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Burt Reynolds

Sad one. RIP.

Tragic and so unexpected. He was announced as being in Tarantino's new film not too long ago as well, so this feels way out of left field.

Did he film his stuff for it already?

He's being replaced by a handsome 28 year old from a CW series

As a kid, and adult, The End is my favorite Reynolds movie. My fondest memory was watching him on Carson, he was always a great guest, particularly with Dom DeLuise.

flyonthewall2983 wrote: Thu Sep 06, 2018 7:03 pm Did he film his stuff for it already?

Regardless, they have a stand-in at the ready.

This appearance on Dinner For Five is probably the height of that entire show. He's candid in a way he probably hasn't otherwise been on television, perhaps except his Carson appearances (which he talks about in the 2nd half).

Reading on Twitter from multiple sources that Reynolds was gearing up to do Once Upon a Time in Hollywood but had not shot any or most of his material yet. He will presumably be replaced or written out.

Too bad, would presumably have been a good film to go out on. That old actor movie he was just in didn't seem very promising

Man, he's easily one of my favorite '70s stars even more so than respectable choices like Pacino and DeNiro. Obviously his last few decades weren't his best, but his heyday was unimpeachable. He was also a surprisingly good director.

KJones77 wrote: Thu Sep 06, 2018 7:08 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote: Thu Sep 06, 2018 7:03 pm Did he film his stuff for it already?

Regardless, they have a stand-in at the ready.

I would prefer this.

Time for a fresh appreciation of Bill Forsyth's Breaking In (and Reynolds' own excellent The End).

While doing some online family tree search stuff a few weeks ago, I ran across this photo.

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(Mom's cousin is the one you probably don't recognize, Fuller's first wife Patty.)

Even if Reynolds himself was ambivalent about the part, his role as the almost fatherly porn mogul in Boogie Nights was absolutely fantastic. There is just the right amount of charisma to have drawn all of those well endowed youngsters under his wing, but it gets tempered by the sense that he cannot (or maybe never thought to) protect them from the rigours of the porno scene. Whether that's the rampant drug use or the rampant egos that lead to paranoia, jealousy and self destruction in almost everyone but that character.

Of course I like the Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run films from his heyday, but even back then most of his other films were trading on that easy going persona for some darker takes on self assured ladies man. In particular the Blake Edwards remake of Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women, which with its bookending structure of all the women in the main character's life reminiscing about him at his funeral, has a particularly dark edge on the search for the 'perfect woman', who is always the one out of reach rather than the current partner, either to come or long lost.

One of the more recent films he was in that I quite enjoyed was in A Bunch of Amateurs, in which a fading Hollywood star is duped by his agent into coming to England to star in King Lear, thinking it is going to be for the Royal Shakespeare Company, but really in a small town amateur dramatic society production. It is a little bit twee and twinkly, with the standard plot of a curmudgeon having his heart melted by small towners and their homely ways, but sometimes that works too. Plus the opening scene of the trailer for his character's latest action film role is a great little satire on obviously aging leads doing over the top stunts and romancing women young enough to be their granddaughters!

My birthdays as a young kid usually involved, after going bowling with a bunch of classmates, going out to a Burt Reynolds movie (Smokey, Hooper, etc.). Endearing guy and childhood icon.

This is one of many appearances on the Tonight Show. It was always a lively show when he was on... Dom Deluise's laughter makes this even funnier

bearcuborg wrote: Thu Sep 06, 2018 8:32 pm Dave Kehr mentions something I didn’t even know about, I had seen the movie years ago, but had no idea it was cut up by the studio...

Kino Lorber just announced they're releasing this on Blu-ray next year

Nice link FrauBlucher. I actually just rewatched an episode of Evening Shade, that still holds up. What a talented cast.

I’ll have to keep an eye out for that Kino disc...

Gotta say, with so much awful news out of Hollywood lately, it’s touchhing to see the outpouring of love for Burt on social media.

My favorite film with him is probably Hustle, in which he gives a hauntingly melancholy performance (without his trademark moustache; frankly I think he looks even better without it). The film is also on object lesson on the importance of a director (on the auteur theory, if you will). The script is by Steve Shagan, whose other major script, Save the Tiger, is thematically almost identical, if placed in a different genre: the passing of the old moral order, embodied in the noble but frequently failing central character, in favor of something new and grotesque (as embodied in Hustle by Eddie Albert's attorney/pornographer). Both films have moments of undigested rhetoric and some heavy-handed metaphors (for instance the constant allusions to Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab in Hustle). But Hustle, directed by Robert Aldrich, is a brutal, searing noir, beautifully put together, while Save the Tiger seems to me to be D.O.A., all the big speeches simply underlined by John Avildsen's direction. Both screenplays have similar strengths and weaknesses, but the films are pretty far apart. Not to impeach Jack Lemmon, who gives a typically strong performance in Save the Tiger, but it's a very actorly thing. I prefer the more inward, less demonstrative Reynolds performance.

Gotta say, with so much awful news out of Hollywood lately, it’s touchhing to see the outpouring of love for Burt on social media.

That said, I imagine Burt might have been glad he wasn't coming up in Hollywood in the age of #metoo.

I'll put in a word for a little film called BREAKING IN, directed by Bill Forsyth, where Reynolds plays an aging career burglar who takes a younger criminal under his wing. A gentle and funny little movie, with Reynolds doing some fine low-key work.

Actually looks pretty good, John Sayles wrote the script. Also a cursory search turns up a Vimeo account owned by the actor who plays his apprentice - be warned, he uploaded the ending to the film and just seeing the opening still is a pretty big spoiler.

Roscoe wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 7:30 pm I'll put in a word for a little film called BREAKING IN, directed by Bill Forsyth, where Reynolds plays an aging career burglar who takes a younger criminal under his wing. A gentle and funny little movie, with Reynolds doing some fine low-key work.

I liked this movie too. (It's on DVD, btw, and can be had for pennies, so there's not much point in watching a YouTube rip seemingly culled from VHS.) I watched it as part of a homemade Bill Forsyth season, though, and in that context, it was a disappointment, coming off of the brilliant Local Hero and Housekeeping. Nowhere does it have the complexly mixed tones of those films, though Forsyth is predictably good at bringing out the gentle melancholy of John Sayles's modesty funny script. Like a lot of Reynolds's later vehicles it seems almost completely unknown. It's certainly one of the earliest of his roles that incorporate his age and has-been status as part of the character (he's a an older burglar, a bit past his prime, who has to show a young up-and-comer the ropes).