- My Burt Reynolds was Cannonball Run Burt Reynolds; it’s the movie that explains his career.
- Half-assed, coasting on charm, Southern, and dated.
- A guy who looked like Burt Reynolds could be a big movie star nowadays, but not one who acted like him; similarly, the film is–from opening frame to iconic blooper reel–a denizen of the Problem Attic.
- Holy shit, every little thing in this movie belongs in the Problem Attic.
- We’ll get to that: Burt is J.J. and he’s some sort of car-related person who enjoys thrills and slapping Dom DeLuise; this required very little acting on Burt’s part, and so Burt does very little acting in the picture: there’s the smirk, and he’s got a deadpan, and the laugh, and that’s it.
- “Hal, just tell me if you want face 1, 2, or 3.”
- I will now drop out of bullet points to address the Younger Enthusiast.
Burt Reynolds was a massive star, Younger Enthusiast, equal to Arnold in the 80’s or The Rock today. He shot people and punched people, Burt and his mustache did, cracking wise all the time. And wooing the ladies. This guy, Younger Enthusiast:
That guy woo’ed the fuck out of the ladies in the 70’s, Younger Enthusiast. Also: Burt killed that bear himself.
This was 1972, and Burt had Deliverance coming out, so he got naked and smoked on top of a bear and then he was the biggest movie star in America for a while, kids. That fucking guy. He did a couple pictures where he played a guy named Gator McKlusky, and a couple others where he was called Bandit, and one where he was Paul “Wrecking” Crewe.
Those are some great fucking names.
And then in 1980, he did Cannonball Run and it was over; thus began the Later Years. There was the buddy cop picture where his partner was a precocious child, and leaden broad comedies, and Burt didn’t give a shit. You had a check? Burt would show up and be obnoxious–possibly violent–towards the director and honk the makeup chick’s tit and smirk when the cameras rolled. He was a professional, after all. Boogie Nights was a fluke; he was in the Mister Bean movie the same year. The Foreign Press Association gave him a Golden Globe for his performance, though, and Burt was back! He immediately squandered the goodwill by appearing in every piece of shit movie that had a check for him, just as he had been doing for at least a decade.
In Burt’s defense, he needed the money: if his script choices were Cage-y, his expenditures were Deppian. Burt acquired art, and real estate, and vengeful ex-wives. He bought the jet. His lawyer told him to lease it, so Burt called him a Jew bastard and slapped him, then bought the jet. Burt Reynolds opened a dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida, because beneath that toupee he was a crazed swamprat.
Remember how I said he bought art?
A lot of it was like that. Paintings of Burt. His whole house was full of them. Not all featured a horse.
And that, Younger Enthusiast, is what Burt Reynolds meant to me. We return to the bullet points:
- The man made some legitimately good films–Deliverance, The Longest Yard, the underrated City Heat with Clint Eastwood–but Cannonball Run is not one of them.; it is, however, the film he made that HBO played near-daily for several years of my childhood, searing every lazily-staged shot and poorly-dubbed line into my still-marshmallowy brain.
- This was how Gentiles behaved, Brother on the Dead and I told ourselves during yet another viewing.
- They had mustaches and drank beers, and they knew about cars.
- Our father was clean-shaven and drank no beers at all, and he drove a car.
- Everyone was Southern.
- Every cop in the movie has a Southern accent, even the ones who stop the Cannonballers directly outside the race’s start in Connecticut.
- Most of the background drivers are Dixie-bred, too
- It is absolutely shocking that the Confederate flag did not appear.
- These Cannonballers are just some good ol’ boys (and two women with large breasts) just a-havin’ some fun and exercisin’ their liberty.
- And putting innumerable lives at risk just to fuck around.
- Okay, I tried to avoid it for as long as I could, but it must be stated: this movie is in the Problem Attic collection.
- It’s right next to Revenge of the Nerds and Soul Man.
- Nothing that happens in this movie is okay anymore.
- Twitter would get furious.
- The main female part is played by Farrah Fawcett’s hair and nipples.
- She’s called Beauty, but that wasn’t her character’s name; Burt just walks up to her and his mustache says “I’m gonna call you Beauty” and so that’s who she is.
- Then, Burt and Dom DeLuise throw her in the back of their van and kidnap her.
- And then drug her.
- She starts off as the assistant to the movie’s version of a villain, the weaselly environmentalist Mr. Foyt, and then the heroes kidnap and drug her.
- And she’s like, “Oh, you guys.”
- And then is two scenes later preparing for bed in the back of the souped-up ambulance in her scanty panties and thin, cotton top.
- It may not surprise you to learn that Cannonball Run does not pass the Bechdel Test.
- Besides Farrah Fawcett, there are only two other women of note; they have big breasts.
- The women, one blonde and one brunette, drive a Lamborghini and wear colorful jumpsuits with zippers on the front.
- When they are stopped by the police, they tug the zippers downward, which reveals a great deal of the interior portions of their big breasts.
- Upon seeing the women’s big breasts, the highway trooper loses his bearing.
- “Wanna suck on those yojimbos,” perhaps he is thinking.
- He lets the women and their big breasts off with a warning.
- BUT THEN!
- The women see flashing lights behind them once again; they pull the car over and pull their zippers down, but THE COP IS ALSO A WOMAN WITH BIG BREASTS.
- Classic set-up and punchline right there, folks.
- Twitter would also take issue with Jackie Chan and The Other Chinese Guy’s portrayal.
- Jackie Chan is, as you might know, Chinese.
- So is The Other Chinese Guy.
- But the joke was that the car was a high-tech wonder from Japan.
- The solution was to just have Jackie and TOCG speak Chinese and not mention it, but it was 1981 and no one noticed shit like that.
- Or would have given a shit about that shit, because every appearance of Jackie and TOCG are accompanied on the soundtrack by a gong and the riff from Everybody Was King-Fu Fighting.
- You could write yourself a real solid college paper about how Burt, Dom DeLuise, and Captain Chaos represent the Id, Ego, and Superego; you could get yourself an A on that paper if you were clever.
- The promotion of operating vehicles while intoxicated might also not play so well in 2018.
- In ’81, drunk driving was apparently adorable.
- It was–just going by the information I have from Cannonball Run–the act of a lovable scamp.
- Boys will be boys.
- This is one of Dean Martin’s last performances, and it shouldn’t have been; his son had died a few years before and he would hang around the Hamburger Hamlet in Beverly Hills getting drunk, and he looked sad and done with it all.
- (Dino’s childhood pal from Steubenville, PA, was in the picture, too: guy named Jimmy the Greek. Nick Tosches wrote a book about Dean Martin, and Steubenville, and Jimmy the Greek; you should read it. For the Younger Enthusiasts: Jimmy the Greek was a famous gambler. There used to be such a thing as a famous gambler. He would appear on CBS and give his picks for the football games until one night in 1988 when someone asked a slightly-tipsy Greek about racial disparities in sports, leading the Greek to deliver a history lesson. “The master bred his big black buck to his strong female, y’see, and that’s why they make such good linebacker.” Even for 1988, that was fucked up and CBS had to let him go.)
- There was a real Cannonball Run in the 70’s, a cross-country sprint by car journalists to protest the new 55-mph speed limit; 35 hours or so was the average.
- Some rich Wall Street asshole did it in 23 hours recently.
- Built himself a Batmobile with massive gas tanks and semi-legal radar jammers, and paid for scout cars and blockers.
- Not as much fun.
- No one got kidnapped and drugged even a tiny little bit.
- No more fun on the highways, and no more Burt Reynolds, either.
- Every race reaches Redondo Beach eventually.
Recent Comments