Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983): Jackie Gleason Sequel Bomb

[00:00:00] From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, it's The 80s Movie

[00:00:13] Podcast.

[00:00:14] I'm your host Edward Havens, thank you for listening today.

[00:00:17] On this episode we'll be covering one of the oddest part 3 movies to ever be made,

[00:00:23] Smoking the Bandit, Part 3.

[00:00:25] But before we do, I owe you a loyal listener an apology and an explanation.

[00:00:31] Originally this episode was supposed to be about the movies of H.B.

[00:00:33] Toby Holicky, who brought Cart Chase films back to life in the mid 70s with his smash

[00:00:38] hit Gone in 60 Seconds.

[00:00:41] Part of the reason I wanted to do this episode was to highlight a filmmaker who doesn't

[00:00:45] get much love from film aficionados anymore, in part because this was the movie that

[00:00:49] literally made me the person I became.

[00:00:53] My mom was dating Toby during the making of the movie.

[00:00:56] I spent a number of days on the set as a 5 year old and I even got featured in a scene

[00:01:00] and I thought it would be fun to get my mom to open up about a part of her life after

[00:01:05] my parents divorce that I don't remember much of.

[00:01:08] And it turned into a discussion that made me question everything I became, much of

[00:01:13] which I will cover when I find the courage to revisit this topic hopefully in time

[00:01:17] for its 50th anniversary this July.

[00:01:21] So for now, and to kind of stick with the car theme this episode was originally going

[00:01:26] to be about, we're gonna do a quick take on one of the most bizarre and most altered movies

[00:01:31] to ever come out of Hollywood.

[00:01:33] As you may remember, Smoking the Bandit was a 1977 hit film from stuntman turned director

[00:01:38] Hal Needham.

[00:01:40] Needham and Burt Reynolds had become friends in the early 60s and Needham went end up

[00:01:44] living in Reynolds' pool house for nearly a dozen years in the 60s and 70s.

[00:01:49] Reynolds would talk director Robert Aldrich into hiring Needham to be the second unit director

[00:01:53] and stunt coordinator for the car chase scene in Aldrich's classic 1974 film The Longest

[00:01:59] Yard and Reynolds would hire Needham to be his second unit director on his own 1976

[00:02:05] directorial debut Gator.

[00:02:08] While on the set of Gator, the two men would talk about the movie Needham wanted

[00:02:11] to make his own directorial debut on a low budget B movie about a cat and mouse

[00:02:16] chase between a bootlegger and a sheriff as they tried to outwit each other across several

[00:02:21] state lines.

[00:02:24] As a friend, Reynolds would ask Needham to read the script.

[00:02:28] The quote unquote script was a series of handwritten notes on a legal pad.

[00:02:33] Needham had come up with the idea during the making of Gator when the Teamster transportation

[00:02:38] captain brought some Coors beer to the production team.

[00:02:41] Believe it or not, in 1975 it was illegal to sell or transport Coors beer out of state's

[00:02:47] west of the Mississippi River because the beer was not pasteurized and needed constant

[00:02:52] refrigeration.

[00:02:55] Reynolds would read the quote unquote script which, according to Reynolds' 1994 autobiography

[00:02:59] My Life, was one of the worst things he had ever read but Reynolds promised his

[00:03:05] friend that if he could get a studio involved and get a proper budget and script for

[00:03:10] the film, Reynolds would make it.

[00:03:13] Needham would hire a series of writers to try and flush out the notes from the legal pad

[00:03:18] into a coherent screenplay and with a verbal commitment from Reynolds to star in it, he

[00:03:23] would soon get Universal Studios to agree to make Smoky and the Bandit to the tune of

[00:03:27] $5.3 million.

[00:03:30] After all, Reynolds was still one of the biggest box office stars at the time

[00:03:33] and $5.3 million was small potatoes especially when Universal was spending

[00:03:38] $6.7 million on the Super Bowl Assassin thriller Two Minute Warning, $9 million on a biopic of

[00:03:45] General Douglas MacArthur and $22 million on William Friedkin's Sorcerer, an English

[00:03:51] language version of the 1950 French novel The Wages of Fear.

[00:03:57] Reynolds would take the lead as the Bandit, the driver of the chase car meant to

[00:04:01] distract the authorities from what the truck driver is hauling.

[00:04:05] Jerry Reda, country and western star would get cast as the snowman, the truck driver who

[00:04:10] would be hauling the course beer from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta.

[00:04:14] Reda only co-starred in two movies before both starring Bert Reynolds and even if they had

[00:04:20] almost no scenes together in the final film, their rapport on screen was obvious.

[00:04:26] Sally Field, a television star who needed a big movie on her resume,

[00:04:30] would take the role of Carrie, the runaway bride who joins the Bandit in his chase car.

[00:04:36] Field had just completed Sibyl, the dramatic television movie about a woman with multiple

[00:04:40] personality disorder which would breakfield out of the sitcom world she had been stuck in for

[00:04:45] the past decade. Richard Boone, the star of the long time television western Have Gun Will

[00:04:52] Travel would be considered as the sheriff, Buford T. Justice, in pursuit of the Bandit

[00:04:57] throughout the movie, but Reynolds wanted someone who was a bit more crazy, a bit more dangerous and

[00:05:02] a heck of a lot funnier. And who wouldn't think of comedy legend Jackie Cleason?

[00:05:09] Shooting on the film would begin in Georgia on August 30th, 1976, but not before some

[00:05:14] pencil pusher at Universal Studios showed up two days before the start of production

[00:05:19] to inform Needham and Reynolds that they needed to cut one million dollars from the budget

[00:05:24] by any means necessary. And the guys did exactly that, reducing the number of shooting locations

[00:05:30] and speaking roles. The film would finish shooting eight weeks later, on schedule and on budget.

[00:05:37] Well, on reduced budget and when it was released in May 1977, just six days before the initial

[00:05:43] release of Star Wars, it bombed. For some reason, Universal Studios decided the best

[00:05:50] way to open a movie about a bunch of good old boys in the south was to give it a big push at the

[00:05:55] world famous Radio City Music Hall in the heart of Manhattan, along with an hour long rockets

[00:06:01] staged spectacular between shows. The Radio City Music Hall could accommodate 6,000 people per show.

[00:06:10] Tickets for the whole shebang movie and stage show were $5, when the average ticket price

[00:06:15] in Manhattan at the time was $350. And in its first six days, smoking the bandit grossed $125,000,

[00:06:22] which sounds amazing until you're told the cost of running Radio City Music Hall for a week,

[00:06:28] stage show and all, was $186,000. And in its second week, the gross would fall to $102,000

[00:06:37] and to $90,000 in week three, and Universal would be locked into Radio City for several more

[00:06:43] weeks. But it wouldn't be all bad news. Universal quickly realized the error in opening in New York

[00:06:51] first and rushed to book the film into 381 theaters in the south, including 70 in the Charlotte area,

[00:06:59] 78 in and around Jacksonville, 97 theaters between Oklahoma City and Dallas,

[00:07:05] another 57 between Memphis and New Orleans, and 79 in Atlanta near many of the locations

[00:07:12] the film was shot. And in its first seven days in just those five regions, the film had grossed a

[00:07:17] cool $3.8 million. Along with the $102,000 from Radio City, the film's $3.9 million gross would be

[00:07:25] the second highest in the nation behind Star Wars. And despite bigger weekends from new

[00:07:31] openers like The Deep, Exorcist 2 and A Bridge Too Far, smoking the bandit would keep going

[00:07:38] and going and going, sticking around in theaters for more than two years in some areas

[00:07:43] and grossing more than $126 million. Naturally, there would be a sequel. But here's the funny part.

[00:07:52] Smoking the Bandit Too, a universal movie would be shot back to back with Cannonball Run,

[00:07:58] produced by the Hong Kong film company Golden Harvest as a vehicle to break their star Jackie

[00:08:03] Chan into the American market. Both films would also star Kurt Reynolds and be directed by Hal Needham.

[00:08:11] Filming on Smoking the Bandit Too was supposed to start in August of 1979,

[00:08:15] but would be delayed until January 1980 because the film Reynolds was working on in

[00:08:20] the late summer of 1979 Rough Cut went way over schedule. While the budget for the

[00:08:26] sequel would be $10 million more than double the cost of the original film,

[00:08:31] the overall production was not a very pleasant experience for most involved.

[00:08:35] Needham was feeling the pressure of trying to finish the film ahead of schedule so he would

[00:08:39] have some kind of break before starting Cannonball Run in May 1980, and because several of the other

[00:08:45] actors including Roger Moore were already locked into other movies after shooting was

[00:08:50] completed on that film. Kurt Reynolds and Sally Field had started dating during the

[00:08:54] making of Smoking the Bandit in 1976, and both of them signed their contracts to appear in

[00:08:59] the sequel in 1979, but by the time shooting started in 1980 the pair had broken up and they

[00:09:06] were forced to pretend to be in love and side-by-side in the Bandit's Trans-Am for a couple months.

[00:09:12] One of the few things that would go right on the film was a complex chase scene that could

[00:09:18] only be shot one time for the end of the sequence would be the destruction of a 64-year-old

[00:09:23] roller coaster in suburban Atlanta, but they got the shot. Needham would get a few weeks between

[00:09:30] the end of shooting Smoking the Bandit 2 and the start of Cannonball Run, but the production on

[00:09:34] the latter film would be put on hold a couple of times for a few days each time as Needham would

[00:09:39] have to go back to Los Angeles to supervise the editing of Smoking the Bandit 2. Smoking

[00:09:46] the Bandit 2 would make its planned August 15th 1980 release and would have a spectacular

[00:09:52] opening weekend 10.8 million from 1196 theaters, but would soon drop off, barely grossing half the

[00:10:00] first film's box office take. It would still be profitable, but Needham, Reynolds and Field

[00:10:06] all next the idea of teaming up for a third film. Reynolds had been wanting to distance himself

[00:10:11] from his good old boy 1970s persona. Field was now an Oscar-winning dramatic actress and Needham

[00:10:20] wanted to try something different. We'll talk about that movie Megaforce of time.

[00:10:26] But despite losing the interest of the main principles of the first two movies,

[00:10:30] Universal was still keen on making a third film. The first mention would be a line item in

[00:10:36] the Los Angeles Times calendar section on August 28th 1981 when within an article about the

[00:10:42] number of sequels that were about to gear up including Grease 2 and Star Wars 3 aka Return

[00:10:48] of the Jedi that Universal was considering a third Smoky movie as a cable television movie.

[00:10:54] In May 1982, Variety noted that the reduced budget of the film estimated at under $5 million

[00:11:00] would not accommodate Reynolds asking price at the time let alone the cost of the entire

[00:11:04] production and that the studio was looking at Dukes of Hazard star John Snyder as a possible

[00:11:10] replacement as the Bandit. But in the end it was decided that Jackie Gleason would

[00:11:15] return not only as Sheriff Buford T. Justice but that he would in several scenes be playing the

[00:11:22] Bandit as well. Thus we begin the wild ride of the third film in the Smoky and the Bandit

[00:11:30] cinematic universe. Smoky is the Bandit. Part 3

[00:11:37] It would take 11 different versions of the script written over the course of six months to get

[00:11:41] Gleason to sign off because somehow it was given script approval before filming would begin.

[00:11:48] Paul Williams and Pat McCormick would return for the third time as Little Enos and Big Enos

[00:11:53] and the storyline would find the Burdette father and son making a bet with Sheriff Justice.

[00:11:59] Justice and his son Jr. must deliver a big stuffed swordfish from Florida

[00:12:04] to a new seafood restaurant they are opening in Texas. If Justice can get the big stuffed

[00:12:09] swordfish from point A to point B in an allotted time the Burdettes would give him $250,000 which

[00:12:17] Justice could use towards his impending retirement. If he doesn't however Justice would have to

[00:12:23] surrender his badge to the Burdettes and he would retire in disgrace. Dick Lowry who had been

[00:12:30] directing episodic television and TV movies for several years including three episodes of Buck

[00:12:36] Rogers in the 25th century and the TV movie adaptation of Kenny Rogers' hit song The Gambler

[00:12:42] would be making his feature directing debut on Smoky is the Bandit Part 3.

[00:12:49] Production on the film would begin in Florida on October 25, 1982 in last two months

[00:12:54] ending two days after Christmas with most of the shooting happening in Florida.

[00:12:59] Lowry and his team would assemble the film over the course of the next three months

[00:13:03] before Universal held its first test screening on the studio lot in March of 1983

[00:13:09] and to say the screening was a disaster would be an understatement. The audiences didn't understand

[00:13:15] what the hell was going on here they wondered how Justice as the Bandit could be in bed with

[00:13:20] a character credited only as Blonde Bombshell who looks at him the way women in 1982 would

[00:13:26] have looked at Bert Reynolds. They wondered why a plot twist in the very last scene was

[00:13:31] presented that Dusty who had been traveling with Buford T. Justice as the Bandit was really

[00:13:38] Big Enos' daughter when it affected nothing in the story before or after its reveal but mostly

[00:13:46] they were confused as to how one actor could play both title characters at the same time like

[00:13:52] is Justice seeing himself as the Bandit seeing himself behind the wheel of the Bandit's

[00:13:57] signature black and gold Pontiac Tramsam and a beautiful country music DJ played by Colleen Camp

[00:14:03] as his companion all while actually driving his signature Sheriff's car with his son Jr.

[00:14:10] as his constant companion the studio had two choices one pony up a few extra million dollars

[00:14:16] to rewrite the script and try to lure Reynolds back to play the Bandit or two bury the

[00:14:22] movie and take the tax write-off the second choice was quickly ruled out as a teaser trailer for the

[00:14:30] film had already been released to theaters several weeks earlier and there seemed to be some interest

[00:14:35] in another smoke in the Bandit movie even though the trailer was just gleason as Justice

[00:14:41] standing in front of a large American flag wearing a military style uniform and giving a

[00:14:46] speech to the camera not unlike the one George C Scott gave at the start of the 1970 Best Picture

[00:14:52] winner baton you can find the link to that teaser trailer for Smokey is the Bandit part three

[00:14:57] on our website at the80smoviepodcast.com so the studio goes down to Jupiter Florida where

[00:15:04] Reynolds had been living for years and made him a sizable offer to play the Bandit for

[00:15:09] literally a couple of scenes since Bleson as Bandit has only one line in the film and

[00:15:15] since most of the shots of Gleason as Bandit were done with wide lenses to hide that it wasn't

[00:15:20] Gleason doing any of the driving during the number of scenes involving the Trans Am and Stunts

[00:15:26] they could probably get everything they needed with Reynolds in just a day or two

[00:15:30] but Reynolds would say no to that offer strangely he would agree to come back to

[00:15:35] the film as the Bandit for an extended sequence towards the end of the film we'll get to

[00:15:40] that in a moment so with Reynolds coming back but not in the capacity they wanted him in

[00:15:47] the next thought was to go to Jerry Reed the country singer and actor who had been playing

[00:15:51] Bandit's partner the snowman in the first two films Reed was incredible to coming aboard but

[00:15:57] he wanted to play the Bandit or more specifically Cleetus pretending to be the Bandit the film

[00:16:04] screenwriter Stuart Birnbaum and David Deshev were called back in to do yet another rewrite they would

[00:16:11] only have three weeks as there was only a short window in April for the production team to get

[00:16:16] back together to do the new scenes with Reed and Colleen Camp dusty would go from being a country

[00:16:22] radio station DJ to a car dealership employee who literally walks off the job and into

[00:16:28] Cleetus says the bandits trans and reads role as Cleetus as Bandit was greatly expanded and dusty

[00:16:36] dialogue would be altered to reflect both her new career and her time in the car with Cleetus

[00:16:42] the reshiots would last a few weeks and Lowry would have a final cut ready for the film's

[00:16:47] planned August 12 theatrical release it is often stated on this podcast and other sources that

[00:16:53] in the 1980s August was mostly the dumping ground of the studio's dogs hoping to get a little bit

[00:17:00] of ticket sales before Labor Day when families look at going on vacation before the kids have

[00:17:04] to go back to school and the weekend of August 12 through 14th in 1983 was certainly one way

[00:17:11] to prove this argument Smokey and the bandit part three would be the second highest grossing

[00:17:18] new release that weekend which is surprising in part because it would have a smaller percentage

[00:17:23] of prints out in the market compared to its competition 498 prints to be exact almost exclusively

[00:17:29] in the southern united states the bad news is that the film would barely make it in the top

[00:17:35] 10 that weekend Kujo the adaptation of the 1981 Stephen King novel would be the highest

[00:17:41] grossing new opener that weekend making 6.11 million dollars in ticket sales and barely

[00:17:47] missing the top spot which was held for a third week by the Chevy Chase film Vacation

[00:17:52] which had earned 6.16 million dollars risky business which was making its young lead actor

[00:17:58] Tom Cruise a movie star would take third place with 4.58 million and then there was return of the

[00:18:04] Jedi which had been out for three months by this point the Sylvester Stallone directed Saturday

[00:18:09] night fever sequel staying alive the Eddie Murphy Dan Acrid comedy trading places the God

[00:18:17] awful Jaws 3d war games and Krull all which had been out for three to 11 weeks by this point

[00:18:26] all grossing more than smoking the bandit part three which made just 1.73 million dollars in

[00:18:32] ticket sales but having it much worse was the curse of the pink panther Blake Edwards attempt

[00:18:40] to reboot the inspector Clusso series with a new american character who may or may not have been

[00:18:45] the illegitimate son of Clusso which grossed an anemic 1.64 million dollars from 812 theaters

[00:18:53] and then there was the man who wasn't there the 3d comedy featuring Steve Gutenberg that was

[00:18:58] little more than a jumbled copy of foul play in north by northwest that arrived too late in

[00:19:03] theaters to ride the now dead stereo optic movie craze which took in 1.38 million dollars

[00:19:10] from 980 theaters in its second week smoking the bandit part three would only lose five screens but

[00:19:18] it would lose 52 percent of its opening weekend audience bringing in just 830 thousand dollars that

[00:19:25] weekend week three would see the film was nearly 300 screens and it would only bring in $218,000

[00:19:33] week four was Labor Day weekend itself with its extra day ticket sales and you'd think that Universal

[00:19:39] would just cut and run since the film was not doing great with audiences or critics yet they would

[00:19:45] expand the film back to 460 theaters including 47 theaters in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan

[00:19:53] area the gambit worked a little bit with the film bringing in 1.3 million dollars during the

[00:20:01] extended holiday weekend bringing the film's four-week total gross to 5.02 million dollars

[00:20:08] and it would slowly limp along for a few more weeks mostly in dollar houses a universal would

[00:20:14] stop tracking it after its fifth weekend in theaters giving the film a final box office

[00:20:19] total of 5,678,950 dollars oh i almost forgot about the Bert Reynolds thing

[00:20:27] Bert did film his scene of four minute or so cameo towards the end of the film where

[00:20:32] justice finally catches up to cletus is the bandit but in justice's mind's eye he sees cletus as

[00:20:38] Bert as the bandit where Bert as the bandit does nothing more than a half-ass readoff of his

[00:20:44] lines while sitting behind the wheel of the trans and i watched the movie on paramount plus

[00:20:50] back in january 2024 when i originally planned on recording this episode but it's no longer available

[00:20:57] on paramount plus nor is it available on peacock which is owned and operated by universal where

[00:21:03] the film was once available and in may of 2024 the only way to see smoking the bandit part three

[00:21:11] is on long out-of-print low quality dvds and blu rays just watch dot com says the film

[00:21:17] is available on apple tv's a showtime channel but i can't find any showtime channel on apple tv

[00:21:23] nor can i find the movie doing a simple search on apple tv the first two are on apple tv as part of

[00:21:30] amc plus's channel it's all so darn complicated but like i said i watched it for the first and

[00:21:37] probably last time earlier this year and truth be told it's not a totally painful film

[00:21:43] it's not a good film in any way shape or form but what little good there is is thanks to calleen camp

[00:21:50] who was not only gorgeous but had an amazing sense of comic timing anyone who saw her as

[00:21:56] zivette the maid in the 1985 comedy clue already knows this like a handful of film buffs and

[00:22:03] historians i'm still wildly interested in seeing the original cut of the film after more than

[00:22:08] 40 years if universal can put out three different versions of orson wells's touch of evil including

[00:22:15] a preview cut that was taken away from wells and re-edited without his consent in the same set

[00:22:21] then certainly they can release both versions of smoky and the bandit part three but let's face facts

[00:22:27] dick lowery is no orson wells and there's practically zero calls for this kind of special

[00:22:31] treatment for the film i just find it odd in this day and age the only thing that's escaped

[00:22:38] from the original version of the film after all this time is a single image of gleason as the bandit

[00:22:44] which you can also find on this episode's page at our website thank you for joining us we'll talk

[00:22:50] again soon remember to visit this episode's page on our website the 80s movie podcast dot com

[00:22:56] for extra materials about smoking the bandit part three including links to smoking the

[00:23:00] bandit fan sites that have their own wealth of materials relating to the movie and a video

[00:23:05] on youtube that shows about 20 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes used in the television version

[00:23:11] of the movie which may or may include an additional shot from the original movie that shows dusty

[00:23:17] writing in the back of big enus's red catalac convertible the 80s movie podcast has been researched

[00:23:24] written narrated and edited by edward havens for idiosyncratic entertainment thank you again

[00:23:31] good night