He and Sally Field were famously in a relationship at that time. I mean, that's just a guess! Burt never said: "Sit down, Paul, I want to talk to you about what gives me the confidence to be Burt Reynolds, and then you can try it." I think that's kind of where Burt's confidence as an actor came from - his football days and his stunt work. There's something about stuntmen in terms of the respect for the level that these guys work at. That was the kind of friendship that existed between the two of them, and it was a connection that was very different from the Hollywood elite. Were they talking about the next shot or was it more like, "What are you doing later?" They were always in the football huddle together on set, and I often wondered what actually was being shared in those huddles. First of all, Hal Needham was just fantastic, and they were tight buddies. I think they were the one and the same! It was the easiest acting job in the world for him, you know? There was a certain level of comfort for him on Smokey. Did you notice him switching between Burt and the Bandit on set? (Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection)īurt Reynolds is so effortlessly charming in Smokey and the Bandit. Sally Field and Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. In a spirited conversation, Williams shared more Reynolds stories from the Smokey set and revealed how the film cleared the path for his own journey to sobriety.
"Burt was probably a better actor than he was ever recognized for, but he was also the world's greatest movie star, and he loved being a movie star." ("We weren't exactly Faulkner," he admits with a laugh.) And he remembers that Reynolds - who died in 2018 - set the tone for the movie's down-home attitude. "After that, we were off and running." Funnily enough, their run in the Smokey franchise outlasted the original stars: McCormick and Williams returned for the 1980 sequel and the third installment in 1983, by which point Reynolds and Field had bailed.Īlthough Smokey and the Bandit's script is credited to three screenwriters, Williams says that he and McCormick ad-libbed most of their Big and Little Enos material. "He looked at the two of us, and said: 'I've got an idea,'" Williams remembers. Reynolds was hosted by Carson one night, and noticed their off-camera camaraderie. "I remember Pat walking into the room wearing his version of the suit, and I thought: 'Sure, he gets the great costume!' And then I realized: 'Wait a minute, I've got the same one here!"Īt the time, McCormick was a writer at The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, where Williams - who had written hit songs for Barbra Streisand and The Carpenters, and collaborated with Jim Henson on The Muppet Movie and Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas - made regular appearances.
Credit for that goes to their matching blue suits, which tipped Williams off to the spirit of the enterprise he had joined.
Williams's screen time in Smokey is relatively brief, but he makes an immediate impression as Little Enos Burdette, who sets the movie's cavalcade of car crashes in motion alongside his on-screen dad (and off-screen friend), Big Enos, played by Pat McCormick. If there was ever a film that acted as kind of a clubhouse for a time and place, it's Smokey and the Bandit." "Billy Bob Thornton once said that, in the South, Smokey and the Bandit is considered a documentary," songwriter-actor Paul Williams tells Yahoo Entertainment with a laugh. It also became part of the pop culture firmament of the American South, where it's viewed as being more than just a smashing good time. Helmed by stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, Smokey and the Bandit sped to a mighty $126 million, lapping the domestic gross of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Forty-five years ago, Smokey and the Bandit went head to head with Star Wars over the long Memorial Day weekend, and while George Lucas's space opera emerged as 1977's biggest hit, audiences happily went " East Bound and Down" with Burt Reynolds's boisterous bootlegger over and over again. Han Solo may be the galaxy's best smuggler, but back here on terra firma, no one outraces the Bandit. Pat McCormick and Paul Williams as Big Enos and Little Enos in Smokey and the Bandit.