Southern and rural culture, battered and diminished after a few decades of desperately needed reform, was battling for its soul. Then, there was Nixon’s self-immolation amid the Watergate scandal. That initiated a trucker culture incentivized to overcome (and undermine) the speed restriction and based around citizen’s band radios. During 1974, in response to the crisis resulting from the OPEC oil embargo, President Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that imposed a national 55 mph speed limit. radios to let everyone know that while Smokey and the Bandit may not be a very original motor-mayhem movie, it is at least a new one.” Just the sort of review one should expect from a guy named… Van Gelder.īut it was the right movie for its cultural moment. “And just in the event that there is somebody out there incapable of recognizing the difference between a 6.6 liter Trans Am and a Hudson Terraplane or a new Peterbilt rig and a decrepit Reo truck, there is sufficient use of C.B. “This is a movie for audiences capable of slavering over a Pontiac Trans Am, 18-wheel tractor-trailer rigs, dismembered police cruisers and motorcycles,” wrote Lawrence Van Gelder in The New York Times review of the movie. Though it’s not like the critics loved it. The stunt work is solid and Mike Henry deserves some love too. Reynolds is at max charm in the blocker black Trans Am, Fields is super-cute, Reed brought great music and astonishing guitar picking in addition to his truck driving, and Gleason supplies most of the hilarity. About a third of the way into filming I was in the car with Sally and there was this little moment we kind a looked at each other and we both turned and looked over at Hal, he gave us a thumbs up and said ‘yeah!’ And we kind of knew it was some magic going on.”

But then we got Sally on board and it changed the entire dynamic.

“It was a bit of a lark when I agreed to do it,” Reynolds recalled in 2015, “and I knew we'd have fun if we could get Gleason. Hal Needham/Smoke and the Bandit Universal

How many smokey and the bandit movies