Burt Reynolds - An appreciation thread

He used to beat the shit out of Judy Carne on a daily basis.

He handed a load pistol to Loni Anderson and told her, "Here, do the world a favor and blow your fuckin' brains out."

Didn't they play a husband-and-wife screenwriting duo in this? That's all I remember. Oh, and also Burt taking a suds up shower early in the film. I definitely enjoyed it.

What an asshole the man was.

Best Friends is one of my favorite movies. I think I may pull out my DVD and watch it again tonight. It's been years since I watched it last.

And yes, Burt enjoyed the pleasure of the male flesh as well as the broads. And no he did not like twinks. He liked em' grown and muscular. If you watch many of his later movies you'll see the same group of guys playing background roles in them. Those are Burt's long time fuck buddies. And I got this from a close friend of Burt.

Greatest thing he did was pose nude for Cosmo. It proved to be a great cosmic chess move in the war of the sexes. Up until then men were such assholes when it came to women’s lib.

Yeah, R4. Like Dom Leluise and Charles Nelson Reilly.

I love his shower scene from Silent Movie

Burt Reynold's character in Citizen Ruth has a twink attendant.

He seemed to have gotten very bitter and grouchy in the last 10-15 years of his life. I don't know why, of course, but until then he always had a great sense of humor about himself and was extremely generous and adoring of his many friends. As they apparently were of him.

He was a notoriously difficult person. If you ever want to see someone being an asshole bully in front of an audience, this Tonight Show clip is your ticket.

That said, he could also be quite loyal to friends, including ultra gay Charles Nelson Reilly.

His final film, The Last Movie Star, has him essentially playing himself, a broken-down, half-forgotten, old crank of an actor who nevertheless still has a charisma that most other actors would kill for. It’s a middling film that got very little attention, but boasts a terrific performance from Reynolds.

Maybe not a very good human being, but he really was a great movie star.

I know a couple of gay cater waiters who did a lot of events at Burt's house. I asked them if he was bi and they said no and if he were, trust me, you wouldn't want him. #majorasshole

[quote] Yeah, [R4]. Like Dom Leluise and Charles Nelson Reilly.

Not all his friends were fuck buddies. Burt didn't fuck fatties or sissies.

In your dreams, R12.

DEFINED masculine beauty in that age

R13 = Sonja Harper

I always thought Burt and Hal Needham had some kind of a thing going on. Hal was handsome. Brad Pitt played him in Once Upon a Time in America, and Leo was Burt.

How did it work with his toupee and sex, do you think?

Some people still speculate that he murdered David Whiting.

it’s so strange that Burt Reynolds, one of the biggest stars on earth, has pretty much been forgotten. He didn’t really leave any legacy—like a popular movie.

DL fave Lorna Luft ("famed Method actress") claims Burt was completely obsessed with her, Liza set them up in Mexico, and that Burt had a panic attack when she finally agreed to go out with him. She was not impressed esp when he went back to Dinah Shore.

He has some good movies, (Deliverance should be much better remembered), Starting Over, Boogie Nights, the first Smokey and the Bandit, Best Friends. But he wasted so much of his output on crap, largely out of loyalty to his friends.

He was the number one box office star of the year longer than anyone.

In private, he preferred to be called Turd Ferguson.

He posed full-frontal for Francesco Scavullo during the Cosmo shoot. His agent told him those images could not be used. He was willing, though, to be seen fully naked in the magazine.

One of the original Cosmo photos leaked years ago.

Best Friends was one of those movies that was on cable all the time in the early 80s. I think he was bitter that boogie nights didn’t lead to more better work and in later years he disparaged it. Also he was someone who burned bridges and blew second and third chances.

Not so strange, R19. With one exception, all of his movies were shit.

R24, you can’t tell that’s a fake? He has almost three legs.

R19, when he died, he was a has-been, a punchline. He wasn’t even c-list. He was a nobody.

The was a rumor he and Lee Majors had a thing.

He directed Farrah Fawcett in Butterflies are Free at his dinner theater.

He had bad plastic surgery, which was OK for Boogie Nights, but not OK for anything else.

[quote]Burt Reynold's character

Oh, dear.

Only at the Datalounge, R29.

I only ever liked him when, in 2012, he appeared as himself on an episode of Archer.

I remember in a college journalism class having to write a TV version of an AP story about his last wife wanting a divorce on the grounds of among other things that he intentionally used to step on her toes.

R4- I know Dom DeLuise was a close homosexual friend of his.

R12- I am a FATTIE and a SISSIE.

Would you FUCK me?

Don Deluise and Charles Nelson Reilly were gay?!

R12 = a lot to prove

He made Our Sally (Field) miss the Emmys when she won for Sybil because he needed company on a film shoot. In her bio she can't believe she let herself be talked into missing them. They were only in Santa Barbara. She could have driven down easily for them but she thinks he was jealous and sabotaging her becoming a serious actress.

Sally also refused to challenge the rumors Burt was gay and had AIDS. "There were always those kinds of people around him."

Sally had self-esteem issues.

Ida Blownim

CHARLES NELSON REILLY!!!!…..CHARLES NELSON REILLY!!!???!!!

I loved him in Sharky's Machine, along with Brian Keith.

That extreme plastic surgery at his advanced age was insane, I can't imagine what he was thinking or that he didn't have knowledgeable and caring friends to talk him out of it. His face looked like it was made of cheap clay. Sad.

I thought the BOOGIE NIGHTS issue was that Burt was disenchanted on the shoot, very difficult and dubious about the director, and only (sort of) came around when the movie and he got raves and Oscar nominations. But by then he was thought to be a grouchy sore loser and that's why the role didn't lead to other quality parts. And then, there was the tragic plastic surgery.....

Say what you will about Burt being a lightweight, but the reality is that Burt changed the face of cinema forever with his use of blooper outtakes during the final credit scroll at the end of the Canonball Run films...

How did the bloopers change the face of cinema forever?

Reynolds was also probably the last person to see Inger Stevens alive as she overdosed after he left her home following an argument.

He probably would have won the Oscar for Boogie Nights but he was so disdainful of the film in what little promotional work he did that he turned people off.

He was the America’s sexiest actor until Tom Selleck came along

[italic]Smokey and the Bandit[/italic] was so huge. I bet he thought he had his legacy sealed with that one, but in the end it was just Burt Reynolds being cool.

He should have done Terms of Endearment. He was offered the Jack Nicholson part but wasn't ready to give up the sex symbol image yet.

That’s really important (eye roll).

It was like he was addicted to plastic surgery. In addition to everything else, he kept having his nose thinned. He made Sally Field get a boob job too.

^ eye roll is for R49

He owned the mid 70's to mid 80's and now you don't see him much when they do retrospectives of that time. My mom loved him, had his Cosmo poster and my Mom was actually quite prudish so that was a big thing.

On SNL, there was someone who imitated him, chewing gum and winking all the time.

Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Al Pacino might disagree with you, R58.

I can’t get beyond “I would have came”.

R59 That was the late, great Norm MacDonald.