A Look at The Biggest Box Office Stories from 1972-present (THABOS: The History of Amazing Box Office Stories) | IT'S FINALLY COMPLETE!!!!!!!

[baumer]

Yes maybe @Tele Came Back can go back and start with the 1890s 

[baumer]

Coming up tonight.

 

Burt Reynolds and his domination of the 70s.

Woody Allens best director oscar.

[Plain Old Tele]

1 hour ago, baumer said:

Coming up tonight.

 

Burt Reynolds and his domination of the 70s.

Woody Allens best director oscar.

 

I want a big-ass write-up for SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT! How many of these young BOT peeps have ever seen it?

[DAR]

21 hours ago, baumer said:

But with Spielberg making that deal, the way I see it, that would be part of what Fox or Disney would inherit.

In addition to being a great filmmaker he had some killer business acumen too.  If I'm not mistaken he also gets 1% of the yearly gate from Universal's theme parks.  Not sure if that's stateside only

[baumer]

2 hours ago, Tele Came Back said:

 

I want a big-ass write-up for SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT! How many of these young BOT peeps have ever seen it?

 

For you....i can do a mini write up. 

[cannastop]

2 hours ago, Tele Came Back said:

 

I want a big-ass write-up for SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT! How many of these young BOT peeps have ever seen it?

I think my mom might have seen it.

Or maybe she just saw Grizzly Adams.

[baumer]

The second highest grossing film of 1977, was the Burt Reynolds vehicle, Smokey and the Bandit.  It took in 126 million, which in most other years in the 70's would have been good enough to win the year.  But of course Star Wars was the victor by a landslide in 1977.  In the 70's Burt Reynolds was the biggest star and he helped this film accomplish what it did.  Before Burt Reynolds signed on, the film had a budget of 1 million.  Once he agreed to do it (he loved the script), the budget was green lit at 5.3 million.  Then inexplicably, two days before the film was about to shoot, the producers chopped off 1 million bringing it down to 4.3 million.  Reynolds was guaranteed 1 million in salary so the rest of the film had to be made for 3.3 million dollars.  And they got it made.

 

The plot sounds like a mini Fast and Furious, very mini mind you but they share the same DNA in a way.

 

Wealthy Texan Big Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick) and his son Little Enos (Paul Williams) seek a truck driver willing to bootleg Coors beer to Georgia for their refreshment. At the time, Coors was regarded as one of the finest beers in the United States, but it could not be legally sold east of the Mississippi River. Truck drivers who had taken the bet previously had been caught and arrested by "Smokey" (CB slang for highway patrol officers, referring to the Smokey Bear–type hats worn in some states).

The Burdettes find legendary trucker Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) competing in a truck rodeo at Lakewood Fairgrounds in Atlanta; they offer him $80,000 to haul 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana, Texas back to Atlanta in 28 hours; Big Enos has sponsored a driver running in the Southern Classic stockcar race and wants to "celebrate in style when he wins." Bandit accepts the bet and recruits his best friend and partner Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reed) to drive the truck, while Bandit drives the "blocker", a black Trans Am bought on an advance from the Burdettes, to divert attention away from the truck and its illegal cargo.

 

The film was a massive success not just in North America but it reportedly made more than 300 million WW.  It helped that Reynolds was in the picture but audiences fell in love with the car chases, the stunts and of course Reynolds and his charm.  

 

There were two other huge factors to the success of the film.  One was the cars used and the other was the music, namely the song East Bound and Down.  The song only reached the number two spot on the Top 100 Billboard chart but it was a song that was recognized everywhere in the US and it was a song that became lionized over time.  While it was recorded specifically for the movie, it later became covered by more than 5 different groups over the years.  To this day, it is still recognized as the title song from the movie.  

 

Just as the cars in the Fast and Furious series are characters in the film, so they were in Smokey and the Bandit.  Director Hal Needham saw an advertisement for the soon-to-be-released 1977 Pontiac Trans Am and knew right away that would be the Bandit's car, or–as Needham referred to it–a character in the movie. He contacted Pontiac and an agreement was made that four 1977 Trans Ams and two Pontiac LeMans 4-door sedans would be provided for the movie. The Trans Ams were actually 1976 model cars with '77 front ends. (From 1970 to 1976, both the Firebird/Trans Am and Chevrolet Camaro had two round headlights, and in 1977, the Firebird/Trans Am was changed to four square headlights, while the Camaro remained unchanged.) The decals were also changed to 1977-style units, as evidenced by the engine size callouts on the hood scoop being in liters rather than cubic inches as had been the case in 1976. The hood scoop on these cars says "6.6 LITRE", which in 1977 would have denoted an Oldsmobile 403-equipped car or a non W-72, 180 hp version of the 400 Pontiac engine.  What does all this mean?  It means the cars were super cool and fast as hell.

 

Smokey and the Bandit was a huge hit, made Trans Am's famous and did wonders for the sales of Coors Lite.

[baumer]

Other notable successful films of 1977 included Steven Spielberg's follow up to JAWS, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  This starred Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr and it tells the story of an ordinary man's encounter with an unidentified flying object.  While not nearly as successful as JAWS, it still finished third that year with 116 million domestic and more than 330 million WW.  The budget was a massive 20 million, almost double what Star Wars cost, and Spielberg did not let Columbia pictures down.  While mostly being ignored at the Oscars, Spielberg did get a best director nomination.

 

Richard Dreyfuss also starred in the Goodbye Girl, which finished just behind Close Encounters, with 102 million.  This was the fourth and final film to clear 100 million.  Dreyfuss would win best actor for his role in this one, where as many thought the better performance was in Close Encounters.  But back in the 70's the academy mostly ignored massive grossing films, Spielberg and Lucas.  

 

John Badham's disco craze film starring John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever, made 94 million.  It was a good year at the box office.

 

Oscar winning film, Annie Hall finished at number 10 with 38.2 million.  The tenth Bond film, this one starring Roger Moore, The Spy Who Loved Me, came in at number 9 with 46.8 million.

[baumer]

I'll get to 1978 shortly.

[narniadis]

Enjoying your recaps B.

 

A shame that Woody Allen (at least from the films I have seen) got his BP with Annie Hall. I just watched Hannah and her Sisters the other day and it would have made a better choice for the Trophy on his shelf (not that it could have won it's year...)

[baumer]

3 hours ago, narniadis said:

Enjoying your recaps B.

 

A shame that Woody Allen (at least from the films I have seen) got his BP with Annie Hall. I just watched Hannah and her Sisters the other day and it would have made a better choice for the Trophy on his shelf (not that it could have won it's year...)

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

Annie Hall winning is worse than Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan.

[baumer]

1978 is a huge year.  Lots to talk about.  It's not just the top grossing films, but the one that finished at number ten is one that is in my top five films of all time and very dear to my heart.  

[baumer]

So much to get to with 1978 (DC comics makes an appearance, one of the highest grossing musicals of all time, JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK IN THE WATER, and THE NIGHT HE CAME HOME.  All need to be broken down so I will do this tomorrow.

[Plain Old Tele]

Thanks for those write-ups, Baumer. SMOKEY helped start that crazy CB radio fad too -- what an odd thing to catch on. And those T-top Trans Ams are legendary. 

 

Fun fact about Hal Needham -- he ended up having a solid little directing career. And he and Reynolds got to be good friends and drinking buddies -- lots of crazy stories about them. 

[baumer]

3 hours ago, Tele Came Back said:

Thanks for those write-ups, Baumer. SMOKEY helped start that crazy CB radio fad too -- what an odd thing to catch on. And those T-top Trans Ams are legendary. 

 

Fun fact about Hal Needham -- he ended up having a solid little directing career. And he and Reynolds got to be good friends and drinking buddies -- lots of crazy stories about them. 

 

Yea, this has been a really good education for me as well.  Those two did Cannonball Run together too.  I didn't know anything about him before doing this piece.  I knew Reynolds was the king of box office in the 70's but that's all I knew.  So this has been educational for me as well.

 

And thanks for the kind words.

 

Since Tele has successfully coerced me into doing a big write up for Smokey and the Bandit, I'll open the floor up to any of you as well.  If there is some movie you'd like me to do a bigger than usual write up on, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.  It has to be a film that finishes in the top ten of the respective year.

[baumer]

3 hours ago, Tele Came Back said:

Thanks for those write-ups, Baumer. SMOKEY helped start that crazy CB radio fad too -- what an odd thing to catch on. And those T-top Trans Ams are legendary. 

 

Fun fact about Hal Needham -- he ended up having a solid little directing career. And he and Reynolds got to be good friends and drinking buddies -- lots of crazy stories about them. 

 

I was a big CB guy when I was a kid.  Do you remember the song Convoy or Rubber Ducky?  I loved that shit when I was a kid.

[Plain Old Tele]

10 minutes ago, baumer said:

 

I was a big CB guy when I was a kid.  Do you remember the song Convoy or Rubber Ducky?  I loved that shit when I was a kid.

 

I might be wrong, but I think "Convoy" literally inspired a movie starring Kris Kristopherson. The studios got Peckinpah to do it -- this was when he was in his coke binge & heavy drinking days, and they had to take him off the production. (I think)

[baumer]

3 hours ago, Tele Came Back said:

 

I might be wrong, but I think "Convoy" literally inspired a movie starring Kris Kristopherson. The studios got Peckinpah to do it -- this was when he was in his coke binge & heavy drinking days, and they had to take him off the production. (I think)

 

It definitely inspired the film Convoy.  As for the coke stuff, I'll take your word for it.  But seriously, who wasn't doing Coke in Hollywood in the 70's and 80's?

[Plain Old Tele]

1 minute ago, baumer said:

 

It definitely inspired the film Convoy.  As for the coke stuff, I'll take your word for it.  But seriously, who wasn't doing Coke in Hollywood in the 70's and 80's?

 

 True enough, I guess. But Peckinpah had a serious substance abuse problem and it ended up costing him his career (and his life, actually). Even in his early days, he would go on heavy drinking binges, and occasionally drug binges, but he was still able to hold himself together. But even after he directed THE WILD BUNCH -- a movie that should've made him an A-lister with his choice of studio projects -- he couldn't really get those jobs because he had a reputation as a guy who picked fights with execs and was unreliable. 

 

CONVOY was at the tail end of his career and he was so troubled at that point that the studio brought in his friend James Coburn to direct "second unit" (actually, just to direct), while Peckinpah was in his trailer most of the time. It was a big hit but got savaged by critics and so it hurt Peckinpah's credibility with them. He lived only a few more years and died in 1984 (he was only 59).

 

And yes, I had to look up some of these details on Wikipedia.  

[baumer]

One last thing to tease about 1978 before I turn in for the night.

 

Superman cost 55 million dollars to produce......equivalent to about 190 million in today's dollars.  No one spent that kind of money of movies in the 70's.  So really, if you put it in today's dollars, that would be like a film costing about 300 million BEFORE marketing, it today's climate.