About this episode
For the first episode of our special retrospective season, we’re looking back to our season on the awesome movie year of 1977 to feature the second-highest-grossing film at the box office, Hal Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit . Directed and co-written by Hal Needham and starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed, Smokey and the Bandit grossed $126 million and spawned multiple sequels. The contemporary reviews quoted in this episode come from Ron Pennington in The Hollywood Reporter ( https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/smokey-bandit-review-1977-movie-1110888/ ), Gene Siskel in the Chicago Tribune , and Ruth Batchelor in the Los Angeles Free Press . Please like, share, rate and comment on the show and this episode, and tune in for our next retrospective installment covering the awesome movie year of 1996, featuring our pick for a notable filmmaking debut, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight .