The Burt Reynolds movie that only hired his best friend to stop him from ruining it: “I can fix this”
Nepotism has plagued Hollywood for over a century, but a movie hiring Burt Reynolds‘ best friend solely to stop him from ruining it probably doesn’t fit the bill. Is it reverse nepotism? Something else entirely? Either way, it was a godsend for the filmmakers.
Reynolds got caught up in several feuds throughout his career, but this technically wasn’t one of them. Instead, he had a highly specific idea for his performance that nobody liked, but his mind couldn’t be changed. It had the potential to tank the film and make a mockery of the hard work everyone had put in until one of his favourite recurring co-stars volunteered to take one for the team.
Dom DeLuise’s first encounter with Reynolds didn’t suggest they’d remain close until the actor and comedian’s death in 2009. Following the latter’s headline-grabbing nude centrefold in a 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan, DeLuise cracked a few gags at his expense on one of Reynolds’ favoured haunts, Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
In response, he sent DeLuise a letter that said, “Dear Dom, would you please leave me alone? Love, Burt.” Just like that, a new friendship was born, and the pair would appear alongside each other in the first two Smokey and the Bandit films, The Cannonball Run, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and The End.
Their sixth and final collaboration came under different circumstances, with Reynolds playing his first-ever voiceover role in 1989’s animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven. As the con artist canine Charlie B. Barkin, who cheats death and gets banished from the upstairs afterlife, he wanted to do a funny voice.
“When he first came to the microphone, he made up what he called ‘My wonderful dog voice,'” director Don Bluth recalled. “He was very proud of it, but it was awful. Then I called Dom DeLuise to see if he could suggest how to get Burt not to use his dog voice. Dom laughed and said, ‘Put me in the movie, call me Itchy. I can fix this.'”
Sure enough, the character of Itchy was created, and DeLuise voiced Reynolds’ best buddy in the picture, and to make sure he didn’t do the voice that Bluth hated so much, they broke from the animated norm by recording their lines together in the recording booth so that the former could keep an eye on him.
“In the recording studio, Dom and Burt sat side by side, and when Burt started to use his dog voice, Dom looked at him and said, ‘What the hell is that, you’re embarrassing me. Just be Burt, the audience loves Burt,'” the director explained. “And that is the reason Itchy, Charlie’s wonderful friend, is in the movie.”
All Dogs Go to Heaven wasn’t a runaway success with critics or at the box office, but it turned a decent profit on the big screen and became a cult favourite for adopting a darker, harder-edged, and emotional approach than standard animated fare. Would things have turned out worse had Reynolds done the dog voice he was so dead set on? No one knows for sure, but Bluth specifically hired DeLuise so that nobody would ever find out.
