Relive Burt Reynolds’ Coolest Moments With These 8 Great Performances
Burt Reynolds made more than 100 movies over the course of his 57-year film career. Naturally, not all of them were great (if you missed his 1961 debut in “Angel Baby,” chances are it can wait). But Reynolds could be a much better and more affecting actor than his popular down-homehunk persona would suggest.
Fortunately, much of his best work is streaming right now. Before he became an actor, Reynolds was a top running back at Florida State University (until a knee injury ended his career). Which may be why he seems to be having so much fun here playing Paul Crewe, a disgraced NFL quarterback better known as Wrecking Crewe.
Now imprisoned, Crewe is tasked with assembling a football team of inmates to play a game against their guards, who in their off-duty lives compete in a semipro league. (The movie’s players include actual pro and college football stars like Mike Henry, Ray Nitschke, Joe Kapp, Pervis Atkins, Ernie Wheelwright and Ray Ogden).
The warden pressures Crewe to throw the game — clearly not knowing who he’s dealing with. The game constitutes about a third of the movie, and is presented like a sports broadcast, with splitscreen and slow-motion sequences and jolting ground-level shots. not just comics trying to sell a joke. Reynolds is back on familiar turf in this ribald satire, playing Billy Clyde Puckett, a running back who is approached by a publisher to write a tell-all book about pro football.
The movie is about more than that, though — mainly Werner Erhard’s then-controversial selfrealisation programme, Erhard Seminars Training, better known as EST. (It is represented here by a group ludicrously called Bismark Energy Attack Training, or BEAT.) The casting of Reynolds as the porn king Jack Horner turned out to be an inspired
Archer
No show is more dedicated to the love of Burt Reynolds than the FX animated series “Archer.”
Its fictional protagonist, Sterling Archer, has seen all of the actor’s films, and when he finally meets his idol in the Season 3 episode “The Man from Jupiter,” he can’t help but fanboy out: Reynolds’s 1965 film “Operation CIA” is why Archer became a secret agent! Too bad, Reynolds says, “That movie was just godawful.” Archer has an idea for a “Gator” sequel! “Gator” was a sequel, Reynolds starts to say — but Archer is already plotting out the McKlusky trilogy. Then it turns out Reynolds is dating … Archer’s mom! This is a typically self-deprecating turn for the actor, who gets to mock some of his not-so-finest big-screen moments in a show that actually celebrates all of his work. Yes, even “At Long Last Love.”