SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977)

Monday, August 3, 7 pm

The definitive Burt Reynolds film. A blockbuster so massive that it was the second highest-grossing movie of 1977 behind Star Wars, raking in more dough than Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Saturday Night Fever. Burt’s at his most charming here as Bo “The Bandit” Darville, a legendary trucker and bootlegger who accepts a bet to transport 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia. Accompanying him is his good buddy Snowman (country music icon Jerry Reed) and bride-on-the-run Carrie, played by Sally Field. Tailing the Bandit is an army of state troopers and local cops led by Buford T. Justice (hilariously played by Jackie Gleason).

DELIVERANCE (1972)

Monday, August 10, 7 pm

This adaptation of James Dickey’s chilling best-seller served as Burt’s big-screen breakthrough after toiling away for years in television and B-movies. Burt stars alongside Jon Voight, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty as a group of city slickers whose trip to the Cahulawassee River turns into a nightmare when they are attacked by a pack of feral hillbillies. Filmed in the gorgeous Georgia wilderness, director John Boorman expertly transforms this tranquil paradise into a terrifying world where survival of the fittest is all that matters. Burt is terrific here as the most macho of the group, a modern man whose ideas of masculinity are put to the test when he encounters true savagery.

THE LONGEST YARD (1974)

Monday, August 17, 7 pm

Robert Aldrich, director of testosterone-fueled epics The Dirty Dozen and Ulzana’s Raid, helms this gritty football dramedy that later inspired a mediocre Adam Sandler remake 30 years later. Ignore that one and see the real deal. Burt stars as Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, a washed-up quarterback who’s spent years drinking his misery away. After getting arrested for trashing his girlfriend’s expensive coupé, Crewe winds up in a brutal Georgian prison where he’s pressured by the bellicose warden (Eddie Albert) to lead the prison’s football team to a coveted championship. With the help of a fellow inmate (James Hampton), Crewe assembles a motley team to face off against their opponents: the cruel and violent prison guards. Also co-starring Ed Lauter, Michael Conrad, Richard Kiel, Mike Henry, Charles Tyner, Bernadette Peters, and Anitra Ford.

HUSTLE (1975)

Monday, August 24, 7 pm

The Longest Yard‘s Robert Aldrich reteamed with Burt the following year for this underappreciated sunshine noir that sees our icon teaming up with French superstar, Catherine Deneuve. Burt plays a weary police lieutenant whose investigation into the apparent suicide of a young woman uncovers twisted family secrets and threatens to destroy his relationship with his lover, a prostitute played by Deneuve. Hustle is representative of the kind of films that came out of the New Hollywood revolution; pictures that tapped into the cynicism and paranoia that gripped American culture in the 1970s. Burt isn’t an unflappable hero in the film. He’s a man who is willing to bend the rules if it means delivering a modicum of justice in a corrupt world. Deneuve and Burt have crackling chemistry, too. Co-starring Ben Johnson, Paul Winfield, Eileen Brennan, Eddie Albert, Catharine Bach, and an appearance from Robert Englund years before hitting it big as Freddy Krueger.

BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)

Monday, August 31, 7 pm

Burt infamously hated making this now-legendary Paul Thomas Anderson epic, firing his longtime agent after filming was complete and refusing to ever watch the movie. It netted him the best reviews of his career, earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination for the same category, and reintroduced him to moviegoers as a true artist whose talents had been wasted in mediocre projects for nearly a decade. Despite Burt’s animosity toward the film, he shines as Jack Horner, porn director and surrogate father to the lost and lonely misfits of the San Fernando Valley adult film industry of the 1970s and ‘80s. In a movie filled with great performances from some all-time legends (Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Alfred Molina), Burt bursts through as the tender heart of the picture as he portrays a man caught between art and business, hedonism and family, revealing a depth the actor had kept hidden for years. It is, without hyperbole, Burt’s greatest performance.