Summer of '78: "Hooper"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Hooper

Release Date: July 28, 1978

Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Field, Brian Keith, Robert Klein, Adam West

The Buzz: “It just ain’t summer without Burt!” (That is, assuming Jimmy Carter is still the president.)

Keywords: Stuntman, Driving Backwards, Rocket Car, Bar Fight, Person on Fire

The Plot: Sonny Hooper (Burt Reynolds) is the greatest stuntman alive, but some fear he’s getting a little long in the tooth. His latest gig is doubling for Adam West, star of The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. (The notion that West would be headlining a big action movie as late as 1978 is one of Hooper’s more implausible elements.) During a barroom brawl at the Palomino, Hooper bonds with up-and-coming golden boy Ski (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is also working on the film. They develop a friendly rivalry on the set, with each trying to top the other with ever more outrageous stunts. This does nothing to help Hooper with his escalating dependence on painkillers, nor his deteriorating relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Gwen (Sally Field). Hooper’s doctor informs him that one more big jolt could paralyze him for life, but that doesn’t stop Hooper from taking on a risky rocket-car gag that could end his career. Take a wild guess if it does.

The Test of Time: Who knew what a cornucopia of embarrassing admissions this Summer of ’78 feature would turn out to be for me? I’ve already copped to owning novelizations of all the Omen movies as well as the Heaven Can Wait Fotonovel, but I can probably top all of that with the admission that I also had the Hooper soundtrack album. At least Smokey and the Bandit featured songs by Jerry Reed; the title track from Hooper is performed by someone named Bent Myggen and is perhaps the only song in recorded history to feature the line “Set him on fire, it will amuse him.” Of course, this latest revelation of mine comes as no surprise to the bazillions of you who keep copies of my book Hick Flicks within reach of your toilet seats. (And if you aren’t one of them, why not buy a copy today? Come on, people, I’m currently ranked # 1,090,823 on Amazon. Help me out here.) As far as the Burt Reynolds/Hal Needham southern fried ouvre goes, Hooper falls short of Smokey but finishes far ahead of Stroker Ace and the Cannonball Run collection. Allow me to quote myself from my magnum opus: “What sets Hooper apart is its insider’s view of a working class subculture within the motion picture industry. The stuntmen are a tight-knight group, clowning around on the set and playing bumper cars on the freeway en route to their favorite watering hole. They know they’re the workhorses of the picture, but even though they’re basically blue collar guys, they’ve got show biz hearts. They do impressions of stars like Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck to crack each other up, and get together to drink beer and watch their stunt reels for the thousandth time. There’s an improvisational spontaneity to such scenes; a “morning after” sequence in which Reynolds and Brian Keith slowly roust themselves from hangover oblivion is particularly well-observed.”

Quotable Quote: “I'm gonna find the guy who invented Zylocaine and kiss his ass on Hollywood and Vine!”

2008 Equivalent: This is a tough one, but I’ll give it to Hancock. Like Burt in the '70s, Will Smith is our current Mr. Summer, with a similar “It’s me, your buddy!” persona winking through every role. Plus Hancock is a two-syllable character name title starting with H – just like Hooper!

Previously on Summer of '78: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Top Thirteen Greatest Fictional Movie Presidents, Part 3

Peter Smith — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Christopher Jones as President Max Frost, WILD IN THE STREETS (1968)

This A.I.P. exploitation classic from the hippie era predates the lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Here, a presidential candidate played by Hal Holbrook courts the youth vote by promising to lower the mandatory voting age and turns to rock star Max Frost (née Max Jacob Flatow, Jr.), the voice of his generation, to help him with his campaign. Max startles everyone by publicly demanding that fourteen-year-olds be given the right to vote, then, after Holbrook is elected, starting a national drive to lower the minimum age for election to public office to fourteen as well. Inevitably, Max runs for president himself, and after his youthful hordes propel him into the White House, he decrees that thirty is now the mandatory retirement age and has everyone over thirty-five bused to "re-education camps" to spend the rest of their days forcibly blitzed on LSD. But Max's reign may not last long; the movie ends with ominous shots of children giving the fish-eye to their teen-aged overlords and murmuring that they, too, will soon get theirs.

Biff McGuire as The President, THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON (1973)

This extremely low-budget film — long on under-lit sets and expository narration — stars Dean Stockwell as a presidential cabinet official who comes down with a bad case of lycanthropy and spends his full-moon nights rampaging around the nation's capitol in a furry Halloween mask. The Nixonian president and his advisers (including Michael Dunn as a dwarf named "Dr. Kiss") conspire to blame the werewolf's bloody killings on left-wing radicals. In the end, Stockwell is killed, but not before mauling the president, who, having thus been contaminated, is heard turning into a howling monster during a broadcast address to the nation.

John Ritter as President Chet Roosevelt, AMERICATHON (1979)

This busy, wilted satire, based on a play by Peter Bergman and Philip Proctor of the Firesign Theater but co-written and directed by Neil Israel, of Bachelor Party and the Police Academy movies, is set in a "future" 1998 when the United States has exhausted its energy reserves and is near bankruptcy, with a running-shoe cartel headed by Chief Dan George threatening to foreclose on the country. President Roosevelt, who operates out of a Marina Del Ray condo known as "the Western White House" and who permits his live-in girlfriend to sit in on cabinet meetings, decides to try to raise enough money to pay off the national debt by sponsoring a thirty-day telethon organized by Peter Riegert and hosted by Harvey Korman. Things get complicated when the president is kidnapped by terrorists while enjoying a tryst with a Vietnamese rock singer (Zane Busby), but in the end everything turns out all right: the telethon is a success, Riegert wins the faithless president's girlfriend, and the presidential hulking, dim-witted bodyguard, Jerry (Richard Schaal) is sworn in as chief executive.

HONORABLE MENTION: Two Real-Life Presidents Who Might As Well Have Been Fictional

Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon, SECRET HONOR (1984)

Playing an iconic figure like Dick Nixon is hard enough, particularly when the script calls upon you to portray him both as a sympathetic figure and a self-deceiving monster. And when you're the only guy in the movie, it becomes next to impossible. But if anyone is up to the challenge, it's the always-outstanding Philip Baker Hall. In this little-seen but compellingly watchable Robert Altman film, Hall portrays a fictionalized, almost mythological Nixon, recording what are putatively notes for his next book but which, with the aid of alcohol and encroaching paranoia, become a confession to the American people and a titanic, defensive apologia, a referendum on a man's entire life. As an impression of Nixon, it's only partially successful, but as an evocation of him, it's perfect — truly a titanic performance, alternating between enraged ranting, deceptive resentment, touching memories of childhood, and total re-invention; as Hall's Nixon raves, spews, laughs, bellows and accuses for an hour and a half, we get a sense of both his mammoth ego and his homely humanity, often in the same speech. The final scene, where a defiant Nixon screams "Fuck ‘em!" to everyone who ever crossed him — his enemies, his allies, the American people — seems both outrageous and inevitable.

Brian Keith as Teddy Roosevelt, THE WIND AND THE LION (1975)

John Milius has always has a soft spot in his heart for Teddy Roosevelt, who in his eyes was the ultimate hard-living American man's man. Milius re-created Teddy's famous charge up San Juan Hill in his 1997 made-for-TV movie The Rough Riders, and in 1975's The Wind and the Lion he shows us Roosevelt (played by Brian Keith) after his rough ridin' days were over. President Roosevelt, more than a little weary of politics and diplomacy, suddenly springs into action after the abduction of American heiress Eden Pedicaris (Candice Bergen) by the Berber prince Raisuli (Sean Connery). Proclaiming the need for "respect for human life and respect for American property," he mobilizes the Army to find Eden, questionable ethics be damned. In Teddy's words, "Why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality?" Sure, the fact that it's an election year may partly explain his motivation, but it's more likely that Roosevelt relishes another chance to embark on a ballsy mission in an exotic, especially one against a worthy opponent like Raisuli. But Roosevelt's finest moment in the film comes when he states: "The American grizzly is a symbol of the American character: strength, intelligence, ferocity. Maybe a little blind and reckless at times. . . but courageous beyond all doubt. And one other trait that goes with all previous — loneliness. The American grizzly lives out his life alone. Indomitable, unconquered — but always alone. He has no real allies, only enemies, but none of them as great as he." It's a rousing and eloquent tribute by Milius, both to the man he so idolizes and to the country they both love.

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov

The Screengrab : brian keith

Summer of '78: "Hooper"

Top Thirteen Greatest Fictional Movie Presidents, Part 3