Did You Know (Smokey And The Bandit) [1977]
DID YOU KNOW THESE FACTS ABOUT THIS CLASSIC FILM? I'M SURE YOU WILL BE SHOCKED!
A majority of the lines and quotes spoken by Jackie Gleason character, Sheriff Buford T. Justice were improvised.
On the DVD Documentary, Burt Reynolds says that a senior executive at Pontiac promised him a free Trans-Am if the movie became a hit. It did and the 1977 T-Top Trans-Am became one of the hottest selling cars of the year. When the movie became a hit, Reynolds expected the executive to come through with his promise. But the Trans-Am never came. After a few months, Reynolds, (who was afraid of looking like one of those pretentious stars looking for freebies), finally called Pontiac. As it turned out, the executive that made the promise had retired and the new executive refused to keep the promise that was made, by the previous Pontiac Trans Am executive.
The second highest grossing movie released in 1977, next to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
Hal Needham asked Jerry Reed to write a theme song for the film. A couple of hours later, Reed presented "East Bound and Down" to Needham. With an acoustic guitar, Reed started to play it and Needham immediately stopped him. Thinking Needham didn't like it, Reed offered to re-write the song. To which Needham replied: "If you change one note, I'll kill you!" The song went on to become one of Reed's biggest hits.
While Hal Needham was in Georgia working as Burt Reynolds' stunt double in Gator(1976), the driver captain on the set brought some Coors beer from California and brought a couple of cases to Needham's hotel room. After he noticed that the maid kept stealing the beers from the fridge, he remembered a TIME magazine article from 1974 about how Coors was unavailable east of the Mississippi River, because the beer was not pasteurized and needed constant refrigeration, and couldn't legally be sold outside of 11 western and southwestern U.S. states. Which made him realize that, "bootlegging Coors would make a good plotline for a movie."
Three Trans-Am cars were used in this movie. Director Hal Needham claims in the DVD documentary that they could barely run towards the end of the film's production.
Buford T. Justice was the name of a real Florida Highway Patrolman known to Burt Reynolds' father who was once Chief of Police of Jupiter, Florida.
Jackie Gleason reportedly modeled his character, Sheriff Buford T. Justice, after Burt Reynolds' description of his father, a Florida police officer and Chief of Police. Among the character traits that came from this was the use of "sumbitch", a colloquial pronunciation of "son of a bitch".
