BURT REYNOLDS (1936 - )



It may be hard for you young whippersnappers to believe, but 30 years ago, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world. He'd be the first to admit that his career management skills were never a match for his good ol' boy charisma and winking, bubblegum-popping likability – in fact, he's practically made a second career out of admitting it. His forgettable early career in television and B-movies (Navajo Joe, anyone?) isn't what convinced John Boorman to cast Reynolds in his breakthrough role in Deliverance; rather, it was his easy command of the Carson panel as a guest host of The Tonight Show that led to his star-making turn as Lewis Medlock. His Southern charm and Marlboro Man looks led to a series of redneck roles, from White Lightning to Smokey and the Bandit, which became the second-highest grossing movie of 1977, behind only Star Wars. Reynolds went to that well a few times too many, famously turning down Terms of Endearment to reteam with hick flickster Hal Needham for Stroker Ace. His career never came close to returning to the heights of Smokey, but he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Boogie Nights. True to form, he fired his agent after seeing the rough cut, fearing his career was ruined…and then when the movie instead revived his career, he squandered the comeback opportunity by going right back to making crap again.

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In the New York Times Book Review, Charles Taylor celebrates Anupama Chopra's new biography of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, both for its own virtues and for what its existence may say about the spread of interest in popular Indian cinema to the English-speaking audience. "The larger significance of the book," he writes, "is that a major American publishing house is bringing out a biography of a major foreign star, largely unknown in the United States. And that is remarkable at a time when newspaper and magazine editors and film distributors are increasingly reluctant to offer readers and viewers what they haven’t already heard about." With more and more movies fighter for fewer and fewer screens in America, and with the international distribution system an erratic mess, it may seem a stretch to suggest that Bollywood is about to take the country by storm. "But in a global economy in which India stands poised to play a bigger part, when the Internet and DVD’s are creating film audiences not bound by borders or by the caprices of film distribution, when some American multiplexes are giving over screens to Bollywood releases in order to lure America’s growing Indian population and when the stagnation of Hollywood sometimes makes the survival of movies as a popular art form seem an iffy proposition, Americans can’t afford to ignore Bollywood much longer." At forty-one, Shah Rukh Khan could well be an important tool in breaking into the Western market; two of his recent movies, Veer-Zaara and Chak! de India (which comes out on DVD next month) are among the rare Bollywood movies that have actually played theaters in the States. Taylor describes him as "part leading man, larger part buoyant goofball" who "represents the confident, successful Indian yuppie, the citizen of the world who is nonetheless recognizably Indian." He definitely has crossover potential. But can he do it in pictures as exotically strange to American tastes as his Bollywood hits? The obvious alternative would be Hollywood-style versions of Bollywood movies, similar to the imitation-Hong Kong action knockoffs that Chow Yun Fat got shoved into when he came to America. The very idea may give migraines to Bollywood-lovers and -haters alike. — Phil Nugent