the cast of the smokey and the bandit movies

(I couldn’t!) As of this writing, the morning of March 12, there is still one more evening screening of this knockout combo, and if you’re anywhere near the intersection of La Brea and Beverly in Los Angeles, I urge you to check it out. If you’re of a certain age (mine), and you ever cruised around town or down the highway jabbering to friends and strangers on an open channel frequency (I did-my handle was The Godfather!), given the opportunity I don’t see how you could possibly resist the chance to see the ultimate trucker-CB action-comedy pairing, Hal Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit and Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy. The New Beverly Cinema, the oldest surviving revival theater in Los Angeles, has this week dished up a time-capsule glimpse into America’s popular obsession with CB, or citizen’s band, radio and the largely mythological outlaw trucker culture through which it crackled. (This is the first in an occasional series in which I remember some of the best double features I’ve been lucky enough to see projected in a theater.)

The cast of the smokey and the bandit movies