What The Bandit can Teach Us About Writing

This article was orginally wriiten in May of 2017, for my site.

This last Sunday I went with my son back in time.

​40 Years ago, this week. May 27, 1977.

I was still in high school.

​ The movie was "Smokey and the Bandit."

Burt Reynolds, Sally Fields, Jerry Reed, and Jackie Gleason as Buford T Justice.

The Epic car chase across three states that ended in a big beer party.

But that's not the real story.

The real story is the fact that I saw this movie when it first came out in 1977 while I was in High School. Since then, I have seen it probably more times than I can count. My son has grown up watching this film we have seen it numerous times together over the years. It's the first time we've seen it the way it was originally presented on the big screen.

The movie is just as silly and in some ways as stupid as it was 40 years ago.

The now “Classic” scene where Burt Reynolds and Sally Field jumped the bridge that was out is just as good as ever, even better on the big screen.

But why does anyone care about a chase movie made 40 years ago?

Characters.

Afterward, in the car, my son and I discussed the film for about 10 minutes.

We picked a picked apart the plot or the “sort of plot” and the silliness of the whole thing.

The likelihood Sally Field’s character did not recognize Jackie Gleason's character on the CB radio it's pretty slim if she knew the family well enough to almost married the stupid son.

Then she would have recognized his voice over the CB; having probably heard it there many times before. All that aside, the movie still works pretty good.

But that's the reason the movie works is not the story; the story sucks. What works is the characters. The characters are memorable.

Burt Reynolds character the Bandit is likable he's Every Man's anti-hero he just doing the best he can and along the way he manages to do things that other people have not been able to do and mostly have fun doing it.

Jerry Reed is also excellent as the Snowman. Snowman is dragged into this crazy bet, he asked Bandit why we want to this silly thing; Bandit explains;

"For the good old American life: For the money, for the glory, and for the fun... mostly for the money. ” Burt Reynolds as Bandit in Smokey & the Bandit, 1977

You may wonder what this has to do with writing?

Theses characters resonate they speak to us, we can relate to them.

They’re doing something that we would like to do. Granted, the story needs work, but that's okay. In this case, it's not so much about the story. Face it, the actual story of “Smokey and The Bandit” is pretty thin.

There are holes in the plot we could drive both Bandit's Trans Am and Snowman's tractor through. But that's OK. This is Character driven.

We like Bandit, and “Frog” and Snowman, in spite of ourselves we like Sheriff Buford T. Justice. That's why the story works. It's not so much the grand adventure, or the danger.

It's watching them do stupid stuff and getting away with it. As a teenager, in 1977, I probably wanted to be Bandit so bad I couldn’t stand it. To drive a Bad-Ass car, get the girl, and generally, do whatever the hell I wanted. That's what these characters embody.

So must you write clones of Bandit, and Snowman, and Justice?

No. But your characters should be something either your readers can relate to directly, or in the case of Bandit, someone they can wish they were. Bigger than real life.

Characters that take over the story. They should ideally be relatable on some level, either age, sex, or occupation, or situation. But above all, they must be memorable.

Granted the movie has the added advantage of “Star Power” The actors bringing the characters to life. While we can’t have a young Burt Reynolds playing our hero, or probably not even the old Burt Reynolds, we must build our characters in ways that make them memorable, and for our readers to care what happens to them.

​​If we build good enough characters, then the audience will go along for the ride, silly as it may be.