Vader and the Bandit

I “discovered” something the other day that made me stop and think. Smokey and the Bandit and Star Wars came out in the same year — 1977. I love Smokey and the Bandit; I’ve seen it probably half a dozen times. I used to could quote dialog from it almost as well as I could Star Wars lines. Let’s see. . .

“What’s the —damn Germans got to do with it?”

“What we got to do, kidnap the pope?”

“I’m gonna need a fast car. Faster than that.”

“That was an attention getter.”

“I take my hat off for one thing, and one thing only.”

“Hold on to your head, Fred.”

“She was wearin’ a wedding dress.” “What’s she wearin’ now?”

. . . that’s all off the top of my head.

I was 10 years old in 1977 but I remember seeing SatB in the theater just like I remember seeing SW in the theater. SatB was a cultural hit, spawning at least 2 sequel movies, at least 1 other similar-themed movie (Convoy), and at least 1 similar-themed TV show (BJ and the Bear). But the CB/trucker craze fizzled out by the 80s.

SW, on the other hand, became a cultural phenomenon that has lasted 30 years so far, spawning uncountably numerous similar media. When I think of SW, I think of it as more of an event than as a simple movie. But really, it was just a movie, just like SatB. I don’t know the exact dates they were released, but it’s quite possible that I might have seen them one week after the other.

They are such completely different pieces of entertainment, it’s hard to think of them as from the same time period and culture. I mean, if you showed these two movies to someone who knew nothing about them, would they believe they came out in the same year, in the same country?

This idea just came to me: Can we map the characters from Smokey and the Bandit with the characters from Star Wars?

Bandit = Luke Skywalker
Snowman = Han Solo
Fred = Chewbacca
Frog = Princess Leia
? = Ben Kenobi

Sheriff Buford T. Justice = Darth Vader
Junior Justice = ?
? = Grand Moff Tarkin

Big Enos = ?
Little Enos = ?

Hmm. Needs a little more thought to make it all work.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com