Every friend of mine wanted a Pontiac Firebird.  Black and with a bird on the hood.  Like the one Burt Reynolds drove.  In Smokey and the Bandit.  The Bandit movies were a rite of passage.  Everyone I knew had seen them.  Even as they got sillier and sillier.  We could quote the cussing character played by Jackie Gleason.  The films were as much about Gleason as Reynolds.  The old man was a comic master. 

The Gleason role is being filled by the wrestler known as Tyrus.

I’m overjoyed a new picture is out paying homage to the originals.  The Gleason role is being filled by the wrestler known as Tyrus.  A big man with a big heart off the set and out of the ring.

Former Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider is behind the project.  He explains it’s because he was an accidental extra in the original Bandit.  He showed up on set and asked for hair and make-up.  People thought he was involved and he ended up in at least one scene.  He explains all this in a video you can see below.  The new movie is called Stand On It.

Not sure when and where it’s available.  It may go straight to home entertainment.  I’m not sure there’s any longer a mass theater audience for films about good ole boys.  Or if people are even willing to join strangers in a dark room because of media driven pandemic fears.

We tend to think of our childhood years as more innocent times.  The 1970s were actually quite volatile if you watched the evening news, but as a teenager, it was movies, cars and swimming at the lake during hot summers.

And all of these things insulated us from worry.

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