Trivia / Smokey and the Bandit

• Acting for Two: Jackie Gleason plays three characters in the second movie: Sheriff Buford T. Justice, Gaylord Justice and Reginald Van Justice.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Jackie Gleason said the cafe scene with himself and Burt Reynolds was not in the original story, it was Gleason's idea.
• Box Office Bomb: The third film. Budget, $9 million. Box office, $7 million.
• B-Team Sequel: Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds were not interested in making the third movie as they were developing another project, Stroker Ace. Reynolds ended up making a very brief cameo appearance though, in the final scene.
• California Doubling: The movie was mostly filmed in Georgia, which not only appears as itself, but is also used to represent four other Southern states. The scene where they drive through the Shell gas station was also filmed in Ojai, California.
• Cast the Expert: Ronnie Gay, Lamar Jackson and Quinnon Sheffield were real Georgia State Troopers at the time of the filming of the movie.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Jerry Reed was originally cast to play The Bandit, until Burt Reynolds read the script and agreed to play Bandit despite considering the script terrible. Reed ended up playing Bandit's partner-in-crime Cledus "Snowman" Snow.
• Creator Backlash: Burt Reynolds later stated that he did not enjoy working on the second movie at all, feeling that it was an unnecessary sequel put together by Universal purely for money-making reasons rather than to try making a good picture. On Watch What Happens Live! in 2016, Sally Field said that out of all her movies she considers it the worst.
• Deleted Scene: In Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, there was a scene where Buford and Junior fill up their car at a petrol station. As Junior 'goes Number One', Buford notices a bank robbery, but mistakes one of the robbers as a 'good buddy' who dropped his bag and assumed that there was a ski resort nearby due to them wearing masks.
• Direct to Video: Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 met this fate in Britain.
• Executive Meddling: Averted, according to Burt Reynolds in the making-of documentary on the DVD. The studio didn't want to cast Sally Field in the lead because she "wasn't sexy." Amusingly, Reynolds (the biggest male sex symbol of his era) began dating Fields during filming.
• Follow the Leader: Smokey was released at the height of the 1970s CB craze, and came after a 1975 film called Moonrunners as well as on the heels of the popular song "Convoy" by C. W. McCall. The Dukes of Hazzard and B.J. and the Bear soon followed. Note that "Convoy" was written by Jerry Reed, AKA Cledus "The Snowman" Snow.
• Inspiration for the Work: Where did the idea for this movie come from? Hal Needham, after being given a case of Coors by a friend, began to notice it vanishing from his fridge... and after installing a hidden camera, discovered his maid was stealing it. He pondered over the lengths people would go for Coors, and it spiraled from there.
  • At the time of filming, Coors would not ship beer more than 1000 miles from the brewery in Golden, CO. Possibly due to their beer not being pasteurized. Texarkana, TX, is roughly 975 miles from Golden.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For broadcast on network TV, the first two films were heavily overdubbed with family-friendly language, to the point where entire scenes spoken by Gleason were dubbed with someone (reportedly Flintstones voice actor Henry Corden) with a noticeably different voice. Some of the overdubbed dialogue became iconic by itself; most notably, Buford's "sum'bitch!" became "scum bum" which was adopted by schoolchildren. These bowdlerized versions of Parts I and II are rarely seen today with the advent of streaming, DVD, and the fact most of the language previously overdubbed is no longer considered inappropriate for broadcast. Sadly, for those wishing to revisit their youth - or have a laugh - the TV audio tracks have to date never been included in any DVD or Blu-ray release. The TV edits only survive among fans who still have copies of the off-air recordings from the 1980s.
• Money, Dear Boy:
  • Sally Field only accepted the part after her agent advised her that she needed a big movie role on her résumé.
  • After critics panned the second film and his work as director, Hal Needham took out a full page ad in Variety depicting himself sitting on a wheelbarrow full of cash.
• Playing Against Type: Jackie Gleason was a native New Yorker. He plays an East Texas redneck in all three movies. Buford is also considerably more foul-mouthed than the types of characters Gleason had played up to this point.
• Posthumous Credit: Narrowly averted with the first of the made-for-TV follow-up films, Bandit Goes Country; which has an older cop played by former NASCAR driver-turned-broadcaster Neil Bonnett. The film debuted on January 30, 1994. Less than two weeks later on February 11, Bonnett - attempting a comeback as a part-time driver - was killed in a practice crash for the Daytona 500.
• The Red Stapler: After this movie came out, there was a six-month waiting list to purchase black Trans Ams.
• Romance on the Set: Burt Reynolds and Sally Field began dating during filming.
• Throw It In!: Jackie Gleason was given a lot of leeway to ad lib. The scene where he meets Bandit at the choke'n'puke without knowing it was his idea. He got the idea of Buford's catchphrase "sumbitch" from Burt Reynolds (as his father used to say it all the time).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Richard Boone was originally considered for Sheriff Buford T. Justice.
  • In the original script Carrie was called Kate while Big Enos and Little Enos were called Kyle and Dickey.
  • The infamous "Smokey IS the Bandit" story. Supposedly, Jackie Gleason was going to play a dual role. The most readily available proof that the film was originally shot this way is a trailer in which Gleason as Justice addresses the audience directly and declares that he has literally stepped into the Bandit's shoes in the new film.

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