The country movie aims to please and will bust a gut doing it. Because a country movie is seldom three or even two years in the making, it appears to be more closely in touch with its audience than more ambitious films.
ported-often exclusively-by people who live in the rural South, Southwest and Middle West, people who see most of their movies in drive‐ins and respond, I suspect, to the nonstop action (which is often just movement), to the colorful, heightened vulgarity of the language and who feel most at home in the country movie's principal setting: the automobile. More than fancier, big‐budget movies that receive frontcover treatment in the news magazines and are widely publicized on TV talk shows, country movies tell us about the state of mind of a large part of our union. More important, perhaps, “Smokey and the Bandit” would appear to be the second most popular American film of the year, topped only by “Star Wars,” which is topping everything, including “Jaws,” “The Godfather,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Birth of a Nation.” Some attention should be paid. Yet it did play at Radio City Music Hall and it does star Burt Reynolds, one of the few major actors who crosses over between country movies and conventionally acceptable films. What? You've never heard of “Smokey and the Bandit”? It's not the sort of movie that's talked about at cocktail parties. Now, according to Variety, “Smokey and the Bandit” has brought in close to $36,000,000 in domestic rental's since its release in May. Pusser, has earned $17,000,000 and its first sequel (there have been two) $11,000,000. “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” brought in $14,700,000, while “Walking Tall,” the film based on the life of the late Tennessee sheriff, Buford T. In recent years “Macon County Line” has earned $10,000,000. Like country music, they are becoming a big, respectable if still largely unpublicized business. Something curious is happening to country movies. Why ‘Smokey And the Bandit’ Is Making A Killing
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