That was filmed about 5 miles from my house IIRC. But then again, it might have been a bridge jump in Hooper instead of Smokey and the Bandit, since it was filmed in Tuscaloosa, 35 miles from me. A lot of it was filmed at a old WWII Army Hospital, after the filming they cleared the site and built University Mall.
Either way, one of the bridge jumps was filmed on that county road close to here. They never rebuilt the bridge, even though the movie company paid something like $10,000 to blow out the old one.
Another little story connected to Burt, sorta.....
When they started filming Hooper, they hired about 1500 people to be used in crowd scenes. All these were local people, a lot of them were hired at gas stations, grocery stores, etc, on the spot instead of advertising for extras. I was working, so I missed out. They paid something like $150 a week, which in 1978 wasn't bad money to basically stand around and do nothing! Anyways, they hired this big old country guy, he never went to school, never learned to read or write, worked the farm all his life. He signed his name with an X. He was in the crowd scene, wearing his overalls like always. Some of the older dead peckers were aggravating him at the country store one day after his movie job, telling him he was going to be famous, and they wanted his autograph, knowing full well he couldn't write. Well, he fooled them, he signed his X, then drew a circle around it! Told them that was his celebrity signature![cl He signed his name like that till he died back in the 90's.
And he did get to meet Burt for a few minutes, not all the extras did even though they were promised they would.
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