I think there is very little I can add here to what has been already been written about this film but I will try. I first saw this film when it opened in Colorado where I was born and raised. I saw it in a theater with a teenage buddy of mine from junior high. We really enjoyed this movie because, even at that age, we realized it was nothing more than harmless fun. The perfect 1970's Saturday night or Sunday afternoon good-time down-home movie.
Both Sally Field and Burt Reynolds were on the Bravo series "Inside The Actor's Studio" in separate episodes and they both had interesting comments about the making of this movie twenty plus years later. Sally Field said that they were forced to improvise a lot of their lines because they had "no script." Reynolds said that Alfred Hitchock had the movie screened over and over. Reynolds said he spoke to Pat, the great director's daughter about this and she said Hitch loved the movie because he could see the people making it loved each other and that they were having the time of their lives.
This film has its roots in the type of low-budget movies being made in the 1970's. With the success of films like "Easy Rider," "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Bullitt" in the late 1960's, Hollywood was eager to make chase movies that featured "anti-heroes." Characters that were either breaking the law or enforcing the law outside of established procedures but you still rooted for them anyway. Couple this with the popularity of CB radios and truck driving slang and you have movies like "Vanishing Point," "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot," "Convoy," "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry," "Sugarland Express," "Breaker, Breaker" and this one. I still marvel at how I know practically every funny scene in the movie but I still laugh like I was a Colorado teenager all over again. Maybe I see some of the qualities Hitchcock saw in it.
Both Sally Field and Burt Reynolds were on the Bravo series "Inside The Actor's Studio" in separate episodes and they both had interesting comments about the making of this movie twenty plus years later. Sally Field said that they were forced to improvise a lot of their lines because they had "no script." Reynolds said that Alfred Hitchock had the movie screened over and over. Reynolds said he spoke to Pat, the great director's daughter about this and she said Hitch loved the movie because he could see the people making it loved each other and that they were having the time of their lives.
This film has its roots in the type of low-budget movies being made in the 1970's. With the success of films like "Easy Rider," "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Bullitt" in the late 1960's, Hollywood was eager to make chase movies that featured "anti-heroes." Characters that were either breaking the law or enforcing the law outside of established procedures but you still rooted for them anyway. Couple this with the popularity of CB radios and truck driving slang and you have movies like "Vanishing Point," "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot," "Convoy," "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry," "Sugarland Express," "Breaker, Breaker" and this one. I still marvel at how I know practically every funny scene in the movie but I still laugh like I was a Colorado teenager all over again. Maybe I see some of the qualities Hitchcock saw in it.