The most embarrassing role of Burt Reynolds’ career: “A terrible, terrible mistake”
Honesty is one of Hollywood’s rarest commodities, but it was something Burt Reynolds always had in spades. The actor made plenty of terrible movies throughout his career, and he never shied away from holding his hands up and admitting it.
Before he’d even become a star via a breakthrough performance in John Boorman’s Deliverance, Reynolds didn’t have any issues confessing to his cinematic scenes. The ‘Best Picture’ nominee was the 11th feature he’d appeared in, and he was happy to tell the world that it was the first time he’d been in anything that didn’t suck.
Whereas the industry’s biggest stars are well-oiled publicity machines who make a solid fist of polishing even the steamiest of silver screen turds, Reynolds didn’t care. If he’d played a role in a terrible film, he’d call himself out for doing so, regardless of whether it sank or swam at the box office. It might not have been the smartest long-term strategy, but he definitely deserved points for his integrity.
Even during his peak years, Reynolds remained perpetually stuck at a crossroads. On one hand, he knew that audiences would keep showing up to his latest high-octane genre flicks, and they paid handsomely. On the other, he knew that branching out and trying something new, daring, and different had the potential for disaster, which is why he didn’t take a huge amount of risks during the 1970s.
One of the biggest was Peter Bogdanovich’s 1975 effort At Long Last Love, which was the first musical for both the leading man and filmmaker. It was ambitious and risky, and with the benefit of hindsight, Reynolds wouldn’t do it again.
“When Bogdanovich approached me to do song and dance, it was not like jumping from square one to square two; it was like jumping from square one to square 89,” he told The New York Times. “It was a terrible, terrible mistake because we all sank together. My audience, which is a big audience, let me know right away that they don’t want Burt Reynolds to sing and dance. They practically picketed the theatres; it was frightening.”
Critics abhorred the At Long Last Love, which died an embarrassing death at the box office. Reynolds was right, though: he’d built his brand on being the face of frivolous action comedies, and his fans had no interest whatsoever in seeing him broaden his performative horizons.
“I came out with better reviews than anybody else,” he said, trying to scrape together a single positive from the experience. “But that’s like staying afloat longer than anybody else when the Titanic sunk. Still drowned.”
After that, Reynolds reverted back to type and went on to headline Smokey and the Bandit, Semi-Tough, and Hooper within the next couple of years to rehabilitate his reputation and bounce back from critical and commercial catastrophe to reclaim his throne as a certifiable draw.
