Every Burt Reynolds movie trashed in public by Burt Reynolds: “I wasn’t happy at all”
Every actor has at least one entry in their filmography that they’ll happily shit all over in public whenever the opportunity presents itself, but few have ever torched as many of their own credits as Burt Reynolds.
While George Clooney loves to denigrate Batman & Robin, Michael Caine insists that people avoid Ashanti at all costs, Brad Pitt openly regrets Troy, and Sandra Bullock continually laments the disastrous Speed 2: Cruise Control, Reynolds is in a class of his own.
For a while, he was the single biggest star in Hollywood, but that still wasn’t enough to satisfy him. It’s not like it was handed to him on a plate either: Reynolds admitted that he’d spent the first decade of his professional life making terrible movies before Deliverance finally ended his losing streak.
From his feature debut in 1961’s Angel Baby to his swansong in the posthumously released 2021 dramedy Defining Moments, the Academy Award nominee appeared in over 50 pictures. However, he openly trashed an alarming percentage of them, which makes it pretty clear that he wasn’t exactly thrilled with his choices.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights is the most obvious example, with Reynolds despising his career-best performance in the modern classic so much that he refused to reunite with the auteur on Magnolia, which is barely even the tip of the iceberg for the self-loathing that covers his back catalogue in a dark cloud.
Navajo Joe? “So awful it was only shown in prisons and aeroplanes because nobody could leave.” Stick? “I gave up on the film.” At Long Last Love? “A terrible mistake.” Stroker Ace? He saw it as the exact moment he ruined his career after turning down Jack Nicholson’s Oscar-winning part in Terms of Endearment out of loyalty to Hal Needham, a decision that haunted him for the rest of his professional life.
What about working with longtime friend Clint Eastwood on City Heat? It almost killed him when an on-set accident left him in a coma and led to a near-fatal painkiller addiction, so it’s not exactly the happiest memory. Even his signature role wasn’t immune to Reynolds’ wrath, despite Bo Darville cementing him as a bona fide and eminently bankable leading man.
Smokey and the Bandit II? “I wasn’t happy at all: They were making it for the money, and we were whores.” Fair enough, but what about a one-scene cameo in Smokey and the Bandit Part 3? “I really hated myself for doing that.” Switching Channels? He hated Kathleen Turner, and she arguably hated him more. The remake of The Longest Yard? “I didn’t want to see it.”
In a way, it made sense for Reynolds to be so vocal about so many of his lowest filmic ebbs because, as famous as he was, he also earned a reputation for being the industry’s ultimate nearly man. The list of iconic roles and classic movies he turned down is nothing short of staggering, so he was well within his rights to be pissed off that he’d turned down so much chicken salad in favour of an ever-growing pile of chicken shit.
Still, Boogie Nights, Navajo Joe, Stick, At Long Last Love, Stroker Ace, City Heat, the second and third Smokey and the Bandit films, the remake of The Longest Yard, and Switching Channels account for almost 20% of his entire filmography, which is an alarming amount of resentment to harbour.
