The “piece of shit” movie Burt Reynolds wishes he’d never made: “My worst film ever”
It doesn’t matter how much anyone hates any of the terrible movies Burt Reynolds made throughout his career, because there’s always a distinct possibility that Burt Reynolds hated it more.
Even though he was a working actor for the better part of 60 years, he was always a lot more likely to tear down one of his films than build it up. Deliverance was the exception, with Reynolds repeatedly calling it the best thing he’d ever starred in, and it’s hard to disagree, especially when there was so much shite.
Despite his success, which could be measured and quantified by his six-year reign as the most bankable movie star in America, he spent his peak years caught in conflict with himself. On one hand, Reynolds knew that his action-oriented or comedically inclined pictures would turn a profit, and he was concerned his audience would disappear if he tried to branch out.
On the other hand, he craved the respect and acclaim that came with being a serious dramatic actor, even if he kept shooting himself in the foot by turning down several roles that would become iconic or Oscar-winning after they’d slipped through his fingers. He knows his filmography was patchy at best, but at no point did he ever think he’d sunk lower than he did in 1965.
After Angel Baby and Armoured Command didn’t do anything to move the needle or cause more offers to come flooding in, Reynolds was caught in his first crossroads. “I was on the verge of doing something drastic, like returning to Florida and coaching football or doing construction work,” he wrote in his memoir, My Life. “All of which would have been better than my third movie, Operation CIA, which was my worst film ever.”
An entirely unremarkable thriller, the leading man’s government agent is dispatched to Saigon to thwart an assassination attempt on the American ambassador, an assignment that got his predecessor killed. This being a ’60s potboiler, there’s naturally double-crossing, duplicity, and conspiracies afoot.
Was it really that bad? According to Reynolds, absolutely. He’d rather people didn’t watch it at all, but if they did, he really didn’t want them to be airborne: “If it played on a plane, people would be killed trying to jump out.” He was famed for being brutally honest when appraising his work, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he surmised Operation CIA as a “piece of shit movie.”
It probably stung even more because it was his first time taking top billing, which is perhaps what convinced him to sign on. After all, what budding movie star wouldn’t agree to headline an international spy caper and have their name first in the credits when they’d only played two supporting roles beforehand? With the benefit of hindsight, Reynolds regretted it.
He denigrated countless pictures that he appeared in over the years, but Operation CIA was the only one he definitively named as the single worst thing he’d had the misfortune of lending his name to.
