The great thing about not being able to sleep sometimes? Getting up and watching old movies on TV, of course.
Recently, I caught one of my favorite movies of all time, "Smokey and The Bandit," starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed and Jackie Gleason. It was released in 1977, the year that I graduated from high school.
It's actually just one long car-chase of a movie, but I've always thought that the performances were hilarious, especially the one delivered by the legendary Jackie Gleason. In the film, Gleason plays Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Texas, and he is chasing The Bandit (Burt Reynolds). Reynolds and his sidekick, Cletus Snow (Jerry Reed) have agreed to haul a truckload of beer from Texas to Georgia in 24 hours, violating all kinds of bootlegging laws and speed limits. Along the way, The Bandit picks up Frog (Sally Field) who left the sheriff's son at the altar, and boy is the sheriff peeved.
Not really much of a plot, but Reynolds was a big star in the 1970s and Fields and Gleason were established big names as well by that time. As for Jerry Reed, the first time I saw him in person was in Florida at a minor league ballpark where he was a concert headliner around 1985. His opening act for that show was . . . an up-and-coming Reba McEntire.
This film is worth looking at for the soundtrack by Reed and for the creative profanity spewed forth by the sheriff, much of which, legend has it, was ad-libbed by Gleason. His version of the profanity "some beach" (of course I can't write the actual profanity online here but you get the idea), is absolute classic movie stuff.
Of course, there is nothing like a classic redneck movie like this one to . . . put me to sleep. Dreaming of some beach, of course.

Labels: Mike Morsch, Montgomery Newspapers, Outta Leftfield, Smokey and the Bandit