The Oscar-winning filmmaker Burt Reynolds said was “a hell of a director, but a total prick”
Just because you don’t like someone, it doesn’t mean that you can’t respect their talents. It’s a boat that Burt Reynolds found himself in more than once during his career, with one Academy Award-winning filmmaker finding themselves on the receiving end of a rather back-handed compliment.
The deposed A-lister wasn’t one for sugar-coating his opinions, which did as much harm as it did good. He appreciated how Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights gave his profile and standing in Hollywood the shot in the arm it had desperately needed for years, but he still thought the guy was a dick.
Reynolds was also fully aware that Marlon Brando was one of the greatest actors in cinema history, but since they spent decades slinging mud at each other whenever the opportunity arose, although it admittedly came largely from the method man’s end, they weren’t on each other’s Christmas card list.
The one-time Oscar nominee even said he’d rather be shot in the leg than watch anything helmed by Ingmar Bergman, not that it was ever put to the test. The point is, Reynolds had enough confidence in himself to say whatever he wanted about whoever he wanted, and by the time he entered his ‘angry old man’ phase, his mainstream prospects were virtually non-existent, so it didn’t really matter.
Few above-the-line stars in modern cinema have trashed their own back catalogue as frequently and viciously as Reynolds did, and his wrath extended to the people who made them. While he had no issues naming himself as a guilty party, there was one occasion where he realised early on that he’d never get along with the man behind the camera.
“A guy I had a real run-in with was John Avildsen, who was a hell of a director,” Reynolds told Deadline of his dalliance with the filmmaker on 1975’s WW and the Dixie Dancekings. “But just a total prick,” he added. Both things can be true, and in this case, the leading man was adamant they were.
Since Avildsen won the ‘Best Director’ Oscar for Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, he was evidently good at his job on his best day. He was also shortlisted in the ‘Best Documentary Short’ category for 1982’s Traveling Hopefully, but those two films represented the pinnacle of his filmography, apart from the box office success of The Karate Kid.
Their run-in came when Avildsen told cast member Mel Tillis, who had a stutter, to stop stuttering, which sent Reynolds over the edge. “I shoved him up against the wall, and I said, ‘You dumb son of a bitch, don’t you do any homework before you do a picture?” he asked. “Mel Tillis stutters. That’s what he does. He can’t stop it because you tell him to stop it.”
He was ready to beat the shit out of Avildsen, but he didn’t. Instead, he decided he was the single biggest asshole in the business, and to rub even more salt into the wound, WW and the Dixie Dancekings wasn’t very good.
