re: #243 TedStriker

The story of how the Coors plot got in Smokey and the Bandit is interesting: while Hal Needham served as the stunt coordinator and second-unit director on the Burt Reynolds-starring/directed Gator a couple of years before, one of his stuntmen brought out some Coors with them to the shooting location in Georgia and people kept swiping it. At first, Needham was wondering why people kept going for the poor guy’s Coors, then he realized that its legal unavailability in the Eastern US owing to how it was made at the time would be an interesting plot for a movie. So, Needham wrote the initial drafts of the script and Reynolds backed him to direct it in his directorial debut.