Burt in the Blood—by Jennifer L. Knox

A poet friend of mine asked if I was going to blog about poetry, since it is the BAP blog, afterall. But to me that feels a little like talking about corgis, to a corgi. Today I wanna to chase sheep.

Scoliosis and bipolar disorders run like rabid squirrels between the twining branches of my family trees. As does a deep love of Burt Reynolds. For years, I’d thought it was only on my father’s side. Whenever a Burt movie was on TV (his fave: Cannonball Run), dad would place his clunky tape recorder next to the TV’s speaker and record the sound, flying up to press “pause” during commercials. He would play the tapes driving to and from work, laughing quietly at all the dirty words bleeped out.

On my mom’s side, there’s my cousin Mark. Technically we’re second cousins—a friend from Texas told me that—people from Texas know those things. I first met Mark when he came to town to play a show with his band, Hooper—a Burt Reynolds tribute band named after the film in which Burt plays an aging stuntman faced with an existential dilemma: he’s on the downhill slope of his life, so why not go out with a bang, thereby saving the life of his rival/protégé?

Each member of the band represented a different character in the movie (Mark was Sonny Hooper), and wore a different-colored stuntman jumpsuit. They all hailed from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the final scene in Hooper was filmed—an orgy of car chases and explosions that stopped traffic in town for three days as the crew shot in the town’s armory. All the men in the band were little boys then, riding home from school in the back seat of their mother’s car, jumping Hot Wheels over the armrest, imagining Burt beyond the armory gates blowing the whole world to hell.

Hooper’s songs were all about Burt, but they avoided patronizing explication. Mark said, “We don’t write songs that say, ‘lifting weights and drinking beer’s a thing Burt likes to do.’ We write about life through Burt’s eyes. And about Dom and Sally, of course.” “Do you have a song about Jerry Reed?” “No,” he said shaking his head slowly, as if speaking to a very stupid child, “that’s more of a side project.”

Mark patiently taught me about Burt in his thick southern accent, slow as cold molasses: “First thing you need to know about Burt is that he was hit across the face with a folding chair filming a stunt sequence. It shattered his jaw, he couldn’t eat, he became addicted to pain pills, lost a lot of weight, and every tabloid in the world reported that he had AIDS. It killed his career, and made him very, very angry.”

“The next thing you need to know is that there’s a book called The Films of Burt Reynolds. Do you know who wrote the introduction for it?”

“You?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“Nope, it was a fella by the name of Mr. Orson Welles. I would’ve, but he got to it first. Orson said, ‘Please don’t discount this man's acting just because he’s the biggest box office draw in the world.’ And I just think…well, it was real sweet for him to take the time to say that.”

Mark knew so much about Burt, he would email the President of Burt’s fan club to correct mistakes that he’d found on the Club’s website. The President told Burt about Hooper, and reported back to Mark, “Burt said he’s really happy you guys are out there. And he means out there.”

When I was asked to guest blog here, I called Mark. “Did you ever see Fast, Cheap and Out of Control?” I asked him. “No, I don’t believe I ever did.” “It’s a documentary by Errol Morris about four different experts: a mole rat zoologist, a NASA robotics engineer, a topiary gardener, and a lion tamer. By being experts about things outside themselves, they have unique understandings about what it means to be human. I want to write about you and Burt. My questions is, what Burt has taught you about being human? Even though Burt’s human, he’s…”

“Say no more, cuz. Tell ‘em this: it’s easy to be a Harrison Ford fan. He plays the President, meditates in Buddhist monasteries, and unwinds in his home carpentry studio. But that’s not reality.”

“Burt rose to fame as a college football star, but he lost it all after a car accident. He became the most popular actor in the world, then he got hit in the face with a chair. He couldn’t get hired to read books on tape for the blind. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Boogie Nights, but he followed that with a bomb called Driven, co-starring Sylvester Stallone and some guy named Kip Pardue. You see?”

“Burt knows if he lets talented people take control of a project, it’s going to be great, but he doesn’t do it. Instead, he hires all his buddies to make a volleyball movie, and the cycle continues. After Elvis died, his bodyguard said, ‘You can save a man from every danger, except himself.’”

“That’s the difference between great myths and Hollywood endings: the characters in ancient stories make terrible mistakes, forever. There’s no resolution, but you still root for the hero who has the courage to fail—colossally and inevitably—in his own inimitable way.”

Inimitable, indeed. If you want to hear Mark sing, “Way of the Stuntman,” along with many other lovely acoustic numbers that he composed with poet Ada Limón, you can! Tonight in Brooklyn at Pete’s Candy Store, catch the duo better known as Gwyn and Sonny at about 10 p.m.

Photo above is not Brando, but Burt Reynolds playing Brando, asking the Bard for some acting tips in an episode of—what else—The Twilight Zone. Photo left is Burt in bed with Groucho Marx from the 1976 edition of Marx's Beds, sent by Adam Deutsch.

Comments

[Ada]

Oh no you didn't. It is true, we are singing two Burt inspired songs tonight. A brand new one for Hooper that Mark wrote called, "Hollywood Hills." Thanks to both you cousins to bringing me into the Burt fold..and that pretty much is like poetry.

[Dick Feller]

Burt too is like a house. A sensitive house, that just might smack you if you're not careful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLKKqh5yQmA