Smokey Bites the Dust

Smokey Bites the Dust is a 1981 car chase film from New World Pictures directed by Charles B. Griffith. Despite the title it is not an official sequel to Smokey and the Bandit (1977).

Production

Charles B. Griffith had made a popular film for Roger Corman's New World Pictures called Eat My Dust! (1976). Corman wanted Griffith to make a follow up called Car Wars using stunt footage from five old New World films. Griffith wrote a script which he later called Wham Bam, Merci, Madame, which he says Corman rejected. However a few years later he reactivated the project.

He called again and offered me a lot more money than he ever had before. I guess I got flattered, and I went ahead and did it. He had Max Apple in Texas go ahead and write a script around all the wrecks and chases. But Max wasn't allowed to see the footage. It was too expensive to rent a Movieola and send Max prints or anything else, so he had only vague descriptions written down on what the stunts were—and nothing worked. So I made a lot of changes in it, and that made Roger angry. He tried to cut it just to the action of the old pictures, but he couldn't, because he needed all the distribution rights. Then he cut all the motivations and all the character development. It was a mess, a jumbled mess!^[1]

References

External links

• Smokey Bites the Dust at IMDB