Cap City Video Lounge

05/28/2026

Apologies for the short notice! Radical Movie Night for May is postponed, so we will not be screening a movie tonight.

We will pick back up next month with Pride, and we'll watch Salt of the Earth in July.

See y'all in June!!

05/27/2026

05/27/2026

05/27/2026

Darkman (1990)

05/27/2026

05/27/2026

On this date in 1977, "Smokey and the Bandit" was released (according to IMDb; other sites say other things).

While Hal Needham was in Georgia working as Burt Reynolds' stunt double in "Gator" (1976), the driver captain on the set bought some Coors beer from California, and put a few cases in Needham's hotel room. After he noticed that the maid kept stealing beers from the fridge, he remembered a 1974 Time magazine article that said Coors couldn't legally be sold outside of 11 western and southwestern U.S. states, because the beer was not pasteurized and needed constant refrigeration. He then realized that "bootlegging Coors would make a good plotline for a movie."

When Needham originally wrote the initial screenplay, he hired Jerry Reed to play the Bandit. But when Needham told Reynolds about the film, Reynolds decided he wanted to do it and Reed was re-cast as the Snowman.

Jackie Gleason reportedly modeled his character after Reynolds' description of his father, a Florida police officer and Chief of Police. Among the character traits that came from this was the use of "sumb***h," a colloquial pronunciation of "son of a b***h." Buford T. Justice was the name of a real Florida Highway Patrolman known to Reynolds's father.

Needham saw a picture of a Pontiac Trans Am in a magazine and thought up a product placement idea. He asked for six Trans Ams, but Pontiac would only agree to send four. Needham also asked for four LeMans for Gleason's cars, but he only got two. By the time they shot the final scene, they had wiped out three Trans Ams and the fourth wouldn't start after all of the stunts, so another car was used to push it into the scene. For "Smokey and the Bandit II" (1980), Needham asked for and received 10 Trans Ams and 55 Bonnevilles with no trouble. (IMDb)

05/27/2026

Louis Gossett, Jr. said in a television interview that he had talked while gargling saliva as a kid "as one of those kid things". He told "Enemy Mine" (1985) director Wolfgang Petersen that he thought that it would add a good touch to his character, the Drac Jeriba. Gossett performed the odd vocalizations all by himself (no mouth prosthetics or post-production effects), and often does "the Drac voice" at convention appearances. According to Gossett, the Drac language was created from scratch. Much of it was Russian, pronounced in reverse.

It took four hours to apply the make-up to Gossett to transform him into Jeriba.

The film began shooting in April 1984 with Richard Loncraine ("Brimstone & Treacle") as director. However, after weeks of shooting in Iceland and Budapest, producers became concerned about a mixture of budget overruns, creative differences and poor quality dailies. Filming was stopped. The studio had already spent $9 million in production costs and had "pay or play" contracts committing an additional $18 million, so executives needed to decide whether to cut losses or go with a new director. At the same time, Fox changed its upper management and new Chairman, Barry Diller, and head of production, Lawrence Gordon, decided to move ahead with a new director. The studio had faith in the story and actors involved, and hired Petersen to take over as director. Petersen did not like any of Loncraine's work and opted to start anew, scouting locations along the African coast. Stars Dennis Quaid and Gossett remained on during the duration of the film's delays and were paid "holding" money. Petersen moved the production from Budapest to Munich and the studio he used for "Das Boot" (1981).

Large sets were constructed, including a man-made lake, and Gossett's Drac makeup was redesigned, taking several months on its own. The film finished shooting seven months after its delay; its budget, originally planned at about $17 million, rose to $29 million,and ended up costing more than $40 million with marketing costs. (IMDb/Wikipedia)

Happy Birthday, Louis Gossett, Jr.