ways

to get Hal in front of anybody you could, anytime.

(ENGINE REVS)

HAL: To me, I remember it 'cause I broke my back...

For the second time.

BARRETT: I can remember him breaking his back and ribs

and getting out of the hospital and getting on an airplane

and going down to do another movie.

He was the first human to test the airbag.

You know when nobody knew anything

about the airbag, there was Hal.

RADEWAGEN: When I first started to go out to pitch Hal,

it was not an easy task.

I realized where I had to go was to tell people,

"Well, Hal Needham is Burt Reynolds' stuntman."

Now we have their attention.

INTERVIEWER: He used to like to do his own stunts anyway.

Well, he started as a stuntman.

You know, originally, he was a stuntman.

Unfortunately, when we started some of the interviews,

they all still went back to Burt.

There's a lot of little things that he took...

You know, I know he took from me.

And for instance, he took my wardrobe, okay.

He had them copy my wardrobe that I wear normally all the time.

And that's what he wore in the movie.

One day he came out, he and I were dressed exactly alike.

RADEWAGEN: We worked a lot on that because we knew that was coming every time,

and then he was off, talking about stunts.

Presenting The Stuntman.

And he's not just your basic everyday stuntman either,

he was modeled after Hal Needham,

the guy that I consider to be the best stuntman in the business.

RADEWAGEN: Well, he had met the guy that owned a toy company,

they said, "You know, Evel Knievel's doll made a ton of money."

MCCLURE: It was sitting on his desk one day when I went in.

I said, "Oh, my God, Hal, you've got a doll."

A little stunt doll, give me a break!

There's a little ram and you could fly the doll and it'll turn,

you could make the hat fly off with a string.

RADEWAGEN: They had designed the prototype,

but they didn't have the market for it yet.

We recognized that we're gonna need a big event.

Hal and Bill Frederick came up with the idea of the rocket car.

MAN: (OVER RADIO) Three, two, one, ignition.

ANNOUNCER 1: Wow. Looks like he's off in a good wind this time, kid.

ANNOUNCER 2: Thunderous send-off to Hal Needham.

Climbing to four, to 500,

almost 550 miles per hour and still climbing.

ANNOUNCER 1: That's faster than programmed, kid.

ANNOUNCER 2: His chute just came out, his chute deployed,

but it has not opened.

ANNOUNCER 1: Ken, it has not opened.

He might be in very serious trouble down there.

ANNOUNCER 2: He's missed the red flag,

and he has crashed at the end of the course.

I'm gonna tell you something,

the last couple of hundred yards is a son-of-a-gun.

RADEWAGEN: Hal said, "I'm not going to put my life behind"

"a 700 mile an hour car any longer."

It was sometime after the rocket car event that the toy finally emerged.

It never really made a place in the market.

He knew he was never gonna be a movie star.

So, Hal was under tremendous pressure

to make Smokey and the Bandit a success.

ENGELBERG: There's a scene in the picture where it's a small dirt road, bridge.

The car leaps the bridge, flies through the air and lands on the other side.

That was really dangerous, there's no...

That's a problem, you come up short, you got issues here.

(TIRES SCREECHING)

Sorry. I don't want to get married.

Terrific. That makes two of us.

Sally and Burt became an item by that day of shooting.

Hold it, oh, wait, one minute, here we have...

We watched the dailies and you could kind of see it, it was there.

When two people are hitting it off

and you can tell they are liking each other.

Sometimes, you call action and there are things that happen first.

(ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYING)

I think the Bandit covers up his vulnerability and his

sensitivity with a lot of braggadocio and fancy shirts

because I think basically he's rather shy.

He's only good at one thing.

Frog?

Not showing off, but he's great at that.

I don't wear these kind of shirts, I do wear cowboy hats.

I think, I'm not real positive about this because

there's a big debate going on about this in America.

I think I'm a real good actor.

FEMALE REPORTER: Burt Reynolds has been top box office for six years,

mostly in redneck tough-guy films.

Now he wants to try serious drama.

If you wanted to get away from the good ol' boy image,

will the audience let you?

If I'm good. If I'm really good.

(SINGING) And there's no concealing

The fact I'm feeling bored

Bored! Bored!

I find Burt Reynolds the most puzzling actor,

he has the power and physical attributes

of the perfect screen tough guy.

Yet he insists on playing light comedies,

as if he saw himself as a kind of Cary Grant with muscles.

The point that seems to escape him, however,

is that you can't be Cary Grant and have muscles,

you've got to settle for one or the other.

PAULINE KAEL: He connects, but he doesn't take very good parts.

He doesn't take the parts that would stretch him and test him.

He could possibly be as great as Sean Connery,

if he had more ease about the way he looked.

You can always feel that he wants to look good

and this is fatal in a male actor.

WOMAN: Maybe he's getting bad advice, Pauline.

Or maybe there's fear in him.

Burt, when you look in the mirror, what do you see?

Who do you see?

BURT: You're looking at a very well-paid movie star.

And a starving actor. Actor.

To be a personality is painful.

To be in the public eye is painful.

'Cause you can never ever give them enough,

they always want a little bit more.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

WOMAN 1: Is it true that you are back together with Dinah Shore?

WOMAN 2: Do you plan on making any movies on location in Chicago?

WOMAN 3: Would you like to go for coffee after the show?

WOMAN 4: You said your favorite sport was football,

is that what influenced you doing The Longest Yard?

WOMAN 5: Is it true that you've been trying to adopt a child?

And do you plan on marrying again?

WOMAN 6: Burt, do you really enjoy all this?

ENGELBERG: Burt got sick down there,

and he was struggling to come to the set.

You talk about change in schedules,

I mean, Sally couldn't work without Burt because it was in the car.

HAL: He did disappear for a couple of days, yes.

But I don't want to get into the reasonings.

RUDDY: Hal understood Burt was an actor.

Being an actor, he was high strung and neurotic.

I mean, all actors are crazy, right?

I mean, Marlon Brando walked out of acting

because he couldn't take it anymore.

You must understand, their face is on this 100-foot screen.

JUSTICE: You know who that is?

If they are embarrassed with what they see, they wanna kill themselves.

So, the pressure on an actor, on his ego

is so overwhelming.

We ain't gonna make it, son. We're gonna hang it up.

Whoa, negatory, negatory! What are you, crazy or somethin'?

We come this far, ain't we?

When we say we gonna do a job, we do a job!

And Hal came up and said, "I give up, are you doing this?"

RUDDY: There's one thing about good old Southern boys, all the way through.

They have a sense of loyalty to their friend.

BURT: I felt like, if anything, I would rebel.

You got to be dangerous

as part of being sexy.

(TIRES SCREECH)

Too late now.

Let's jump this bridge.

We jumped over that bridge! We did that!

Did you see what we did? Yes, I did.

I wanna jump something else!

I wanna jump a house! I wanna jump something!

LEVY: We'd just done the car jump.

The director yelled, "That's it, that's a wrap."

That was the last... The end of the movie.

Needham, he and I looked over the top of the Trans Am at each other.

He just gave me a wry smile and looked at me and, you know,

we just nodded at each other and that was it.

You're crazy!

LEVY: Kind of our moment.

We realized that it exists and it's gonna be around a lot longer than you are.

BURT: Everybody was convinced it was a toy car that went up,

but we all know it was a real car.

MAN: With people in it.

BURT: With people in it.

And that's Needham. MAN: Yeah.

It was never... He wouldn't work with a toy anything.

That was the beautiful art of it and that's the loss.

They'd figure out a way to do it now without doing it for real.

We didn't have that technology...

MAN: No, there were people hanging it out there pretty far.

It all went together and it was magical.

Universal... I think there's a computer at Universal that

pretty much predicts what a movie's supposed to make.

They put in all the facts, the stars, the timing, how many theaters,

and I think that computer spit out

for Smokey and the Bandit, one million.

That was it.

ENGELBERG: The general sales manager at Universal,

having seen the movie by the way,

I don't think had much faith in the picture.

He asked that we not sneak preview.

I think he actually suspected that he was going to lose bookings

'cause the picture was so bad.

(HAL SPEAKING)

And I said, "Take it out!"

You do a comedy that doesn't work... (EXCLAIMS)

Dead!

And only a fool does it, thinking it's a sure thing.

LEVY: I thought it was a very funny movie.

And then, you know we thought we had great expectations,

they opened the movie

in the Radio City Music Hall, and then it died.

ENGELBERG: I said, "Wait a minute, you opened it in New York"?

That's ridiculous.

BURT: It was a disastrous screening. I mean...

The cards were, you know, "This is boring, we've seen this before."

I thought, you know, what do I do to get these guys to get it?

(GIRLS SQUEALING)

ENGELBERG: And I said, "Put the damn thing out in the South."

That's who it was made for.

(CHEERING)

How many of you have seen Hal's picture, Smokey and the Bandit?

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

I love it! I love it! WOMAN: Everybody loves it.

I bet I've seen that movie 200 times.

That's probably plus or minus five.

That little number is the second highest grossing motion picture

in the history of the motion picture business.

BURT: I'm glad it was because it was a picture

that wasn't made for the critics,

it was made for the people.

How did you like the movie?

Oh, I just loved it.

It was so exciting.

Who was your favorite in the film? Burt.

Naturally. The dog was good, too.

All of us that live in that part of the country go,

"Yup, that's about how it works."

Or, "He reminds me of my uncle."

Or, "He reminds me of my dad,"

or, "He reminds me of my neighbor down the road."

Who's gonna hold your hat?

You know, in the South, they think of Smokey and the Bandit as a documentary.

It had a cultural impact that I don't think any of us could have imagined.

I mean, to this very day it's a friendlier South

than maybe a lot of people had seen before.

And maybe in that there is an elegance.

The buzz was huge. I mean, it was huge.

MAN: You know, in the days of silent movies,

the chase was often the highlight of the story.

So Hollywood figured if audiences like a little, they'll love a lot.

And pretty soon there's no meal at all, it's all dessert.

It's not a B movie. It's A++.

Burt bought us through the disco era.

He kept us all alive and gave us a reason to say,

"Hey, we still got a hero out here."

When I say Burt Reynolds right now...

Black cowboy hat, mustache. Is that what you see?

It's what I see. I also see him in a Trans Am.

If he drove up in a Lexus, it would just destroy me.

The Washington Post critic in that person's opinion,

greatest road movie ever made.

This new talent that had emerged on the American film scene,

Hal Needham, made Preston Sturges,

and John Ford and all of these people,

you know, look like second stringers.

The critic thought this was, you know, the Second Coming of Christ.

I mean, the picture elevated Hal,

and Hal was no longer a stuntman.

DAVID: So, my father decided it was time to

move out of Burt Reynolds' house.

You get married, you settle down and then,

you have to move out, you gotta get your own place.

BURT: I've always wanted to have a theater,

all my life, ever since I started being an actor.

How are you tonight?

If you'll follow Bruce, he'll take you to your seats.

Good evening. How are you all doing?

And I think secretly, most actors,

back in the back of their mind,

think about going back to their hometown and building a theater.

We have an apprentice program, and they're learning

that it isn't just stardust and moonbeams.

It's a lot of hard work, a lot of pain...

Get out of here! Punctuate it.

MAN: Burt Reynolds is a hungry man.

I think he is hungry to show everybody and the world that he is more

than the illusion that he presents.

WOMAN: Do you want to be taken more seriously

or would you go on doing these stunting performances?

Well, I think that probably

20 years from now these "stunting performances" as you call them

will be considered minor works of art.

And they'll say, "Those were damn good films."

For what they were, they weren't trying

to be anything other than what they were.

But for what they were, they were terrific.

MAN: But you're still shooting for a Casablanca in your career?

Yeah, I'm shooting for a Casablanca,

and you know what I'll do when I get my Casablanca?

I'll go right back and make a Smokey and the Bandit.

ANNOUNCER: Burt, the co-writer and director of Smokey and the Bandit.

Your pal, Hal Needham.

First off, let me say that I'm sure

nobody expects me to play a guitar or sing

'cause y'all know better than that.

I only have one God-given talent and that was to fall on my head,

and I'm thankful for that because it allowed me

to meet Burt Reynolds some 20 some-odd years ago.

BURT: I always told him if he'd have been a woman,

we'd have had a great marriage.

He was an amazing man.

They don't come along like that but once in your lifetime.

You're a doll, I love you, and I owe everything to you, Burt. Thank you.

(APPLAUDING)

I just wanna make a wish.

(ALL LAUGHING)

RUDDY: Certain people show up in your life,

and the magic happens, and it doesn't always happen.

But when the magic happens...

HAL: You know something?

You're looking at the luckiest man alive.

So we're talking and I say, "Hal, can you believe your success"

"from the sharecropper's kid in Arkansas. You do Smokey and the Bandit."

"Yeah, " he said. "It's been a good run, man."

HAL: Folks didn't think too much of me, what I was gonna amount to.

But for sure, for sure...

(VOICE BREAKING) My mom is looking down on tonight

with a big smile on her face.

(CLEARS THROAT)

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

I wanna thank the entire Hollywood community

for allowing me to be part of it.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

BURT: When I heard that he'd passed,

I thought, "What in God's name could kill him?"

"What could kill him?"

DAVID: He was the only guy that I thought might live forever.

(TIRES SCREECH)

He liked speed.

He liked to bend the rules a little bit.

He liked to live life on his own terms.

Hal Needham was and will always be The Bandit.