Basically, in the story world of Smokey, the 1% are so rich and indifferent to the working people of America that they casually amuse themselves by betting on sporting contests involving animals as well as people.Įnter Burt Reynolds – “the Bandit” – and Jerry Reed – “the Snowman” – two drivers who are already legends for what exactly I’m not sure. I’ll note that the Enos duo are having the party because they own a thoroughbred that is highly favored to win a big horse race the next day, and the Coors is for the celebration they are planning for after the horse race. Big Enos wants to impress his party guests with the forbidden suds. To haul the wrong kind of beer over the wrong state lines is a crime called bootlegging. You can’t get Coors in Georgia, not legally anyway. Why Coors, and why can’t Big Enos just send someone to Sam’s Club to get the beer? Because this is 1977, and the US still operates under a strange mish-mash of long pointless laws regulating the regional territories where certain alcoholic beverages are allowed to be sold. Now I’m wondering if Mike Meyers retooled these two characters for Dr.
The movie makes them look ridiculous in their constant matching technicolor outfits, which look like a mash-up of the wardrobes of Colonel Sanders and the Oompa-Loompas. Big Enos (Pat McCormick) and his son, Little Enos (Paul Williams) are the super-rich jerks who live on top of the world while the working people bust their asses to keep them entertained.
The catch is they only get paid if they make it back with the beer on time. It’s a 900 mile schlep each way, and Big Enos is willing to pay $80,000 to have it done. The premise of the movie is that a crazy rich southern bazillionaire named Big Enos (yes, really) is planning a massive party at the Atlanta fairgrounds late the next day, and he’s looking for a trucker who is willing to make a mad dash to a warehouse in Texarkana, Texas, pick up 400 cases of Coors Beer, and hurry it all back to Atlanta in time for the party. Read on if you’re interested and I’ll explain more ? … But there’s some surprising social commentary embedded in a movie that is basically a cinematic bag of potato chips. That’s right: Smokey and the Bandit is a socialist allegory aimed squarely at the capitalist menace. It’s a film whose Southern US world is one where white good ole boys, working class black folk, truckers, prostitutes, and little old church ladies are friends and collaborators in resisting the authority of ridiculous white lawmen, who themselves are the poorly paid errand boys of repugnant Southern white billionaires who have so much money and power that they entertain themselves by placing bets on contests in which the working people try to pull off risky and absurd feats. In one of the most iconic (and controversial) moments of the film, Carrie (Sally Field) flips the bird to get the attention of a motorcycle cop, so she can lure him away from Cledus’s big rig.Īnyway, I spent this past Saturday night watching Smokey again for the first time in decades, and while I can’t say that there’s anything about this movie that asks to be taken seriously, I was surprised by some of the images and touches in the film. They said it was disrespectful to law enforcement, and they were generally put off by movies about irreverent playboy outlaws being pursued by pathetic and humorless cops. We thought that was awesome. My parents, however, didn’t like the movie. We counted the cuss words in the movie – I remember that we emerged from the cinema telling our friends that there were 76 bad words uttered in the film.
I was 8 when the movie came out, and I remember coming home from summer camp and going to see it in the theater with my childhood friend, Steve K. Amazon Prime is featuring Smokey and the Bandit (Universal Studios, 1977) in tribute to Burt Reynolds, who died this past week at 82.