Texas Bound and Flyin'

In my previous post, I talked about my adolescent memories of seeing Smokey and the Bandit. While I was growing tired of the car chase formula, the unabashed silliness and fast-paced action of Smokey sucked me in. When the sequel was announced, I wasn't so sure they could strike lightning twice, and I had no intention of seeing the movie when it came out. Things changed, however.

By the time I got my driver's license, Smokey and the Bandit II was in the theatres. In fact, on the day after I received my license, my mom let me borrow the car for the day and my friend Vince and I went out to exploit our new found freedom. We ended up at the mall where we wanted to see a movie. Unfortunately, the only film at the multiplex that was not rated R (we were both still under 17) was the new Smokey movie. Although I liked the first one, I had bad feelings about the sequel and my reservations were well founded.

Instead of a light, rapid-fire comedy, we were treated to a plodding, stupid story with a drunken, loser Bandit (Burt Reynolds) acting like an ass and generally bumming everyone out. In a nutshell, Big Enos and Little Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams) resurface to make a proposition to Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reed). They want Cledus and Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) to transport a mystery package from Miami to Dallas, Texas in three days. Fairly simple, except the Bandit has disappeared. His 15 minutes of fame after the Texarkana to Altanta run had expired and Bo is now hiding in a sleazy Florida motel drinking himself to death. Meanwhile, Carrie (Sally Field) has left him and is about to once again marry the son of Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Justice (Jackie Gleason) is none too pleased with the arrangement, but when Carrie decides to run off again and save the Bandit, he holds her at gun point to stop her. After she escapes, Justice and his son (Mike Henry) are once again in "hot pursuit."

There's a lot of time wasted as Carrie and Cledus try to detoxify the Bandit. When they finally pick up the package, which turns out to be a female elephant, and get on the road, Justice has tracked them down and tries to stop them. From this point, the story plods along in fits and starts. The elephant turns out to be pregnant, so they pick up an Italian doctor (Dom Deluise) to watch after her. They have to stop frequently to accommodate the elephant's delicate condition, leaving plenty of time for Bo and Carrie to fight and for Bo to act like an insensitive jerk to the elephant. While the first movie was driven by the tight 28-hour deadline to get Coors Beer from Texarkana to Atlanta, there's no sense of urgency in the sequel and the gang spends most of the time out of their vehicles arguing with each other. Meanwhile, Buford T. Justice is supposed to be in "hot pursuit," but there is no explanation as to what he's up to while the heroes are mulling around. He just pops up conveniently when he's needed to chase them around.

Finally, in a feeble attempt to liven up the finale, Sheriff Justice enlists the help of his law officer cousins to lure the Bandit into an ambush. The ambush occurs in a desert environment where the law officers descend on the Bandit from the surrounding hills in their police cruisers. Although the visual metaphor of old-time movie Indians attacking the settlers in their stage coaches is obvious, the whole fiasco makes no sense since there are no desert areas anywhere between Miami and Dallas. Even if you are willing to suspend disbelief, dozens of cars smashing into each other like a demolition derby is not really the same as the thrill of watching high speed car stunts. It's just mindless destruction, and it gets monotonous real fast.

Since the theatre was mostly empty, Vince and I entertained ourselves by calling out remarks at the screen, mocking the whole mess while it spooled out onto the screen. The only redeeming factor was that I got to hear Buford's salty dialogue as it was meant to be heard, uttered by Jackie Gleason himself. As mentioned in the previous post, Gleason's redubbed dialogue for the TV version was voiced by character actor Henry Corden. As it would turn out, Corden would also provide the redubbed language in the TV version of the sequel. I still cringe at hearing Fred Flinstone's voice coming out of Gleason's mouth.

For days and weeks after seeing the debacle that was Smokey and the Bandit II, I kept pondering how the movie could have been so much better. By this time, I fancied myself a writer and had already scribbled out two novels, two screenplays, and numerous short stories. I knew I could come up with a better script than this horrid piece of junk.

At first, I thought the film would simply pick up where the last one left off. At the end of part one, the Enos's ask Bo, Carrie, and Cledus to run up to Boston and bring back a large quantity of baked beans. Since they only had 18 hours, perhaps they could employ airplanes or helicopters. Really open up the action. Then I thought better of that. After all, it had been three years later, and the filmmakers would want to use a new Trans Am, the iconic symbol of the series.

Fine, three years later it is. Although the Bandit could have built a celebrity status based on his stunts, he would still be facing numerous criminal charges from his behavior in the last movie. He would have to stay on the run or come to some arrangement with the law. Perhaps Carrie offers herself to Justice's son again as a way to get the sheriff to leave Bandit alone. Maybe she realizes that she can't stay with a guy like Bo long term, but she could still make a sacrifice for him out of love. That would provide some explanation for why she would try to marry Junior again, even if it was a weak one.

Okay, the Bandit is free and he is certainly no drunk, although he misses Carrie. The Enos's offer a big bet, but nothing involving cutesy elephants or kittens or koala bears. Maybe they have to bring Farrah Fawcett from Hollywood to take Little Enos's virginity? I don't know! Just keep the damn thing on the road and moving!

The feeble nature of the sequel's storyline only enhanced the unmistakeable sense that car chase movies were a thing of the past. All the CB jargon, so hip in the mid-70s, sounded tired and stupid by 1980. These characters and the whole genre was passe. When the chance to do a third movie cropped up, even Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds said, "no thanks." Jackie Gleason had other ideas though...

East Bound and Down

After hearing the news that GM's sporty division Pontiac would become a small, niche car line with only a few models, I couldn't help but become nostalgic for the days when the Pontiac Trans Am was the American muscle car for the beer pocketbook set, helped in no small part by the Smokey and the Bandit movies. These films hold a special place in my vault of so-bad-they-are-good movies. I never sought them out when they were in the theatres, but I somehow ended up seeing each one several times and find myself dissecting them with a degree of analysis normally reserved for films like Citizen Kane or Casablanca. I think it's their very slip-shot nature that makes them endlessly fascinating since there are so many continuity issues, plot holes, and inconsistencies in character, you can't help but wonder why they wrote or shot what they did. To simply say, "It's a crappy movie!" isn't sufficient in my book.

The summer of 1977 seemed like the first true movie summer. Sure, Jaws had torn up the summer box office two years prior, but '77 was the first summer where the studios actively sought to put out crowd pleasing movies for the kidsc who were home from school and the parents who were on vacation. This was the summer of Star Wars, The Spy Who Loved Me, A Bridge Too Far, and Smokey and the Bandit. In fact, Smokey was the second highest grossing movie of the year. Even still, at the time, I didn't feel any great need to rush out and see it.

To me, Smokey was the culmination of a movie trend that was on the verge of playing itself out. Numerous car chase movies, usually dealing with good ol' boys who are runnin' moonshine or generally screwin' with the law, had been cluttering up the drive-ins for years. Initially, the movies were played straight, but audiences found the outrageous car stunts to be unintentionally funny. Also, watching the anti-heroes stick it to the corrupt, redneck sheriff usually brought about hoops and hollers of joy from the anti-establishment crowds of the 70s. After awhile, the filmmakers took a more lighthearted approach to these kinds of films. Even the producers of the Bond films inserted a comic-relief sheriff in two of their 70s films (Lie and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun). It took director Hal Needham to finally jump in the deep end and create a car chase movie that was played for pure laughs. Burt Reynold and Jerry Reed had already taken a serious stab at such material in the movie Gator, so they were perfectly suited to lampoon the good ol' boy action film. Throw in (then) sitcom darling Sally Field and comic legend Jackie Gleason as the blustery sheriff, and you had a big budget spoof that had real potential to reach a mass audience.

The plot was fairly straightforward: Millionaire Big Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick) and his son Little Enos (Paul Williams) offer Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) the princely sum (for the 1970s) of $80,000 if he can transport a truckload of Coor's Beer from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia in 28 hours. In those days, Coor's Beer could not be transported past the Mississippi, so this was flat-out bootlegging. Bo agrees and, to make the best possible time, he enlists the help of his friend Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reed) to drive the truck while Bo runs interference with the police using his flashy Trans Am. All goes well on the trip to get the beer, but things go awry on the return leg when Bo picks up a pretty girl in a wedding dress. Turns out the woman, Carrie (Sally Field), is running away from marrying the son of a Texas sheriff. The sheriff, Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), is not about to let her get away and soon, the Bandit has a permanent Smokey on his tail all the way to Atlanta.

Despite all the praise I was hearing about the movie, I was dubious. As I said, I had seen so many car chase movies already and even the star power of this one wasn't turning my head. It wasn't until two years later, when the movie finally popped up on broadcast television, that I gave it a chance. By this time, I was studying for my driver's license and I was becoming completely obsessed with automobiles. I studied everything I could get my hands on about how cars worked, the history and evolution of the car, the differences between the various makes and models, the whole nine yards. Suddenly, watching this flashy Trans Am do all these stunts and roar down the highway had new appeal. I liked the rapid pace of the story and the constant banter which, to a teenager, was far more clever than it would sound to me as an adult.

But I was also fascinated by the inexplicable oddities. I could chalk up the strange continuity issues to problems with matching the stunt shots with the principal photography, or the inexperience of a first-time director, but the odd dubbing of the broadcast television version was truly bizarre. When Smokey and the Bandit was originally released, it received an R rating, I assume for the harsh language. By the time it reached television, the movie had developed a huge following and I think the producers felt compelled to overdub virtually all the dialogue to wipe out any trace of foul language, lest they offend the Bible Belt viewers who were their primary audience. Burt, Sally, and Jerry all did their own overdubs, but for Jackie Gleason, it sounds like his voice was replaced with that of Henry Corden, a character actor best known for taking over the voice of Fred Flinstone after Alan Reed died. Not only does it look like Jackie Gleason is channeling the ghost of old Fred, the lines the writers came up with to replace the colorful metaphors are utterly inane and often unintelligible. All these years later, I've never been able to find a satisfactory answer as to why Gleason could not do his own overdubs.

A couple years later, cable TV invaded my neighborhood and the unedited version received regular rotation on channels like HBO and Showtime. With the original dialogue restored, I got a better understanding as to why everyone thought this movie was so funny. Still, I didn't have any burning desire to see the second entry in the series, but I did anyway...