| The Cannonball Run | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Hal Needham |
| Produced by | Raymond Chow |
| Written by | Brock Yates |
| Starring | Burt Reynolds Roger Moore Farrah Fawcett Jackie Chan Dean Martin Sammy Davis, Jr. Dom DeLuise |
| Music by | Al Capps |
| Cinematography | Michael Butler |
| Editing by | Donn Cambern William D. Gordean |
| Studio | Golden Harvest United Artists |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | June 19, 1981 |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country | United States Hong Kong |
| Language | English Cantonese Japanese Arabic |
| Box office | $72,179,579 |
The Cannonball Run is a 1981 comedy film starring Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise and Farrah Fawcett, and was directed by Hal Needham. It was produced by Hong Kong's Golden Harvest films. There was a sequel, 1984's Cannonball Run II.
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Race teams have gathered in Connecticut to start their cross-country race. One at a time, teams drive up to the starters' stand, punch a time card to indicate their time of departure, then take off.
Among the teams are:
At the starting line, observing from the shadows, is Mr. Arthur J. Foyt (a play on the name of racer A. J. Foyt), a representative of the (Safety Enforcement Unit), who tries to stop the race because of its environmental effects and safety issues. In the car with him is Pamela Glover. Shortly after they leave the starting line, J.J. and Victor (driving their ambulance) come across Foyt and Glover, who have been involved in a minor fender-bender. Glover implores J.J. and Victor to help, but when they tell Foyt to enter the ambulance through the back door, they kidnap Glover and take off without Foyt. As the race progresses, various teams are shown either evading law enforcement, most of which deal with talking their way out of a possible ticket, or concocting crazy schemes to outmaneuver their opponents.
The primary rivalry in the film is between the teams in the ambulance and the Ferrari. In Ohio, Fenderbaum and Blake are able to convince Victor to pull over their ambulance in order to bless the patient on board. While Blake carries out the blessing, Fenderbaum punctures one of the ambulance's rear tires with a knife. Later in Missouri, J.J. gets his revenge by convincing a nearby police officer that the two men dressed as priests are actually sex perverts who are responsible for the flashing victim in the ambulance. Meanwhile Foyt, with the help of his government agency, is able to set up a roadblock and catch several teams (though none of the "major" teams featured in the movie). Similar scenes continue to build up to the conclusion of the movie. The remaining teams find themselves stopped on a desert highway, next to a roadside market, waiting for construction work to clear the road ahead of them. While waiting, a biker gang (led by Peter Fonda) shows up and begins harassing Compton and Finch. The harassing quickly gets out of hand and a free-for-all fistfight ensues with everyone getting in on the action. Naturally the Subaru team (Jackie Chan puts his martial arts skills to work) and the remaining teams join in the massive fight. In the middle of the fight, the construction crew announces that the road is open, and the teams sprint back to their cars for the final race to the finish.
The ambulance falls behind the rest of the pack, until Victor changes into his super-hero alter-ego Captain Chaos. The vehicles all arrive at the finish line's parking lot at the same time, and it's a foot race to the finish line (why it's so important to be first to the clock when everyone clocked in at different times to start the race is left unexplained). In the sprint, J.J. hands his team's time card to Victor, then ambushes the remaining racers, leaving only Victor and one of the Lamborghini women. Just when it appears Victor will reach the time clock first, a scream rings out and a spectator shouts that her "baby" has fallen into the water. Victor, still in his Captain Chaos persona, quits the race and rushes to save the baby (later revealed to be her dog), allowing Marcie to clock in first and win the race.
Cannonball Run featured an all-star cast, including:[1]
The film continued director Hal Needham's tradition of showing bloopers during the closing credits (a practice he started with the Smokey and the Bandit films). Jackie Chan says it was this film that inspired him to do the same at the end of most of his films.
The film is based on the 1979 running of the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an actual cross-country outlaw road race held four times in the 1970s, starting at the Red Ball Garage on 31st Street in New York City (later the Lock, Stock and Barrel Restaurant in Darien, CT) and ending at the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California, just south of Los Angeles.
The film's screenwriter was automotive journalist Brock Yates. Yates had originally proposed the race as a writer for Car and Driver.[2] The race had only one rule: "All competitors will drive any vehicle of their choosing, over any route, at any speed they judge practical, between the starting point and destination. The competitor finishing with the lowest elapsed time is the winner".
Yates' team was the only participant in the original 1972 running, and in the March 1979 race, formed one of 46 teams with director Hal Needham to compete with a 150-MPH van converted into an ambulance, with LA doctor Lyell Royer, and Brock's second wife, Pamela Reynolds, riding as the patient on the gurney. Although the ambulance never made it to the finish line - the transmission gave out 50 miles short of the Redondo Beach finish line [3] - Yates made it to the movie as a race official, Needham as an EMT, and the ambulance itself was used in the movie. The ambulance was stopped once, in Pennsylvania; that event made it into the movie, as did a cop stopping traffic in Kansas, exiting from a rodeo, to let the ambulance pass unimpeded.[4]
The Right Bra team was put together by rail-thin auto writer Judy Stropus, race driver Donna Mae Mims and Peggy Niemcek, whose husband was part of another entry, driving a Cadillac limo. In the movie, it became a two-woman team led by buxom Adrienne Barbeau driving a Lamborghini, but as auto writer Stropus said decades later, "a little editorial license never hurt anyone".[5] Yates points out in his book "Cannonball!"[6] that Stropus's version of the race does not mention the baptism with green fluid from the porta-potty the three girls experienced when the limo overturned.
Reynolds plays has-been race car driver J.J. McClure. Playing his mild-mannered mechanic counterpart, Victor Prinzim, is DeLuise (with a superhero alter ego, Captain Chaos, always waiting in the wings). Together, they participate in the Cannonball Run in an ambulance - a heavily modified Dodge Tradesman van.
In an attempt to appear legitimate to law enforcement, Victor hires Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing, a frightening, yet friendly, physician of questionable skill played by Jack Elam. They kidnap attractive young photographer Pamela Glover (Farrah Fawcett) — whom they nickname "Beauty" — to be their cover patient. Though Beauty vehemently opposes this at first, she eventually warms to the idea of being a participant in the race and to her unlikely "captors".
The film earned $72,179,579.[7] According to Box Office Mojo, Cannonball Run was the sixth-highest grossing film of 1981, behind Raiders of the Lost Ark, On Golden Pond, Superman II, Arthur, and Stripes.
In June 1980, 24-year-old stuntwoman Heidi Von Beltz was critically injured in a car crash during production of the film. Her car was struck by a van that made the wrong move, and she was not wearing restraints because seat belts had been removed from her vehicle prior to the accident.[8] She survived, but was left a quadriplegic. When it became clear that Von Beltz's personal injury lawsuit would blow through all available primary insurance coverage, the production's excess insurer, Interstate Fire (a subsidiary of Hollywood's favorite insurer, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company) sued its own insured and Von Beltz for a declaratory judgment that Von Beltz's lawsuit was not covered under its policy. In 1988, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that there was a duty to defend, and that there was also a duty to indemnify to the extent that Von Beltz was seeking recovery for mental injuries (the exclusion for bodily injuries was ruled to be enforceable).[9]
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