BEFORE: While I'm down South, I'll check out another one of those films that "everyone" has seen before, except for me, apparently. Rod Steiger from "In the Heat of the Night" links to Burt Reynolds (last heard in "All Dogs Go to Heaven") through a 2001 film called "The Hollywood Sign".
THE PLOT: The Bandit is hired on to run a tractor trailer full of beer over county lines, pursued by a pesky sheriff.
AFTER: Well, there are some films that are just the product of their times, and then just don't seem to make sense in the modern world. And I'm not even talking about Burt Reynold's career, which was at its peak around about the time this film was made.
You know how you see a film from the 1970's or 1980's, and someone's in a bit of trouble, like their car breaks down, and they needed to be somewhere important, and you just wonder why they didn't use their cell phone to call for help? Then you remember, that technology wasn't in use then. Same goes for GPS, wi-fi, and I bet a whole lot of things we take for granted these days - they've really ruined old movies that depends on certain plot points or miscommunications.
This relates to this film in two ways: First, the CB radio. Wildly popular for some reason in the 1970's among people who found some fascination with the trucker lingo and lifestyle, or maybe just trying to connect with others in a cold, faceless world. My dad was a truck driver for over 40 years, but never had a CD radio or said things like "Breaker, good buddy" or called a policeman a "smokey". But if it's dangerous and illegal now to drive while talking on the phone or texting, then by extension, CB radios should have been illegal back then too. They should have been used only during emergencies to call for help, not to determine the best ways to speed through populated areas, or to flirt with loose women who liked truck drivers.
Secondly, the job in this film, transporting cases of Coors beer from Texas to Atlanta. While it is true that Coors was a regional product until the mid-1980's, and it was largely confined to the Western U.S., I don't know whether it was specifically illegal to transport it across state lines. Facts be damned: Wikipedia is telling me that Texarkana, TX was located in a dry county, anyway - so the premise is shot from the get-go.
As a beer drinker, I have to wonder why anyone would want so much crappy beer to be hauled across the country anyway. Of course, American beer really came alive in the mid-1980's with craft brews like Anchor Steam and Sam Adams, so I have to remember that back in the 1970's, maybe Coors was considered a tasty beer by comparison. I certainly wouldn't drink it now, not with all the amazing diverse beers on the market.
But, we come back to the "bet", which is to drive round-trip 1,800 miles in just 28 hours, bringing the Coors beer to a party in Atlanta, since (apparently) local Georgia beer won't suffice. The actual round-trip distance between Atlanta and Texarkana is just 1,260 miles, so it's good to know that no one was in danger of getting hurt by doing actual research for this screenplay. Why bother with the facts? With two drivers for the trip, why not take shifts so one can sleep while the other drives? No, that would make too much sense, I suppose -
But Burt Reynolds needs to drive the TransAm as a "blocker", even though he spends much of the movie cavorting with a woman he picks up, and not actually blocking for the truck. I assume by "blocking" he's supposed to get the cops to chase him instead of the truck that's going 90 miles an hour, but honestly this plan never really works right, since he's usually off doing something else.
The Texas lawman, Buford T. Justice, is way out of his jurisdiction - and no one can quite figure out how he knows about the beer, or why he's so relentless on catching the Bandit. But that's because he's got his own reasons for the pursuit, and they don't involve the beer at all.
I'd like to see a count on which film destroyed the most police cars - this one was probably only beaten by "The Blues Brothers". But other than that, the movie just didn't land with me, since the premise and most of the details seemed so out of line with reality.
NITPICK POINT: Three young men are stripping a car by the side of the highway (they appear 30 seconds after the car is abandoned, which seemed a little odd). Presumably all three men are on high-alert, since they're breaking the law. So how come none of them hear a police car drive up, and a portly sheriff exit the car?
NITPICK POINT #2: If Bandit and Snowman keep switching CB radio channels so the cops can't track their conversations, then how come every trucker (and non-trucker) along the route knows about their backstory? They wouldn't have been in any one place, or talking on any one frequency, long enough for anyone to know the details of their trip.
Also starring Sally Field (last seen in "Mrs. Doubtfire"), Jackie Gleason (last seen in "The Hustler"), Jerry Reed, Paul Williams, Pat McCormick.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Diablo sandwiches
I believe the Coors was unpasteurized (or something like that) and supposed to be excellent as it was made in prior to the 80s, but if it was allowed to get warm, it was supposed to ruin the beer, so it was not sold on the east coast. I remember people were making a big deal about it when it was first being imported to the east coast, but I think later preservatives were added making just another inferior beer.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I am always glad to see Paul Williams in anything. His career as a actor seem to revolve around appearances on the Love Boat.
Also, the Trans Am was pretty nice too.
That makes sense - and it's rare when someone trumps me on beer knowledge! Wikipedia is telling me that in the late 1970's, Coors was the only major U.S. brewery that wasn't pasteurizing its beer, because it was considered a regional beer and it wasn't being shipped over long distances.
DeleteI've visited the Miller brewery in Milwaukee and tasted a Miller Lite, fresh from the teat, and was shocked by how good it tasted. Normally I would never drink a lowly Miller Lite. Same thing happened when I visited the breweries at Busch Gardens and sampled a Bud Lite.
Turns out that beer tastes better when you don't cook all the flavor out of it, then ship it across the country through various temperature conditions. Which is why I prefer to drink local beer, plus a variety of craft beers that I find more flavorful.
There was also a decade-long labor dispute at the Coors brewery, and people who supported the unions boycotted the beer, which hurt sales. The brewery fought back by establishing its distribution nationwide.
Though it's connected with Denver, Colorado, Coors opened up a brewery in Virginia in 2004, so if you're on the East Coast now, that whole Rocky Mountain tie-in is a bunch of bull.
Anyway, what Bandit + Snowman did by driving the unpasteurized beer across the (presumably) warm South in a non-refrigerated truck could not have resulted in a quality beer being delivered.
Yeah, as I was writing my comment, it occurred to me that they were using an non-refrigerated truck, making a hole in my justification of their beer run.
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ReplyDeleteFor some bizzare reason, the Country Music Television (station?) seems to have like only two programs that they play, one of which is the movie Smokey and the Bandit, which they have been playing for like a month. For that reason I have seen bits of the film recently, and was looking something up on it, and it said that the model truck, well actually trailer, that was used in the film was actually refrigerated, so it turns out the hole I thought there was was actually due to my lack of knowlege about trailers, not a fault with the plot.
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