Writer-director Jesse Moss describes The Bandit as “a buddy movie about a buddy movie”, and he’s right. The buddies are mega-star Burt Reynolds and his stuntman/friend/roommate Hal Needham, who directed the enormously successful Smokey and the Bandit franchise.
Needham, one of only two stuntmen with an Oscar, is arguably cinema’s greatest stunt performer and stunt coordinator. Reynolds did many of his own stunts, and we we see some hard, hard falls in The Bandit. But Burt did nothing to nothing to match Needham, whose FIRST career stunt was jumping off an airplane wing to tackle a rider off his horse. We see many instances where Needham became a LITERAL car crash test dummy.
One of The Bandit’s highlights is the Needham stunt that broke his back – jumping a car off a dock and onto a barge – and slamming into the barge a little short.
There’s rich source material here from Burt’s garage (Reynolds calls it “King Tut’s Tomb for documentarinans”), which stored tapes back to 1956.
For added color, Needham and Reynolds were epic partiers, who embraced and exemplified the Mad Men era. Needham was a vivid character and lived a helluva life. I strongly recommend Terry Gross’ Fresh Air interview with Needham.
Hal’s widow told Bay Area filmmaker Jesse Moss that Needham hated documentaries because they were boring, so Moss aimed to make a documentary that Hal would enjoy. Indeed, The Bandit opens with the sly Reynolds, in maroon leisure suit with flared pant legs, mocking his own image outrageously. And, it’s a hoot throughout.
(Moss’ first movie was at San Francisco’s Castro Theater in 1979, when his dad took him a double feature of Erroll Morris’ Gates of Heaven and Hardware Wars, a documentarian born!)
I saw The Bandit at its premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It played on TV channel CMT, and now can be streamed on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.