The Bandit

- I guess you're asking yourselves

why I came down those stairs,

walked across these boards,

ambled past these props,

these theater trunks

cluttered with memories of a thousand opening nights.

I guess you're asking yourself,

"What does that have to do

with tonight's show?"

Well, I'll tell you.

Nothing.

My name's Hal Needham.

My face you will not recognize.

But I bet you've seen a lot of my work.

For 20 years, I've been a Hollywood stuntman.

Not too bad, huh?

When a stuntman does that kind of driving,

he better have his act together,

because there's no room for error.

But recently, I graduated.

I directed a movie.

And that movie starred a dear friend of mine,

my old roommate,

a good ol' boy that probably

you people are gonna recognize...

like that.

- Ladies and gentlemen, Burt Reynolds.

Burt Reynolds.

The most exciting star on the screen today.

- Burt Reynolds is Gator McKlusky.

Whether he's racing the law

or chasing the ladies.

Ah!

- Burt Reynolds, the quarterback

who will tackle anything.

You saw Charlie Bronson.

- Now you're Burt Reynolds' stuntman.

Where does Burt like to draw the line

as far as doing his own stunts are concerned?

Well, actually, uh,

I've never seen Burt draw the line.

He'll do just damn near anything you want done.

The insurance companies draw a line sometimes,

and, um, but really and truly, he doesn't draw the line.

I've seen him do some things that, uh,

were just flat scary--I mean, there's no other way to put it.

- What is the job of a stuntman?

- The object of the stunt guy

is to come in and look as much as you can like the actor.

They'll dress you like him and fix your hair, whatever,

and whatever they want to do, whether it be a horse fall,

high fall, or who knows, a fight,

be able to do it as many times

as you can do it without getting hurt.

- In the old days, they would go out,

and they would shoot four or five days with all stuntmen.

No actors.

The wide shots were for stunt people.

And then they'd bring the actors out,

and they'd do the-- the tight shots,

and the medium shots.

- If you're the biggest actor in the world,

you want to have the best stuntman in the world

next to you-- why not?

- God damn, Pops, didn't tell me they were gonna shoot back!

- Burt trusted Hal and knew that Hal

was gonna do the stunts

that would really make him look good.

- Hall and Burt were guys who appeared

at a time in the '70s when anything could happen.

Burt was an actor with all

the accoutrements that an actor has.

And Hal Needham was a man of action.

Ready.

I've seen a lot of actors

have good relationships with stuntmen,

but never like Hal and Burt did.

- That was the closest relationship I ever saw

in the picture business.

- But you don't want to get too close to an actor,

I don't believe.

And--just--you know,

you just--it's not gonna work out very good.

- Okay, Hal, how'd you meet Burt,

like on Smokey and, uh, and the Bear?

- "Smokey and the Bandit." - And the Bandit.

Was that something that he found as a property

and then looked for you

to complete the movie, or did you come first?

- No, I--I wrote "Smokey and the Bandit."

- Oh. I understand you directed this movie?

- Yeah. - This is kind of, uh,

an unusual case, isn't it, Hal?

I mean, I've heard of actors turning director.

I've heard of writers turning director,

but never a stuntman.

I was doing a film with Burt

down in Georgia called "Gator."

That's the thread that put "Smokey" together.

- We spent a lot of time in the swamp, you know,

and I--I remember, everyone said,

"Weren't you scared in the swamp?"

Only, you know, Needham was from down there.

The rest of us were from other places.

He was, like, at home.

We had a lot of Coors beer

we'd brought down from Los Angeles,

because in those days, at the end of the work day,

everyone got a beer.

Needham and I were talking about how

the Coors kept disappearing from our mini-bars.

So we finally realized that our housekeepers

were helping themselves to our beer.

So we asked them, I said, "It's Coors beer, man.

You know? What are you doing?"

She said, "Well, I get like $20 a six-pack

for this beer down here 'cause you can't get it."

Hal and I looked at each other, and we said, "Well,

"maybe we should-- maybe we should make a movie

"about getting Coors beer, you know,

on the East Coast."

- At the time, I really had some doubts

whether this was even true or not.

In other words, I don't know how you

prohibit a beer company from shipping beer

from one geographical location to the other.

- Said, "Hey, let's just do a trucking movie

"with Coors and fast cars,

and let's see what we can come up with."

And at that time, the trucking industry was very romantic.

Modern truckers, the last American cowboys.

- He told me he was writing a screenplay.

Everybody said, "Nice pipe dream, Hal."

- In between shots, he'd be over in his room,

and he's scribbling down, and I said,

"What are you doing?" He said, "I'm writing a story!"

You know, and he told me a little about it,

and I thought, "Eh, okay, whatever," you know?

- He handed me this mash of, you know,

legal pad notes, and scenes, and characters,

and all this stuff.

In fact, I think my mother

typed up the script for "Smokey and the Bandit."

- We played with different names for the movie.

Probably called it "The Bandit"

at one point, or "Bandit."

- I want to do, hopefully, action-comedy.

I just want to throw something on the screen

that people can be entertained with,

and I think laughter's contagious,

and I think people enjoy action.

Not violence, action.

- We were gonna sell it to a company called AIP,

which made small, exploitive genre movies.

That was its first incarnation.

We wanted to do something on our own.

Look out!

- Hal Needham had made a living, you know, sort of

falling on his head for 20 or 30 years.

And, you know, he's a nice guy-- not a Rhodes scholar.

- Hal said to me, "I'm getting too old

to bury my head in the dirt anymore."

In the back of his mind, he always wanted to be

either a star or a director.

- Every stuntman, every second unit guy,

every cameraman, everybody-- you know the old joke,

everyone wants to be a director.

- He had the script that he had written,

and he took it to Universal Studios,

and said, "I want to direct this movie."

- People that ran the studios, he--you know, he--

"He's a stuntman. He can't direct a movie.

What are they talking about?" You know?