Word: burtness
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Correspondent James Willwerth has covered war in Saigon and peace (almost as harrowing) in the streets of New York City. Last week he was on his new beat in Hollywood, but his subjects were presumably still tough: Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood. "Covering illusion, I suspect, is going to be just as confusing as reporting reality," says Willwerth. Part of the confusion came from spending a few days with Reynolds. The flashy-flip, skirt-chasing, tire-burning macho hero of Semi-Tough, and a score of other cinematic excursions, proved to be a "semi-shy, urbane homebody." It turns...
...popcorn or worse. But Contributor Richard Schickel, who wrote this week's cover story, takes a different view. Schickel, a film maker himself as well as a critic, has spent time with both men and admires them for being "non-prima donna professionals." He adds: "Clint and Burt have classic screen presences"-like John Wayne, who for 25 years lived with bad reviews despite popular adulation. Says Schickel: "I have a feeling that when Clint-or Burt-reaches 60, he'll make his version of True Grit, and critics will sit up and realize how good...
...Burt McGillivary praise for not going with his roommates Sunday night...
...think, and how could a film starring Burt Reynolds be any other way? This is unfair; Reynolds saves Semi-Tough, and the fault lies not with him but with Ritchie. Sunbelt attitudes toward women are hard to define; what you tend to forget is that Scarlett O'Hara was one tough old bitch. Barbara Jane Bookman, secure in her looks and her money, might have to take a lot of grief from her stud football-playing buddies, but by God, she should give as good as she gets, and the film never captures the uneasy jocularity that is a necessary...
...Burt Reynolds is very good, the best he's ever been; he gets three yards on his own. Reynolds made what should be called the best football movie ever in The Longest Yard, and he seems to grow more in every film. I have a suspicion that 30 years from now we may dredge up all those old sunbelt epics like W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, Deliverance, etc., and cherish them the way we do Casablanca now, if maybe for a different reason. For the present, though, Semi-Tough is only semi-good, in the fullest sense of the word...