Film Friday: Smokey And The Bandit (1977)

Smokey and the Bandit is an historical marker. It marks the birth of the New South and its reintroduction back into the United States. Indeed, this film introduced America to the new South. That may sound like a lot for a seemingly simple comedy, but it’s true.

** spoiler alert **

Plot

You all know the plot. Big Enos Burdett bets Bo “Bandit” Darville (Burt Reynolds) that he and his friend Cletus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed) can’t drive from Atlanta to Texarkana, Texas and back in 28 hours. The catch: they need to bring back a truckload of Coors beer, which could not legally be brought east of the Mississippi at that time -- this was bootlegging. As they undertake this journey, with Reynolds driving the now famous 1977 black Pontiac Trans Am, Reynolds picks up hitchhiker Sally Field, who has run away from her own wedding, causing the father of the groom, Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), to chase them across state lines.

Southern History

Before we discuss the movie, let’s do a quick history lesson. Following the civil war and reconstruction the South remained an economic and social backwater for more than a hundred years. In the 1930s, the federal government created the Tennessee Valley Authority to kickstart the region, but little else made an impact. Indeed, until the 1980s, the South remained largely rural and agricultural.

In the 1950s/1960s, racial issues boiled over, leading to a series of famous legal disputes, protest marches, and massive federal intervention. Hollywood used these events in films to tar the South. From Sidney Poitier facing down racist cops In The Heat Of The Night (1967), to Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke (1967) exposing the plantation-like prison system of Louisiana, to Gregory Peck’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) highlighting racism in the southern legal system, Hollywood repeatedly painted the South as backwards, racist, and reactionary, and southerners as racist hillbillies. Even Burt Reynolds' prior movies painted unflattering pictures of the South, with The Longest Yard (1974) showing a corrupt and violent Florida prison and Deliverance (1972) giving us the immortal line with which many northerners continue to brand southerners: “squeal like a pig boy.”

Introducing The New South

Smokey and the Bandit changed all of that. Indeed, Bandit was the first major film to come out of Hollywood that showed modern southerners in a positive light. Southerners are shown to be friendly and multiracial. They have black sheriffs, truckers and store owners, and the good guys interact with them in a friendly and polite manner. There is no hint of the prior racial problems, except through Buford T. Justice, who is meant to lampoon the old image of the South, and who in fact, wonders aloud what happened to the South he knew. Women too are shown in the workforce, not sitting at home with servants. There is even an Asian trucker. You see southerners engaged in everyday life, doing the same things as everyone else in the country, e.g. attending youth football games. Not once do you see a toothless, hillbilly rapist.

One moment perfectly sums up the message of the film. As they stop for a rest, Sally Field, who plays a pleasant but condescending northerner, quizzes Reynolds about his knowledge of theater culture. He knows none of the names she mentions, which disappoints her -- her point: the South is not as sophisticated as the North. But Reynolds responds by asking Field if she knows various famous country music singers. She does not. He then states:

“When you tell somebody something, it depends on what part of the country you're standing in as to just how dumb you are.”

The message: the South doesn’t have to be the North to be just as good, and the North should stop looking down on the South.

Yet, if history hadn’t been changing to back up the film’s portrayal of the South, the film would have been forgotten as nonsense. And history was changing. Consider that less than a year before its release, the nation elected the first President from the deep South since Andrew Johnson assumed the Presidency with Lincoln’s assassination 112 years prior. And while Jimmy Carter ultimately would prove to be a disaster, the image of the new South was born. Gone was the rural land dotted with sharecroppers. In its place, southern states deregulated and courted foreign manufacturers and their economies were booming. FedEx opened in Memphis. Trucking companies sprang up across the region. Car makers followed. Atlanta became a megalopolis. The economic backwater of United States became an economic dynamo, and people flocked south.

In fact, only a few years later, Bob McDill would write “Song of the South”, later re-recorded by Alabama, with the lyrics: “gone, gone with the wind, ain’t nobody lookin’ back again” -- a reference to the South moving beyond the civil war culture that dominated the region for more than 100 years. Bandit marked and announced this change in perception and attitude. It is no coincidence that it took two southerners to make this film -- Reynolds was from Georgia/Florida and director Hal Needham from Tennessee.

The End of Rural America

Another interesting aspect of this film, is the divergence between the rural roads and the interstate shown in Bandit. Why is that? Because part of what gave regions like the South such mystery to outsiders was that they were generally impenetrable, except by rural routes that no sane outsider would traverse. But by the 1970s, the country was completing the National Interstate System, which opened up these regions to the rest of the country.

In many ways, Bandit was a swan song to the era when the country was divided into tiny fiefs, each acting as its own country, with its own set of rules and its own law enforcement/border control. This era ended with the interstate system. And places like the centers of small towns and hidden country roads and single car bridges, where the chase ended up whenever the Bandit ran out of interstate, would become things unknown to modern cross-country travelers, who rarely leave the interstate. Even the very idea that it would take 28 hours to get from Atlanta to Texarkana and back is laughable to modern audiences, as they can now make the trip on I-20 in record time. Moreover, Bandit gives us the last gasp for the days you when could outrun the cops. There were no spike strips, there were no helicopters, and few police had CBs. It was mano e mano on the roads. All that changed dramatically in the coming years, as communications gear made it possible for police departments to coordinate.

The Struggle Against The Glitterati

Bandit was originally released in New York City, the heart of the anti-South, by the same studio that opposed the use of a country music soundtrack. It flopped. The New York Times dismissed the film as "a movie for audiences capable of slavering all over a Pontiac Trans Am, 18-wheel tractor-trailer rigs, dismembered police cruisers and motorcycles.” You can almost hear the words “dirty hillbillies.” The LA Times was both dismissive and alarmist: “A few years from now, when the freeways are silent except for the gasping of the bicyclers, we will all gaze in misty-eyed nostalgia at an antique and improbable 1977 item called Smokey and the Bandit.”

But Needham fought back against the studio and demanded that it be released in the rest of the country. “I made this movie for the South, Midwest and Northwest. . . so why don’t we take the damn thing somewhere where it was made for.” He won his argument and the film was rolled out in those regions. By the end of the year, it was the second highest grossing film of the year, behind only Star Wars. To date, the film has grossed more than $126 million. After his success, Needham took out an ad in the trade papers quoting his negative reviews and showing a wheel barrel filled with money. Southern boy makes good.