College Park Bound and Down

 

When Rednecks Ruled The Road

1977 and still in school, breaks spent amidst wretched environ of the College Park Cinema, would-be rival to the Liberty, but lacking utterly charm of the latter, CP a pointed rebuke to substance and style even small-town theatres once had, its screen largely a platform for Billy Jack, Buford Pusser, the “Preacherman” series (Cinema Treasures has no entry for the College Park --- did it not exist? Did I merely dream it?) They opened with What’s Up Doc in 1972 and slid from there. We were figured for rednecks who liked best redneck movies. Easy to forget glut during the 70’s, and not just from snatch-grab independents. Twentieth did The Last American Hero about our hometown bootlegger and race driver Junior Johnson (renamed “Jackson”) with too much serious intent beneath its trash lid. We needed less an understanding of our primitive regional culture than more car crashing and Junior outrunning Feds (always transplanted Northerners, as they should be). Peter Fonda made rag-tag road pictures after Easy Rider worship was done and out, all hits with us (poor Henry Fonda even ended up in one). Peter could have signed autographs at the College Park anytime. Atop pile of compost was Smokey and the Bandit, more auto misshaping than up-to-then recorded, Burt Reynolds down home enough (born/raised in Florida) to suggest a genuine article. College Park should have bought a print for all the times they ran Smokey. Not since Thunder Road had there been a picture that so belonged to us (and I’m not excluding Thunder in Carolina, with Rory Calhoun).

I lately re-saw Smokey and the Bandit, forty years sufficient to forget detail, except one … it is a fine action comedy, 97 minutes stripped to essentials, and if not so funny alone as with College Park’s crowd, has still appeal I did not expect. Was it nostalgia for going in 1977? I’d say not for but partial glimpses at the time courtesy friendly management not obliging me to buy tickets, Smokey seen more in chunks than whole, idea to observe tumult of one full house, another, still more that followed. Locals laughed, loved it, came back repeatedly. A friend confessed to me yesterday (confessed? She was proud) of ’77 seeing Smokey seven times, in fact was the one who inveigled me to this week watch again.

College Park was largely a flea market to sample from, little worthy of seeing whole other than, say, canonical Freebie and The Bean or Sorcerer (more CP lore via these links). We’d break from to-dawn card play to assemble, then watch, whatever the Thursday night truck delivered for a next day’s opening. This being the 70’s, most were kennel rations (excitement over a midnight sneak of The Deep? --- none). Sometimes I would aim my 16mm Bell and Howell from the booth and run Son of Frankenstein or some such as dawn approached for roughly dozen of us who used the theatre like a clubhouse. New movies had ceased to interest me much after 1967, an odd admission for 2300 posts so far at Greenbriar, but how many of those address topics beyond that year? (not when there’s Norma Talmadge to glow over) I look at Smokey less as treasured memory than bug on a microscope slide, as if somebody other than me caught it first-run. Spending the 70’s largely in blinders, wondering why movies couldn’t be the way they were before I was born, was anything but sensible, maybe not healthy either. Collecting was a guilty party, Adventures of Robin Hood, Red Dust, or The Black Cat on 16mm to argue a since damnation of films. I could count 70’s pictures I liked on one hand, spare fingers enough to hold a drink cup, smug in my statistic then, hopefully less so now. Resolution then, is to visit or revisit what I've long ignored or down-graded, Smokey a start.

Jackie Gleason’s Buford T. Justice seemed to me a part unworthy of him. I deplored the mustache, thought he overplayed, liked better the Miami Beach setting, him in elegant attire introducing the June Taylor dancers. Others strain for laughs, Jerry Reed especially busting a gut. Was Burt Reynolds so magnetic as his Bandit appears to think? Boxoffice evidence said yes, up to a point. Smokey has a cast largely gone now, Mike Henry most recent. I think the best performance was Sally Field’s. She reacts nimbly to others trying too hard, staying for most part on-script while they tear off improv and ad-libs. Reynolds wrote that he got Field the part, even argued with Wasserman on her behalf, latter no stranger to hick comedies, Universal having harbored the Kettles, Francis, and Don Knotts. Smokey and the Bandit was a first in some ways, a last in others. No more would there be road trips so lean, done true places, and with real folks for background. I bet there are fans who have identified every spot drivers passed or stopped at. Reynolds lost his audience not just for repeating Smokey’s formula, but for letting his Cannonball and Stroker Aces be too insider show-biz, cameo-heavy, willful separation of stars from a public they fully expect to adore them.

More that would fade: CB radio, “Citizen’s Band” … was there a hotter, or briefer, fad? Earlier equivalent might have been ham sets at home, or wireless hounds wanting to pick up Japan. Do truckers get as much fun from modern technology as they did CB? Or maybe CB is still thriving, and I’m not aware of it. And what of Coors Beer? I can testify to people smuggling same into frat houses well before “Bandit” made his trip, us assured that Coors tasted way better than anybody’s brew, a relief for me as I was still trying to cultivate a taste for the nasty stuff. Finally had a swig circa ’73, just one was enough to know that beer would never float my boat. Gone for sure: onscreen impressions of George “Gabby” Hayes --- Reynolds does one. He knew movies, was a fan, was a collector. I knew someone who sold him a 35mm print of Sullivan’s Travels. It went vinegar, the dealer citing bad storage climate at Burt’s Florida estate. Reynolds cultivated friendship of old stars. Once I saw him on a talk show where Carol Burnett said how big a fan of Linda Darnell she was growing up. Reynolds said casual, “Yeah, I did Tea and Sympathy with her in summer stock.” Right then, they broke for a commercial, came back after seeming eternity, only to light upon another topic. Last of Smokey nods toward past time: a Broderick Crawford joke. We’ve about run out of live people who'd pick up on those.

There were sequels, horrid sequels. Burt Reynolds and Sally Field did one, a refute of what we liked about the first Smokey. Jerry Reed was the bandit for a third, which I have never seen and would dread to. Gleason stayed through the lot, surely for money alone. Did he die with impression his Buford would be prized over Ralph Kramden, Reggie, the Poor Soul? If so, the cash must have been small comfort. Smokey roads wind on … maintained by fans dedicated beyond energy I have, or had, for any show. Some have done trailers for an imaginary fourth Smokey, so authentic to make you think a #4 had been done. Devotees dedicated enough don’t want their favorites ever to stop, and so there are imagi-previews for Forrest Gump 2, more Back To The Futures, even another Titanic, as if the first did not settle matters. There have been modern-day races staged, Bandit’s Trans-Am against the “General Lee” from The Dukes of Hazard. Original cars used for Smokey and the Bandit numbered four, all destroyed after production, according to Universal. Reynolds had three “exact” replicas made and sold them off one by one over leaner years, the last going at auction for $550K in 2016. He flew out to Arizona to help stimulate the bids. Association with hot driving would cling to a star himself passing eighty. A spooky scene from The Last Movie Star (2017), has present-day Reynolds as passenger in the Trans Am with “Bandit” of forty years earlier at the wheel, old Burt cautioning his younger self against “bad life decisions.” Fans that grew up watching Reynolds were chilled to find him so fragile, millennials better equipped to celebrate their idea of a film “legend.” Chances are the rest saw too much of themselves in what had happened to him.