I cried when Burt Reynolds died. I did. Movies and TV shows were my safe place growing up, and watching Reynolds host The Tonight Show was a happy time in my dysfunctional family. Going to the Starlight Drive-in in Henderson, Kentucky to see a Burt Reynolds movie was always a great time. I couldn’t say that about Christmas with my family, but I could say that about any time a get together with my family and Burt Reynolds was involved.
Unless you were alive in the 1970s, you have NO IDEA how huge of a star he was in that decade. No idea. There is no celebrity I can compare his popularity to, before or since.
When I saw on Facebook soon after Reynolds died that a movie theater in Portland, Oregon was going to show Smokey and the Bandit, I immediately bought tickets for the showing, more than a month away. When am I ever going to get to see Smokey and the Bandit again on a big screen?! The showing was almost sold out and the audience laughed at all the right moments – except one, the one in which mocks Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Portague County for being a racist. I always appreciate that scene – the movie would have been disingenuous about the South without it. Regardless, I was in heaven watching that movie in a real theater, on the big screen. I could feel tears in my eyes when “Eastbound and Down” played the first time. A friend of mine tweeted after Burt died, “I was eight years old and my bike was, alternately, the Millennium Falcon and the Bandit’s black Trans-Am.” And rewatching the movie reminded me of why that was.
Ever since that night in Portland, I’ve been hungry for more Burt Reynolds movies.
I’m thrilled to learn today that Turner Classic Movies will show six of his movies on December 26, including Smokey and the Bandit and The Longest Yard. But in October, TCM showed White Lightning, and I recorded it to watch when I had time. And I just watched it. Heaven.
White Lightning was a critical bomb, but an audience smash. If you are thinking of watching it, be forewarned: this is not the romantic, genteel South or the fun-loving good ole boy hick flick you may be expecting. This is not Smokey and the Bandit, though car chases abound. There are some beautiful, atmospheric moments and some hilariously-witty one-liners from Burt and, yes, he takes his shirt off a lot – which is FINE – but this a dark, gritty, at times brutal look at the rural South. If you can ignore the painfully stupid instrumental background music at times, and if you experienced any of the South in the 1970s, or if you wanted to, you’ll dig this movie. I wore the clothes in this movie, women in my family had the hair of oh-so-many of the women in this movie… I swear, I could smell the grass, the cars, the food, the gasoline, the pigs, the sweat, the water – even the moonshine. I loved how all the women in this movie had normal, real bodies – no boob jobs, no botox, real hips. And when Burt says “The Poe-lease,” I melt… that’s how we talked growing up. I’ve been saying “The Poe-lease” frequently these days, much to the confusion of my German husband.
But White Lightning is more than just a movie that looks so nostalgic and atmospheric and has great car chases: I heard so many of the things said by the sheriff and some others in this movie when I was growing up by family members, neighbors, even teachers – about “hippies” and young college students daring to challenge the status quo, asking questions and asking, “Why?” I feel like the movie has a subversive, subtle message: the old ways are going away, and young people everywhere, all over the USA, including the South, are going to demand something much better: racial justice, women’s equality, education for all. And you can’t just kill them all or dismiss them as communists – they are going to just keep coming, and really, are they any better or worse than anyone else? The scene with Reynolds walking around the students in the diner, listening to them as they talk about justice, him obviously thinking of his brother and his ideals, really got me. I believe there are a lot of people like that in rural America, who may not be eloquent, who may be more focused on having a good time than trying to help the oppressed, but who admire those people we mock now as “social justice warriors.”
I do wonder how modern audiences who don’t know the VERY restrictive laws regarding alcohol in the USA once upon a time will understand the secondary plot of the movie, centering around the illegal production and transportation of whiskey, the massive amounts of money people made off such and the dogged attempts of the federal government to collect taxes on it.
It’s not a movie for everyone. But if you have the right mindset, this is a good, thoughtful flick.
And on a side note, I found this interesting note from another reviewer:
Every character in this film hates the system! Sheriff Connors hates the Commies infiltrating Washington, the moonshiners hate the IRS, and those damn long-haired, pot smoking hippies are always protesting. This is because screenwriter William W. Norton was a rebel in his own right; a card-carrying member of the Communist Party since the paranoid 50’s, Norton’s life is as interesting as the story. After a career in Hollywood, penning THE SCALPHUNTERS, I DISMEMBER MAMA, BIG BAD MAMA, and this film’s sequel GATOR, he moved to Ireland in the 1980’s and became a gunrunner for the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army), until he and his wife Eleanor were busted in France, and sentenced to prison. After doing his time, and learning a warrant was issued in America, he sought asylum in Nicaragua, where he killed a man who broke into his house. Then he moved to Cuba, but found living under a Communist regime was a lot different from just carrying a card, so he fled to Mexico, eventually being smuggled back into the USA by friends, where he lived out his life.
And checking IMDB, I found out Norton’s son directed an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my all-time favorite shows, and FreakyLinks, a show created by a friend of mine…
Mind. Blown.
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