Burt Reynolds, who received an Oscar nomination when he portrayed porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) and was the No. 1 box-office attraction for a five-year stretch starting in the late 1970s, died Thursday morning at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida, his manager, Erik Kritzer, told THR. He was 82. No explanation was given as to his passing.
While Reynolds didn’t spend much time in the horror genre (outside of 1995’s The Maddening and 1996’s Frankenstein and Me), he did star in Deliverance, one of the most memorable and influential thrillers in the 70s. John Boorman directed the backwoods-set film that surprisingly came out the same year as Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, both beating Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to the punch. While most of us remember the latter, our parents grew up terrified of Deliverance. It has been referenced in pop culture for over 45 years and has given us horror fans yet another reason to celebrate the works of this great actor.
THR shared this wild anecdote from the production of the film.
In John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), based on a book by James Dickey, Reynolds starred as macho survivalist Lewis Medlock, one of four guys from Atlanta who head to the wilderness for the weekend. Filmed by Vilmos Zsigmond along the Chattooga River near the Georgia-South Carolina border, it was an arduous production that Boorman shot in sequence.
“When I asked John why, he said, ‘In case one of you drowns,’ ” Reynolds wrote.
He had good reason. When Reynolds saw test footage of a dummy in a canoe going over the falls in one scene, he told Boorman the scene looked fake. He climbed into the canoe, was sent crashing into the rocks and ended up in the hospital. “I asked [Boorman] how [the new footage] looked, and he said, ‘Like a dummy going over the falls,’ ” Reynolds wrote.
Deliverance, infamous for its uncut 10-minute hillbilly male rape scene (“squeal like a pig”), was nominated for three Academy Awards but came away empty. It lost out to The Godfather in the best picture battle.
“If I had to put only one of my movies in a time capsule, it would be Deliverance,” Reynolds wrote. “I don’t know if it’s the best acting I’ve done, but it’s the best movie I’ve ever been in. It proved I could act, not only to the public but me.”
Digressing, Reynolds shined in many other action films (often doing his own stunts, injects the site) and in such romantic comedies as Starting Over (1979) opposite Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen; The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) with Dolly Parton; Best Friends (1982) with Goldie Hawn; and, quite aptly, The Man Who Loved Women (1983) with Julie Andrews.