"Smokey, the Bandit and That Damned Dog."

I was watching Smokey and the Bandit for reasons unclear to all. I'd put myself through Kobayashi's Human Condition trilogy –– nine hours of unrelenting hilarity –– just before. This was me relaxing a bit. That is, I thought: "I suppose I better fucking watch it. I bought it two years ago in Amoeba." It seems I like to punish myself with bad films. I'm now steeling myself to watch Tod Browning's Freaks –– a film that everybody feels they ought to watch, but nobody does. Tod Browning's Freaks is like champagne –– everybody claims to like it but nobody wants to actually have any. I've had it for probably close to ten years, sitting there accusingly, defying me to watch it.

This is why I end up binge-watching whole seasons of Million Dollar Listing New York instead of watching serious world cinema.

I was watching Smokey and the Bandit, which features Jackie Gleason as Buford T. Justice, the racist Southron cop who pursues Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed across numerous Trumps States without any clear reason. It has something to do with Sally Field... I think...?

When Jackie Gleason's credit came on, I went, "Jackie Gleason, wasn't he... uh..."
"Yup," goes my wife. "The kid in the Charlie Chaplin film."
"Wow," I went. I was silent for a moment.
Then I said, "That was Jackie Coogan."
My wife was irritated in a very specific way but she couldn't fight the facts, even in this "post-truth" age. Trump may be in the White House, but Jackie Gleason and Jackie Coogan are still not the same person.

However, Duane Chapman and Jackie Gleason might be the same person.
Say if you pinned Dog down and strapped him to a gurney and then proceeded to cut off his fucking yellow hair against his will in a sort of bathetic burlesque of the story of Samson in the Bible -- if you cut off his hair and then mollified him by dressing him up as a cop (the one thing he has always wanted to be but never can!), you'd have Jackie Gleason in the celebrated role of Buford T. Justice.

Look:––

It's like Dog and Leland I swear. Although these guys are obviously superior at the art of criminology.

(It's true –– Burt Reynolds drives flat-out like a nutcase in his Pontiac Trans-Am and these two manage to keep up at every turn in a police car with the roof shaved off, doors missing  and no fucking engine, propelling it along with their feet like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.)

Also you would have to somehow force Dog to avoid the tanning bed –– perhaps by keeping him strapped to the gurney for several weeks so that he gradually fades to his "natural" colour –– whatever that is. Dog seems to have a similar model sunbed to "The President", but Dog cranks it up even higher so he emerges from it no not orange but bright fucking red.

One last thing. I mentioned to M.K. Price that I was watching this film and he said, "I prefer Cannonball Run."
I said, "You can like both. It's allowed."