FOLIO
Though Burt Reynolds began his career on TV shows in the late ’50s (mostly Westerns) before moving up to the big screen in the ’60s (also mostly Westerns), it was the 1970s that was the Golden Decade for the handsome actor. The movies (many quite good) came fast and furious, like Deliverance (his best ever), The Longest Yard, Starting Over, and Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask).
In that last one, he was a switchboard operator in charge of jettisoning the sperm.
In 1972, he became a pop culture icon, posing nearly nude in a Cosmopolitan centerfold, a bad move he later regretted, like other mistakes in his life and career. The Last Movie Star, his final starring role, is based on fictional actor Vic Edwards who, like the real-life Burt, is in his early 80s, mostly forgotten, lonely and full of regret.
Written and directed by Adam Rifkin, the film opens with a ’70s clip of David Frost interviewing virile, young Reynolds (as Vic) at his most popular and most charming. Cut to a close-up of an aged, life-worn Vic. The camera draws back; he’s in a veterinarian’s office with a similarly aged dachshund in his lap.
The prognosis is not good.
Returning alone to his empty, sprawling house, Vic finds an invitation to an International Nashville Film Festival, where he’s to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award. Following in the steps of Eastwood, De Niro and others (or so Vic mistakenly thinks), he hobbles through the Nashville airport, expecting to be picked up in a limousine. Instead, his ride is a junker driven by his guide for the weekend festivities, tattooed, multi-pierced Lil (Ariel Winter), a young woman whose brother organized the festival.
What ensues is both a touching and comic odyssey through Vic’s life and the fabled career of the now-faded actor playing him.
When Vic learns the International Festival is in truth a showing of his films on a makeshift screen in the back room of a bar lounge, he ignores the fact that the folks there are still adoring fans. Rude, arrogant, drunk, he ditches them and splits with a reluctant Lil for a nostalgic trip to Knoxville, his hometown.
Vic’s sunset odyssey into the past recalls aspects of Reynolds’ life and career, but uninformed viewers should know there are distinct differences. Vic might be based on Reynolds, but he’s not Reynolds.
Both were college football stars whose gridiron hopes ended due to injuries; both had many high-profile relationships, like most movie stars. In fact, Vic tops Burt. Reynolds was married twice; Vic’s alimony payments go to five ex-wives. Vic claims to have bedded nearly everyone within reach; not counting his two marriages, Reynolds was noted for his lengthy liaisons with Dinah Shore and Sally Fields (the professed love of his life).
Nor did Burt Reynolds change his ancestry or his real name, just shortening Burton to Burt. Writer/director Rifkin, who’s Jewish, gives his fictional movie star that heritage, maybe to emphasize how far Vic had left his real self to be a star.
Vic’s greatest regret is abandoning first wife Claudia (Kathleen Nolan) and their only child for fame and fortune. One tender moment is a reunion with Claudia, now suffering from Alzheimer’s. Closing the Film Festival is a clip from Gunsmoke, with the young Noland and Reynolds.
Still contrasting present and past, Rifkin shows clips from Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance, edited to suggest Vic is communing with his fictional personae. It’s a clever ploy, since those two films juxtapose the two poles of Reynolds’ career. Deliverance was the apex, the best example of a powerhouse actor. Smokey, a huge hit, with charming and superficial Reynolds, spawned subpar groaners like Stroker Ace and The Cannonball Run.
In the end, Burt Reynolds was a far better man and better actor than this fictional star. The Last Movie Star is a tribute to his self-awareness and his never-failing sense of humor.
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