I made a wrong turn inside a truck stop and stumbked upon a few dozen truckers watching Smokey and the Bandit in a full theater room.
Is it a union thing?
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Really? Please, how do you define “into the movie biz”?
I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say most people who decided to dedicate a career to running movie theaters probably genuinely enjoy watching movies.
it was so huge that it was second in box office only to star wars, which is definitely saying something.
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smokey and the bandit was released when independent breweries did not exist,
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“People in the 1970s were weird”.
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i prefer to think we were broad, but ok 
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AMC shows lots of stuff that would be poor choices if profit were the motivation. Im sure Smokey and the Bandit will be about as empty as The Producers 50th Anniversary was. If AMC wanted to make money they would show cheaply licensed anime nonstop which us Millennials go batshit for.
At my local AMC tickets are $16, this film is showing for $5.
Also AMC shows a fair amount of Christian garbage to near empty auditoriums.
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Mmm. Maybe. Based on a few people I’ve know as I worked at movie theaters in my youth, the employees were likelier to care more about the movies than the owners. For the managers and owners I knew it was a business first and foremost.
Making a career out of something doesn’t mean you love it. I’ve made a 20+ year career out of working in automotive advertising, and I despise car commercials, car dealerships, and a good number of car salesmen. But it pays my many bills.
That said, my personal experience doesn’t prove any kind of truism. Just that I would expect some movie theater owners like movies, and others don’t.
And that I would have been better off opening a movie theater, or done pretty much any of a number of other things with a good chunk of my adult life.
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OK. I’ll bite. What would you list among his best work?
Cannonball?!!
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Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I’d forgotten that one.
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Hands down, Boogie Nights. But the first Longest Yard, Deliverance, and The Man Who loved Cat Dancing he did pretty good. And so many others where he actually brought something to the table other than just looks and a sense of humor.
I never said he was Paul Newman. I just said S&B wasn’t his best. Don’t try to draw me into a stupid argument, please.
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Sorry for sounding flippant. I was (am) genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts. I’m guessing we might be about half a generation apart, and I’d never heard of Longest Yard or The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (very intriguing title). Boogie Nights, definitely a quality film an a quality performance. I’ll have to look for “The ManWLCD”.
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