So I am watching Fast N Loud and they are restoring a 1977 Pontiac Firebird, Black with the Gold screaming chicken. Very cool. My inner 9 year old is gitty.
I loved Smokey and the Bandit and while I am mostly a German CarGuy, growing up in the states when I did, this brought back many memories...For those youngin's on the site, back in the old days, if you wanted to re-watch a movie, you had to wait until it was on TV, usually about a year or more later (unless your father is like mine and you had to watch it the first time on TV a year after everyone else saw it. Which usually resulted in your FINALLY being able to talk about the movie all your friends where were you a year ago!). So I was chompin at the bit to see the cool movie that everyone was talking about...
The movie finally came on TV (having checked the newspaper on a regular basis (remember those days?). Happily, my father liked new gadgets so in 1973 we had a VTR (early VCR), and in 1978 when Smokey and the Bandit was on TV, I recorded it.
This is a VTR (Video Tape Recorder...actually, technically it is a VCR video cassette recorder, but the video guy who fixed it always corrected me, I suppose because of the 3/4 inch tape? Who knows. He probably became a helpdesk employee in the 1980s so he could continue his unnecessary attitude and condescension).
Cool article about the umatic here for the uber-geeky.
Vintage Umatic VCR. The Sony VP1100, Sony VP1000, Sony VO1600, Sony VO3800. A museum of first video recorders.
There was no way I was going to miss that one opportunity as then, if you missed it, well, you are waiting a few years before it comes out again (usually channel 9 on the "million dollar movie show")
BTW, side story, when I was in 1st grade my dad got Disney's Robin Hood. When I was asked in school what I did this weekend, it sort of went like this:
Teacher: What did you do this weekend?
Me: I watched Robin Hood on TV
T: Robin Hood? On TV? What channel was it on?
M: Channel 3 (in the old days if you wanted to broadcast on the TV a VCR/VTR signal, you had to use an unused channel. In the NY area, you had broadcasts on 2,4,5,7,9,11 and 13 (and according to Billy Joel "all your life is channel 13, Sesame Street, What does it mean?". Tvs didn't have a channel 1 (at least, none I ever saw, so we used 3).
T: Channel 3 isn't a real channel.
M: Well, it is a video tape and I watched the movie on that channel.
T: Oh, I see, you had a
cassette tape and you
listened to the movie.
M: No, I
saw the movie on my
TV.
...I am sure my teacher thought I needed some "special" help but that wasn't done back then. I guess I was a know-it-all back then too...
Oh, I still have Robin Hood memorized watching it seemingly endlessly for the next 4 years. Funny how the mind works after 40 years.
Anyway, back to the Bandit. Smokey and the Bandit was a show I watched MANY MANY times. So much so that I counted the number of cars used and found several inconsistencies in the movie. I saw that bridge jump scene over and over and over.
Oh, BTW, if you want to see a bunch of older movie cars, this is a good site I found while writing this:
smokey and the bandit | Star Car Central - Batmobile and Movie Car News
Looking forward to seeing how Fast N Loud do it up. I suspect, they'll do a good job...as long as they don't paint it green or add that ugly metal flake stuff.
Anyway, thanks for the walk down memory lane.