Speaker 1: Welcome everybody back to the Surely You Can't Be Serious Podcast.
I am here with my cowboy hat and my Coors beer,
and Jason is here with his trucker hat and his
nineteen seventies mustache.
Speaker 2: Cheers Jason, What are you drinking that curs beer for dye.
Speaker 1: Because I'm thirsty dummy.
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be
Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
of eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: Pop culture with your co hosts James D.
Speaker 2: Graves and Jason Caliphic Mercy Sakes. Mercy Sakes like Lester
and Earl and Fred and Ginger together again. Today we're
going to be talking about two fantastic buddy movies. I
mean two favorites, right, maybe Got Smoking the Bandit versus
Cannonball Run.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is not an easy contest. This is going
to be in the realm of Bold Durham versus Major League,
where you get two movies that are so stinking good
it's hard to pick one as the best.
Speaker 2: They are guilty pleasures to the core. I love these movies.
I can put them on any time, and I guaranteed
to laugh.
Speaker 1: So with two great movies like this, we have to
ask the question, why are we doing this? What is
our purpose on going to this impossible mission to decide
which of these two movies is the best.
Speaker 2: We're doing this for the good old American life, for
the money, for the glory, and for the fun.
Speaker 1: Mostly for the fun, right because money, no money.
Speaker 2: There's no money involved here.
Speaker 1: Before we do that, we want to give a few
quick shout outs a couple of Facebook folks that we
want to say hi to. The first one is Ali
Zara and Derek l. We noticed he was commenting to
folks about us, and he messaged us to suggest a matchup,
and it's just awesome. We can't tell you. The most
important thing to us is that if you love us,
you share us with your friends. That's the best thing
that we can have. Is because we want to make
the as big a family and community as we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, man. I'm so excited that people are
hearing us and enjoining us and sharing it. We got
a shout out from a guy named Christopher Weber. He's
a physical therapist in New Orleans. Christopher, thank you so
much for listening, he messaged us and said that he's
sharing with his friends and enjoys us and so Christopher,
thank you so much for sharing us. That helps us
get discovered by other people.
Speaker 1: And then one final shout out to Ken Wilson Junior.
He is a friend of the show, always involved with
us on Facebook, and just a great guy. He had
actually hit us up about a Gunter contest. He had
created one and we were supposed to do a clue
for him. But before we could get together and do
the clue together, somebody already figured it out and won
the prize. So he sent us a message that says,
looks like we don't need to announce the clue. Someone
claimed the prize this morning. A Gunter named Limited from
Discord Ready Player one group was the winner. So congratulation Limited, Ken.
Sorry we missed out on this one, but we definitely
want to do some more Gunter stuff in the future.
Can't wait.
Speaker 2: That's right, we are big Ready Player one fans.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's talk about these two movies, because
these two movies defy reason. You know, we've talked about
the Greek structure of Raiders of the Lost Arc and
Back to the Future and the hero's journey and the
depth in Bull Durham and all of these things. And
these are two movies that don't really have a plot,
should I do?
Speaker 2: I mean, you guys going to pick up some beer
as fast as possible, loosest loosest of terms.
Speaker 1: So I guess maybe maybe our story begins back in
the eighteen hundreds when Adolph Cours stows away on an
oil freighter across the Atlantic, ends up in America, travels
his way out west where he ends up in Golden Colorado,
and is the only guy with any beer making experience,
so he becomes the local brewer. And what do they get?
We get Coors beer. And that is the impetus for
the first of these movies. Come out Smoking the Bandit.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Smoking the vandit for a second. Okay,
Smoking the Bandit was released on June twentieth, nineteen seventy seven.
The budget for this get this five million dollars, okay, five.
Speaker 1: Point three don't forget three hundred thousand dollars is a
lot of money.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, five point three million dollars right. One million
of it went to Burt Reynolds, so that left four
point three right, And then they brought in a hatchetman
at the last minute. Yea, he knocked off a million
dollars off the budget, right.
Speaker 1: So how need him bent thirty hours redoing the script
to get it to where they could shoot the movie
for the money that they had to make it with.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about how this movie came about. Yeah,
so how neat him is a stunt man. He was
arguably the best stuntman in the business for quite some time,
had been doing it for years and years. And he's
good old boy, and as good old boys do, they
drink beer. And so somebody got him a gift of
some Coors beer, and he wasn't a big drinker, but
he noticed that he seemed to be going through a
lot of In fact, he seemed to be going through
cours whenever he wasn't drinking, And so he realized somebody
was stealing his Coors beer, and lo and behold.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be the maid. The maid stole
the beer, and when he confronted her about it, she
was just like, well, my husband just loves this so much.
He just says it's the best beer that's ever made,
and we're not allowed to get it out here, And
so that's why I was sneaking it from you, And
that little thieving maid was the inspiration for the whole plot,
if you will call it, that of Smoking the Bandit.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. This happened on the set of the movie Gator,
which was shot in nineteen seventy six, right before Smoking
the Bandit. And in Gator you have starring Burt Reynolds,
Jerry Reid is the bad guy and how Neatam is
the stuntman. Yeah. So he just thought, well, bootlegging Coors
would make a good plot line for a movie. And
you know what, he was right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, so while they're making Gator, he's trying to
write the script for this movie idea that he's and
he writes it all on the legal pad and some
years earlier, I don't remember what the circumstances were, but
he was out of home for a bit and said, hey, Bert,
can I crash on your couch for a few weeks?
And Bert said sure, and then they were roommates for
the next eleven years. Right, So he's writing this script
on the legal pad and thinks he's got this great concept,
got the whole movie written on the breaks of Gator,
and he shows it to Bert, and Bert Reynolds says,
this is the worst script I've ever read in my
whole life, but I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 2: You know, originally they wanted Jerry Reid to be the Bandit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had to wait for Smoking in the Bandit
three for that one kind of mentioned that the same
way we mentioned Superman four. Yeah, and Crystal Skull. Hell.
Speaker 2: Needham had a lot of trouble getting any studio to
get involved in this or have any interest at all,
until Bert Reynolds said, you know what, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Burt Reynold was the biggest star of the day,
the biggest Yeah.
Speaker 2: Burt Reynolds said that after he agreed to do this,
he had friends that got down on their knees and
begged him not to do this movie.
Speaker 1: You got you gotta just think about that for just
a second. Okay, he's the biggest star of the day.
You look at the movies that he was doing, and
you look at this movie that nobody wanted him to do,
that he said, was the worst script ever. That was
being written and directed by a stunt man who had
never done any of those things before other than as
a second unit guy, and you got to think, how
the heck did this movie become the movie that everybody
remembers and practically nobody cares about Gator, right, or whatever
that movie he was in with e Liza Minelli, or
any of those other movies that came in.
Speaker 2: Right, name five Burt Reynolds movies. And I guarantee you're
starting off with smoking the Band at Canniball, Run Yep,
Deliverance probably you know something like that, right, Okay, So
as they're putting this together, Burt Reynolds says, yeah, I'll
do it. And I got my buddy Jerry Reid, who
we just shot Gator, and he's going to play my
buddy Snowman in this. And he said, I need my
love interest. And they said, okay, well who are we
going to hire for this? And Burt Reynolds had always
kind of been smitten with Sally Field, the flying Nun. Yeah,
and she was not really looked at as a sexy actress.
Speaker 1: She's kind of a I didn't think she was attractive enough.
I mean she was cute, you know, yeah, baby baby,
that's a cute.
Speaker 2: But he really wanted her to do it. And when
he talked to her. She thought, you know what, I
want to be a little more mainstream. I want to
be seen as attractive and sexy. And if Hollywood's number
one leading man thinks I'm sexy, then maybe everybody else
will think I'm sexy. Sure, So she was like, you
know what, I think I will do this, And especially
since she just got done doing a movie called Sybil,
which is about a woman with multiple personalities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's her age and on this they were like,
you need to do a big movie. You need to
do these you know, you've you've been the flying Nun,
you've done these TV bits, you've done the weird Sibyl thing.
You need to be a part of a movie that's
got some big stars in it. And so how nice
that Burt Reynolds is the one that's knocking on her door.
Speaker 2: So then they they're looking for the role of who's
gonna play Sheriff Beauford t Justice of Texas. And so
they originally looked at this guy, Richard Boone. Are you
familiar with him?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He was on the have gun We'll travel, Have Gun,
We'll travel. It is the heart of them man. A
night without armors?
Speaker 2: Nice?
Speaker 1: Then I'm getting it all from stand By Me. I
didn't watch that show.
Speaker 2: That's where I know it from to stand by Me.
But Bert wanted somebody a little crazier, a little more dangerous,
and a lot funnier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got him.
Speaker 2: Jackie freaking Gleason.
Speaker 1: Jackie freaking Gleason, man, amazing. I said it just a
little bit earlier tonight. I was talking to our friend
Arlen about this movie. These are two of his favorites
as well, and I said it without Jackie Gleason smoking
the band, it doesn't become the thing that it is.
Speaker 2: Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree. In fact, for
this podcast, I went through the movie. I watched the
movie and I wrote down every funny line, and I
basically wrote down everything that Jackie Gleason says.
Speaker 1: Right, he's hilarious. These are the two movies if you
pick two movies from the seventies and eighties that you
think of when you say Burt Reynolds, it's these two movies.
And in both of the movies, he's along for the ride.
I mean, he's great, but he's not the guy that
makes the movie. He's just there giving his star power
and letting everybody else make you laugh.
Speaker 2: I call you the band Okay. We talked about this
briefly the other day, but I asked you who is
the best at their role in this movie. Burt Reynolds
plays Bandit to a t. I mean, people love the
bandit and he's cool and he's smooth, and he's funny,
and he's out.
Speaker 1: The mischievousness and the laughing at the situation that makes
his part in this movie. It's not that he's done
some great acting performance. He does. We talked about Eddie
Murphy breaking the fourth wall. He does it in both
of these movies. Yes, and freakantastic because he's letting you know, hey, guys,
come on, let's go for a ride, seriously letting the
audience in. It's great.
Speaker 2: He's like a redneck James Bond. I mean he's cool
and funny and laid back and come on and party
with me. We're gonna have a great time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Bert does a great job. Jerry Reid as the buddy,
as the trucker snowman, likable, funny, He gives this the
flavor of the movie with the trucker talk and the CB.
Speaker 1: Knowing that he's the villain in Gator seems weird to
me because I just he's just seems like such a
nice guy. It's hard to imagine him as the villain, right,
He's actually, I mean, kind of a tough guy. You're
kind of scared of him in that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, at the beginning, you see this friendship when
Bandit shows up at his house and basically just moves
his wife out of the way and goes into his bedroom. Oh,
you know, we got a chance to make a lot
of money, and Jerry's like, well, we got to do
kidnap the pope or something. That whole the friendship is great,
you get you I buy their friendship. But then you've
got Jackie Leeson as the sheriff.
Speaker 1: It's just fan freakantastic.
Speaker 2: Everything is funny.
Speaker 1: Sally Field is acceptable in the part. She's pretty enough
and sexy enough, and she's engaging. There's just something enticing
about her. And Bert Reynolds we've talked about, Jerry Reed,
we've talked about, but Jackie Gleason is the man in
this movie.
Speaker 2: You know. And Jackie Gleeson was originally just supposed to
be in the car by himself, but he's like, you
know what I need somebody to play off of. Put
somebody in the car with me and Mike Henry Junior Justice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike Henry, who's just I mean, he's like a
Greek god. I mean, he's just. He was Tarzan, he
was a football player. He was in the longest yard
and was one of those tough guys. And he plays
that goofy who Daddy the top came off to a
tea to a tea he does. I mean, his the
entire dial that he has during this movie probably doesn't
fill up an entire paragraph, but it is essential for
all of Jackie Gleeson's comedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, basically, his direction is to stand there
and be a punching bag for Jackie Gleeson, and Jackie
Gleeson is like, you want something, He's like, hush puppies, Daddy,
we ain't got time for that crap.
Speaker 1: Hilarious hush puppies. Why. So, that's the other thing about
this movie. We talked about the fact that Burt Reynolds
read hol Needham's Legal Pad script and said, this is terrible,
worst I've ever read. Right, they didn't have a script
that they stuck to, Like number one script was just
an outline and then number two, the first day of
filming they find out, oh crap, we've got to eliminate
half of our scenes because of our budget cut. And
so it was really just okay, guys, here's the situation.
Make up some.
Speaker 2: Stuff, right, and who better to do that with than
Jackie Gleeson. In fact, I mean, well, I know we'll
get in all this. But the restaurant scene where Bandit
and Beauverty Justice meet was not in the original script,
but it was suggested by Jackie Leeson. And it's gold.
It's gold.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's absolutely fantastic. Cleans his tie off with his coffee.
Jackie Leeson is spitting in his face.
Speaker 2: You mean dieblo sandwich and a great big doctor pepper
and make it fast. I'm gonna hurry.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what this is a mystery to me.
And if you've got the answer, I'd love to hear,
because I couldn't find it. So Jackie Gleesion says to
Helen Edam, we need to have this scene where Smokey
and the Bandit meet. They set up the scene. He
comes in, He's brilliant. Burt Reynolds is really just reacting
most of the time. But at some point, either while
they're filming the scene or just after they film the scene,
Burt Reynolds goes to hell Needam and says, I'm not
doing any more scenes with Jackie.
Speaker 2: I know that drives me insane. I wish I know
what the reason was. Yeah, So what I read was
there was no explanation and there was no insinuation of anything.
Bert was just like, I'm not doing that anymore. And
maybe it was because he knew Jackie was killing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe he felt like he was getting upstaged.
That's certainly possibility, kind of.
Speaker 2: Like sharing a scene with Robin Williams. I mean, you
just got to get out of the way and let
him go to work, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right. And I can understand if you're a huge
star like that having that concern, But I mean, we're
talking about Jackie freaking Gleason. Man. Maybe it's because he
didn't like getting spit on.
Speaker 2: I got some Diablo juice in my eye here.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody please stick around. We will be right
back after these messages.
Speaker 2: Okay, Jackie Gleeson, I don't know if you know this
or not. Jackie Gleeson was offered a percentage of the
gross box office versus a straight salary. But he took
the salary and it cost him millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Well, I can't blame him. Looking at the situation,
I cannot blame him, right, but ouch, that sucks.
Speaker 2: Just to stick the knife in a little bit further.
This was the second and biggest movie in nineteen seventy seven,
second only to Star Wars, which you know, might have
heard of that one, Yeah, yeah, did pretty well the
box office for Smoking the Bandit one hundred and twenty
six million dollars on.
Speaker 1: A budget of five four four four point three then
a million going to birth right. That's right. Just think
about that. Just think about your entire budget. A quarter
of it goes to one actor in the movie.
Speaker 2: You have three, you have four point three left to
pay Sally Field, Jerry Reid, Jackie Gleason and buy about
five trans ams and five cop cars and chase them
all over the world. It's it's it's insane.
Speaker 1: So, in addition to being in the movie, Jerry Reid
wrote east Bound and Down, which is the key song
in the movie. Right, huge, huge for the movie came
in played it for how Needham and how Needham just
kind of stared at him for a second and he
was like, it's okay, I can go I go rewrite it.
I'll go rewrite it. And how Needam says, no, this
song is going to be a hit. Do not change
word of it, and he was absolutely right. It was
Jerry Reid's number one song.
Speaker 2: Oh it's huge. You walk up to somebody on the
street and you say, what do you remember about smoking
the Man and they're like, well, bird's mustache and eastbounding
down yep. You know.
Speaker 1: They do a part where they say westbounding down, like
when they're headed Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, when they're headed to text Arcana. That's brilliant
westbounding down, which sounds a little bit funny. They make
it to text Arkana and like the first fifteen minutes
of the movie, right, yes, they have no trouble making
it to text Arcana.
Speaker 1: Right yeah? And why why is that? No?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have less concern when you don't have a
semi truck full of bootlegged beer. It was Cores that
didn't want their beer going out anywhere other than the
eleven states they had distribution in because they didn't put
additives in their beer, then put preservatives in there, and
so if you let them get hot, they would go
bad really quickly. But they didn't want to spend all
the money on the refrigerated trucks. So it was Coors
who was fighting the nationwide distribution. They just wanted to
deliver to their eleven states and that be it. But yeah,
they got sued in a couple of different circumstances and
finally just had to go, well, I guess we're gonna
have to spend the money because people want us to
have They had become in eleventh they were in eleven states,
and they had become the fourth most popular beer in
the US. Number one was Budweiser, the other one was
Phapsed and the other one was like Schlitch. I mean,
it's like two other beers that just nobody drinks anymore.
And then Coors, which I'm almost done with my second one,
so yours?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are thirsty. Do we want to talk about
the plot now or do we want to talk about
Kenniball run?
Speaker 1: No? I mean we can we can do the plot.
I mean it's gonna take about thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: To Okay, So the plot of the movie. The plot
of the movie is Bandit, whose actual name is Bo
Danville Barville.
Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, a quick shout out to warm Bowled because
he's the other part of the reason I'm drinking a
beer while we're doing our podcast when we did our
podcast with the thirty something guys. Shout out to the
thirty something guys. Shout out to Bo for drinking a beer.
You've inspired me to have a beer while we're doing
our podcast.
Speaker 2: Right, all right, So Bandit's real name is Bo Darville.
They don't say his full name at anytime in the movie.
They do mention it. His real name is Bo. He
mentions that, but he his handle, his cebe handle, is Bandit,
and he is a truck rodeo superstar, okay, because there
aren't such things as that, exactly. He's a legend, a legend,
and a nautiwork bom look a lot of leg daddy.
So big Enis and little Enis are our father and son.
Speaker 1: And they stop and talk about their name for just
a second. Let's just this whole big Enus and little Enis.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there was just purely coincidental that they were
going to do that.
Speaker 1: It was actually not their original names they had, they
had different different.
Speaker 2: That was like Kyle and Dean or something like that.
But yeah, not funny enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, not funny at all. Speaking of Enus, I think
Enis and bo right, I think John Schneider might have
been been a cameo.
Speaker 2: Both Duke Cooter and Enism Dukes of Hazard.
Speaker 1: All three of those guys are in this in in
a little bit parts that's it?
Speaker 2: You got yea, and Burt Reynolds plays Boss Hog in
the remake of Dukes of Hazzard.
Speaker 1: It all comes full circle.
Speaker 2: Are we back on the plot here?
Speaker 1: Did we leave? I thought we were down with the plots.
Speaker 2: We're not quite done with the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Running beer the end, that's all.
Speaker 2: No. No, So Big Enis and Little Lenis are Texas
oil bearings, as we think, and they just go around
and put people up to these weird, strange bets. And
so he wants Bandit to get off his butt and
accept a real challenge and go pick up four hundred
cases of Coors beer from Texarkana, Texas transport him back
to Atlanta for a rodeo in twenty eight hours or less.
Speaker 1: Why Cooors beer?
Speaker 2: Because he's thirsty dummy. The kicker is is that transporting
Coors beer east of the Mississippi is bootlegging, and so
it's illegal what he's doing. And not only is it fast,
but it's illegal, right, So he gets his buddy Snowman
to drive the truck. They're gonna put the four hundred
cases of Cours in the truck, and the trans am
is running blocker, which basically means he gets all the
attention from the cops and he runs all over the
place and lets Snowman in the clear. Along the way,
he picks up a runaway bride, Carrie played by Sally Field,
who's running away from her marriage to Junior Justice, who
is Sheriff Beaufort Justice's son, and Beaufort Justice is the
type of man who is not gonna lit some koozy
walk out on him, whether Knocker's bouncing around, poondanging was wiggling.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 2: She insulted my towne, she insulted my son, and she
insulted my authority. And so she jumps in the car
with Bandit while he's transporting this beer, and he makes
it his life mission to catch and put away Bandit.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they get this challenge by Big Nis and
Little Nis right with me so far?
Speaker 2: I believe you're just a little bit scared. Oh that's great.
Why don't you just say something about my mother? Your
mama is so ugly?
Speaker 1: Okay, So can you name me the artist that has
had songs sung bye? Ready for this? Okay? Elvis Presley,
Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Barbara streisand Willie Nelson, Kermit the Frog,
Luther Van Dross, Neil McCoy, and Diamond Riot. To me,
it's Paul Williams, the actor play in the part of
Little Enis and he is a pastic prodigy. It is amazing.
I mean he and I throw the carpenters in there
as well. He's responsible for just an old fashioned love
song out in the country, family Man, Rainy Days and
Mondays and Rainbow Connection and this this might be the
best the love boat theme.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It is right. He is a flipping genius and he
was one of just to throw this in. He was
one of the apes on one of the Planet of
the Apes movies that John Landis was a part of too.
Speaker 2: Really, Rainfall Circle. When you say Rainbow Connection, I immediately
why are I mean, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: If anybody's gonna if anybody's gonna pick up anything from
this part podcast, it's that we love the Muppets.
Speaker 2: We love the Muppets. We absolutely love the Muppets.
Speaker 1: We haven't yet had a Muppet movie episode, but we will.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, we have to. Yeah, well you want
here's my Muppet tie in. You ready for this? Other
than Rainbow Connection, Cannonball Run, Huh, which is the second
movie we're going to cover. Yes, was released June nineteenth,
nineteen eighty one. Yes, We've talked about this on our
Superman episode. Right, in my opinion, is the greatest two
weeks in nineteen eighties movies history.
Speaker 1: Okayb in movies history overall, right, it is freaking fantastic.
So let me let me read you.
Speaker 2: It just blows my mind. So June twelfth, nineteen eighty one,
you had during this weekend, you had Clash of the Titans,
History of the World and Raiders of the Lost Stark. The
next week, June nineteenth, you have the Cannonball Run Superman two.
The week after that you have Dragonslayer for your eyes
only great Muppet caper and Stripes.
Speaker 1: And as John Reid would say, no, kid had any
money in June of nineteen eighty one, No Eloys, all right, everybody,
please stick around. We will be right back after these messages,
he as Sam never been heard.
Speaker 2: So Cannonball Run was released June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one.
Budget was eighteen million, and it made seventy two million
dollars yep and over one hundred million worldwide, but seventy
two here in the States. And that was sixth best
in nineteen eighty one. And I just read that Murderer's
Row of awesome eighties movies.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the inspiration for smoking in the
bandit being stolen Coors beer by the maid. The inspiration
for Cannonball Run was an actual race. Brocky Eights is
the guy who put on the race. He wrote for
a magazine called The Cannonballer, and he was He's a
car and driver guy. He's very into cars. As we know,
how neat him is as well. How need him, by
the way, was in the first attempt to break the
or not the first attempt, but a famous attempt to
break the sound barrier on land by driving a car
seven hundred miles an hour and at six hundred and
twenty miles an hour. He pushed his shoot and nothing happened.
And then he pushed his second shoot and nothing happened.
And then he pushed his third shoot and nothing happened.
And he was like, oh, crap, I guess I'm just
going to have to push on the brakes with my foot.
And he fortunately wasn't injured. But when he went to inspect,
and this is all that said. This is crazy to me,
he says in his autobiography. And some individual who will
remain nameless, had poured battery acid all over my parachutes.
How do you not name the guy who tried to
murder you? I don't know, I don't what.
Speaker 2: Views pay justice poured battery ascid all over it.
Speaker 1: So Hal Needham was great friends with Brockyates. They he
had been doing the Cannonball Run race for a while.
This was back whenever fifty five the speed limit across
the United States, and so they thought, okay, well we're
going to do this race and it's just going to
be from coast to coast and everybody gets to pick
whatever their own vehicle is and how and Rocky Yates
drove a Dodge Van that they camouflaged as an ambulance,
had had a Hemi engine in it. You could put
ninety gallons of gas in there. They had four holes
to put the gas in so that they didn't have
to sit too long to fill up ninety gallons. You
got four hoses going at the same time. And then
whenever they hit the road, they were just going until
there was a traffic gym, and then they turned on
their lights. And he said the cars would part like
the Red Sea.
Speaker 2: I heard him say this. He said the cars would
part like Jesus partying in the Red Sea. I'm like, any,
I guess not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, this is an actual thing that
he actually did with his buddy Brockiades.
Speaker 1: Yes, the this van would go one hundred and forty
five miles now and that's how fast Hal drove it.
Like when how was driving, it was going one hundred
and forty five miles an hour. And the scene where
they get pulled over by the cops, that actually happened
to him, Like he and Brockiates are driving this thing
dressed as EMT's driving across the country. They get pulled
over in Pennsylvania and he's and they get out and
they're like, well where are you you know, where are
you going? Well, this lady's sick, Well where are you
taking her? California? California? Here Pennsylvania. And he was like, well,
you know that she's got to go to California. There's
something wrong with her. And they're like what is Why
didn't you meta flight her? And they're like, I don't know,
asked the doctor, And as it turned out, they had
an actual doctor in the van with him who brought
his wife. And when they opened the door, he's back there,
just like Jackie Elum and they're like, hey, why why
didn't couldn't you fly this lady over to California? And
he goes because she has got a serious lung infection.
In fact, it's so serious we couldn't even take the
northern route to California.
Speaker 2: That it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hal Needham said he thought about getting those guys
to play the part of the cops in the movie,
but then thought better of it, which is probably a
good idea.
Speaker 2: I don't getting the actual cops to play the cops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome, So I got wrong.
Speaker 2: Dun dun, dun. Okay, So Cannonball Run. They thought about
making an action movie was Steve McQueen, but he died.
Then they decided, hey, let's call Burt Reynolds to make
it a comedy, and they paid him. Listen to this,
four weeks of work five million bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the four weeks more than the entire budget for
Smoking in the Bandit.
Speaker 2: Burt Reynolds said after doing the Smoking the Bandit movies,
after he did Smoking the Bandit too, He's like, I'm
never driving a car over thirty five miles an hour
ever again. And they said, oh yeah, how about five
million dollars for four weeks. He's like, done, Yeah, I'm in.
Speaker 1: Hal Needham said when he gave him a call, he
was like, all right, I'll bring this over to you.
I just want you to read the script. But they're
willing to pay you five million dollars four weeks. And
Burt Reynolds said, did you say five million dollars for
four weeks? And he says yeah, And he says, I
don't need the script. I'm in.
Speaker 2: The actual correct full name of the Canniball Run race
is called the Cannibal Baker See to Shining Sea Memorial
Trophy Dash. Should we go through the plot on this one.
Speaker 1: Sure, I've got forty five seconds go.
Speaker 2: JJ McClure played by Burt Reynolds is an adventurer who
decides to partake in an illegal race across the country, using,
like you said, an ambulance as cover. There's other racers
including Farah Fawcet, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Junior, Roger
Moore as a very James Bond life character, and Jackie Chan.
They'll do anything, break all the rules to outrun all
the difficulties and win the race.
Speaker 1: Well, you've you've forgotten your foil, right, We've got viewfort
Justice as the foil for Smoky in the Bandit as
much as he is one, because he's really ineffectual. And
our ineffectual foil for this movie is Arthur Foight, Mister Foyight,
who is brilliant played by George Firth, whose other memorable
part is from Blazing Saddles, which shares the commonality with
these two movies in that completely politically incorrect.
Speaker 2: Yes, mister Foyd, every time he takes on the cannonball
or something bad happens to him.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, he is such a good part of
this movie. I love him and I'm gonna give a
shout out to Arlin again. When we were discussing this,
he's like, yeah, you know what, I'm pretty confident he
was named after a race car driver. And I was
like what. And it turns out there is a famous
race car driver from this time period named AJ Foyight
who did some amazing things but also had a very
memorable like race car toy set. You remember seeing the
AJ Foyight Racing team. I bet some of our listeners
out there will remember that one.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that, but I've heard that name before.
Speaker 1: So AJ Foyt was the only driver to win the
Indianapolis five hundred, which he won four times, the Daytona
five hundred, the twenty four hour Daytona, and the twenty
four hours of Lamon's. That's pretty freaking impressive.
Speaker 2: That's impressive.
Speaker 1: There's no question that George Firth's character is named after
this guy as kind of a wink and orknot mister Foyight.
Speaker 2: So you have this cast of crazy characters, right, You've
got Jackie Chan and Michael.
Speaker 1: Qui and it's probably not something anything close. It's probably
like Smith right exactly.
Speaker 2: You've got Adrian Barbo and Tara Buckman in the Lambo
the Lambeo Girls.
Speaker 1: Yep. Tara Buckman, by the way, was also in Sheriff
Lobo and bj and the Bear, which of course were
TV things that were kind of spawned by Smokey in
the Bandit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You have Seymour Goldfarb, who thinks he's not James Bond.
He thinks he's Roger Moore.
Speaker 1: Right, because you can't say James Bond in the movie
You're gonna get.
Speaker 2: Sued, That's right. You have the Shekh played by Jamie Farr.
You have Mel Tillis and Terry Bradshaw. Yeah, you've got
Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Junior as priests in a
Ferrari doing the Lord's work. Just faster.
Speaker 1: Be Ferrari. By the way, is how Needam's car that
was his actual car?
Speaker 2: So was the ambulance?
Speaker 1: Right, So the ambulance that they use in the Cannonball
Run is the same ambulance that Brockyates and how Needam
used to do their actual cannonball race. Say bitch one
they okay? So I said that it goes one hundred
and forty five miles an hour. They averaged eighty miles
an hour average That means including stops and phillips and
all of that averaged eighty five miles an hour. Were
completely in the lead, and then the transmission went out
and just like in the movie, they had to get
loaded up on the back of a semi truck bed.
Speaker 2: Okay, according to which car dot com, America's most illegal
record has been obliterated. This is May fifteenth, twenty twenty.
The Cannonball Run, which had been the record cross country
from Connecticut to California, was twenty eight hours. Now it's
less than twenty six hours. And the reason why is
because everybody was off the road in quarantine. Oh man,
the Cannonball run record has been beaten seven times in
the past five weeks. So apparently the Canniball Run is
still alive and well time to be twenty six hours.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, please stick around. We will be right
back after these messages. So a couple other folks that
are a little less known. You've got Mad Dog, who
is played by Rick Aviels. But then the other guy
who was riding with him, the no breaks. It's the
no breaks gag. It gets him every.
Speaker 2: Time you got the brace.
Speaker 1: That guy was played by Alfie Wise. His character's name
was Batman. I don't think I even knew that. But
you know what else? Alfie Wise was in No Smoky
in the Bandit what you get that piece off my
high way?
Speaker 2: Oh? Are you serious?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, he was like, and it's O there's evidence
in a crap? Oh no, give a crap? What it
is you.
Speaker 2: Get that pieces off my highway? Don't you raise your
voice to me? You know who else? Okay, So we
got Burt Reynolds and Don del Luise, Farah Fawcett and
Jack Elam in the ambulance. Okay, hold on, hold on,
hold on, Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: Can you say Farah Fawcett.
Speaker 2: Again, Farah Fawcet.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just dwell on that for a moment. Okay,
did everybody just think of the poster? Because I'm pretty
sure everybody just thought of the poster right now? Is
that what you thought of? That's what I thought of.
Speaker 2: She doesn't want to bra the entire movie either.
Speaker 1: I don't think you wore brought her entire life. God
bless her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got Adrian Barbo and Tara Buckman in the Lamborghini,
you've got Roger Moore and a different girl every five seconds.
In the aston Martin, you've got Dean Martin, Sava Davis Junior.
In the Ferrari, you've got Jackie Chan and Michael Hui.
And the Suzuki, you've got the Sheikh in a Rolls Royce,
You've got mel Tillis and Terry Bradshaw in the Hawaiian
Tropic Car.
Speaker 1: Sorry you take this, keep it. The change leaves comes back,
get a physical.
Speaker 2: I will be back for you, my desert flower. The
cast in Kenniball Run is amazing. When I was watching
the commentary, they talked about how at the beginning of
the movie, you've seen the Lamborghini just scream down these
roads and it's like Burt Reynolds and then Dom Delawise.
It's these single name cards, right that when it was
first played like opening night, people started to cheer. I mean,
the cast in this movie is amazing.
Speaker 1: Right, And it was. I mean, it was another one
of those that they had these big plans, but it
wasn't until Bert said five million for four weeks. I
don't need to see the script. Once he was in,
everyone else fell into place. You had your rat pat guys,
and the part of Sammy Davis Junior was actually supposed
to be played by Don Rickles at first, but because
Dom Delauise was in the movie and Don Rickles had
this kind of competition going about who was the best
in Las Vegas at the time, he's like, nah, I
don't want to be in that movie. And so Sammy
Davis comes in. You know, it was a Jewish name,
Samuel Wurk and uh, because you're small, sam mall.
Speaker 2: God is our co pilot. Where is he gonna sit?
We only got two seats.
Speaker 1: So they make the movie. And after the movie comes out,
Frank Sinatra, who wasn't in the movie, is like, why
didn't I get to be in the movie? Everybody else
got the movie. I don't in the movie, So they
put him in. They put him in Part two, which,
by the way, Hall Needam said, I was always the
first guy on the set, But when Frank was there
for his shooting, I arrived to the set and he
had he was already done with makeup and waiting for me.
He's really been on his own little private jet. Did
his scene and out like a pro. The chairman of
the board Okay, so one super famous guy that you
haven't mentioned yet is Peter Fonda, right right, right right.
Peter Fonda was the leader of the Motorcycle Gang, which
is perfect because not too long before this movie he
had done Easy Rider, the motorcycle movie. Right right right.
How Needham's cameraman was actually a friend of Peter Fonda's,
and Peter Fonda heard about the movie and said, Hey,
could I be in the movie? I mean, this movie
is just about a bunch of these guys getting together
and having a good time.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: It's just fun. You don't have to come in with
any expectations. You just get in there and you see
them all having fun together, and you're along for the ride.
It is wonderful.
Speaker 2: I have fun every time I watch this movie. It's
like being a part of a you know, something special.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's They talked about how at the hotel they stayed
in every night as a group, they'd wrap up, they'd
get some drinks, they'd watch dailies.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. He would invite the crew to watch the dailies,
which was uncommon. Usually it would just be the actors
watching their own performances in the dailies. But he invited
the crew because he figured, Hey, if the guys who
spent you know, eight hours shooting this scene the day
before are laughing at it, that means that we did
something right. Right exact, if he went into a bar
and some of his crew was in the bar, he
would never let him buy a drink. He was really
a very down to earth director. And then he you know,
we talked about the famous people that he put in there.
He had his secretary was in there. She was one
of the people taking the entry cards. The other lady
was Brockiates, his wife. He put his business manager in there.
She's the one at the end screaming, help help my baby.
He's drowning. And then you remember the scene where the
two priests where Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Junior are
over there talking about how to pick up the girls
in the bar. Yeah, I was just listening in and
eventually does a spit take. That was his accountant. That
was the accountant for the come on, let's come on,
let's just be a part of let's all do this
fun thing together. That is what defines these movies to
me is we're not looking at some sort of marvelous, cinematic,
epic thing. We're looking at people getting together and having
a good time and in biting us along for the ride.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Here's something for you to look
for the next time you watch Canniball Run. Okay, the
continuity errors with Adrian Barbo zipper. I'm not kidding. When
she's pulled over in Pennsylvania, it's up, it's down, it's up,
it's down. She end zips it once. It's it's funny.
Speaker 1: Makes she liked to play with her zipper a little bit.
Speaker 2: That guy who played the cop in Pennsylvania, the guy
that she's dazzling with her zipper is Burt Reynolds stand
in Yeah, and you can tell just by looking at him.
He looked He's got the same mustache, same kind of
dark hair, and that was his stand in. Oh, you
know who else is in Cannibal Run. You've got Bianca Jagger,
who is Mick Jagger's wife, right, she's sister. You had
Joe Klecko, who played nose tackle or nose guard for
the New York Jets.
Speaker 1: He was the guy who's lifting up the van instead
of using the jack and he was actually lifting that van.
That guy was a big mother effort. He was huge.
Speaker 2: He's huge. You have Jimmy the Greek.
Speaker 1: Yeah, story there along with the political incorrectness of these movies, right,
you get Jimmy the Greek.
Speaker 2: I love it when Sammy Davis Junior comes up and says,
Sir James like calls him, Sir James.
Speaker 1: For some reason, We've got God is our coke pilot.
You're gonna need him.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about twenty big large ones. Sammy Davis Junior
is hilarious in this movie.
Speaker 1: Oh brilliant, just brilliant. Oh all right, everybody, please stick around.
We will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: All right, let's flit back smugging to Bannon. Okay, So
they make it to text ar caanaon in like ten minutes,
right right, Which is funny because this was not shot
in Texas, Canada, Texas. This was shot in Jonesboro, Georgia. Okay,
Cletus's house the place where they shot Cletus's house, Yeah,
the warehouse where they pick up all the beer. Yeah,
where they use the forklift where he can drive any
forking thing around. That was about half a mile from
that house. Nice, but The first scene I really want
to talk to you about is when Sally Field leaves
the wedding, her own wedding. She leaves Junior at the
altar brand it picks her up, they take off, and
the car left behind says just married on it. There's
some vandals that come and show up. Right, my favorite,
Jackie Gleason shows up.
Speaker 5: Don't you leave, don't get no lunch, don't play with yourself.
You can think about it, but don't do it.
Speaker 2: I'd like, he's such a respected bad ay. He walked
up to the first guy and he's like, you look tired, boy,
rest yourself, bars around like immediately spreads him, you know
the nuts. Yeah. Then he walks up and kicks that
guy in the butt and he's like, that wasn't attention
get her? That part is hilarious and it establishes that
Jackie Gleeson is somebody who's serious and not to be
messed with, right.
Speaker 1: Right, but also hold out of the car and his tucks.
And it's at that point, you know, it's weird to
me that they explain the illegality of transporting Coors beer
across state lines about three times in this movie. Right,
make sure you understand it, but they just kind of
cruise on over the fact that Junior's in the tucks
and that's his bride. It takes. They don't give you
that explanation. You just got it. You got to kind
of get there, right, which is good. I mean, that's
good that they don't dumb it down for you. But
it's interestingly decided to dumb down the cores things. And
as if anybody couldn't figure that part out.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a scene where the cops are onto Bandit
and he takes them down a country road and he
realizes all the craft the bridge is out, so he says,
that's not good. Turns around, cops are coming, he said,
and that's even worse. When he wheels around, he's going
to jump this bridge and they hit the spectacular bridge
jump in the movie. Yeah, that jump when you see
it on film, that car is so high in the
air it's freaking unbelievable. It's dukes of hazard times ten.
Speaker 1: Right, So how Needham has this deal with rockets like
that's his special deal. One of the first movies that
you see a car flipp it like they had to
try to figure out how to flip a car over
on the beach, right, And you know, normally when you
flip a car over, you're going to have to have
like a bush or another car or something like that
to create the ramp so that the car can be flipped.
But they're out trying to do this on the beach
and they don't know how to do it. And so
how Needham says, well, why don't we just put a
rocket in the floorboard. And of course how need HM's
the stunt man at this point, he's going to car.
They put the rocket in the floorboard. He's driving his
car and he says, they hit the rocket and all
of a sudden, I realized I was sixty feet in
the air and going backwards, and I thought, this is
not going according to plan. He said the pain was
something that morphine didn't seem to have any effect on.
Speaker 2: This guy is an amazing guy. Like I don't know
if we talked off air, Ora, but hell need him
is a guy that I would love to have his
life for like a few days. So he man director
tons of Hollywood friends and girls and parties and right, yeah,
well that's.
Speaker 1: The interesting social connection because most of the people who
were in Cannonball Run. He got to know through like
these Hollywood parties that he would go to with his wife.
Like his wife was this actress named Danny Crane who's
just absolutely gorgeous. I mean, she potentially is another Marilyn
Monroe or Jane Mansfield, but she goes to these Hollywood
parties and that's how he ends up meeting half of
the people that are in Cannonball Run. And I said
to you earlier, I don't you know, I got nothing
to prove this, but I got a strong impression that
there's a lot of there's a lot of swinging.
Speaker 2: Happening to Swing, right, Yeah, for sure, a lot of swinging.
Speaker 1: Did you just say this to Swing Yeah, singer Sona.
Speaker 2: Yes, I get the impression that there's some cocaine and
swinging for sure. You know, Pontiac gave them four trans
ams to use during the course of the film. In
this movie, on that bridge jump, they totally destroyed one car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had four Pontiac transims. By the way, about
four years ago they introduced a bandit special trans am.
Do you know about this?
Speaker 2: You send this to me, I want one, I got out.
Speaker 1: Oh well, they only made seventy seven of them. How
awesome is that it's seventy seven because the year bandit
came out with seventy seven, it was supposed to be
a seventy seven transam, although I think what they did
actually is they put the the front of the seventy
seven on the back or on the car of a
seventy six. But Yeah, by the time this movie was
over all, of all of the four that they had received,
plus a couple of other extra cars had been totally
demolished and like three of them became the parts for
the fourth one that which could still drive down the road.
Speaker 2: Right. I wanted to talk briefly about Fred the bassett Hound.
Speaker 1: And the beauty contest, Yeah, or is it the ugly contest?
Speaker 2: Ugly contest?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So before the movie started, they had a contest to
bring your dog up for a chance to be in
the movie, and Burt Realds was the judge, and he
picked Fred the basset hound, who is actually named Happy.
Picked him chiefly because it refused to obey any commands.
Speaker 1: Free get on back here.
Speaker 2: Beauverty Justice was the name of a real Florida Highway
patrolman known to Burt Reland's father who was once the
chief of police in Jupiter, Florida. And I also thought
it was funny that Burt Reynolds dad use the term
some bad all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some where are you you so much?
Speaker 2: Do you remember when Jerry Reid was in that episode
of Scooby Doo. It's like the ghost that haunts the
Grand old Opry and they kidnapped.
Speaker 1: Jerry Reid and might actually kind of remember that he
just like opened a drawer and a small cabb on
the mental mansion that has not been opened in about
thirty five years? Is what? What did? Yes? I think
I do remember that.
Speaker 2: What the way they found him in Scooby Doo was
They just they told him just to sing and so
is a chance for him to have this song montage
while they looked around for him?
Speaker 1: Well it looks like that, does it? For this episode?
Jason just send the bill to big enis burdett.
Speaker 2: Uh big big enis verdet uh b uh bu b
be hell I got to go. We