There's more to Smokey and the Bandit than I realized

An essay written in September 2018 shortly after the death of Burt Reynolds was announced

Amazon Prime is featuring Smokey and the Bandit (Universal Studios, 1977) in tribute to Burt Reynolds, who died this past week at 82. I was 8 when the movie came out, and I remember coming home from summer camp and going to see it in the theater with my childhood friend, Steve K. We counted the cuss words in the movie - I remember that we emerged from the cinema telling our friends that there were 76 bad words uttered in the film. We thought that was awesome. My parents, however, didn't like the movie. They said it was disrespectful to law enforcement, and they were generally put off by movies about irreverent playboy outlaws being pursued by pathetic and humorless cops.

In one of the most iconic (and controversial) moments of the film, Carrie (Sally Field) flips the bird to get the attention of a motorcycle cop, so she can lure him away from Cledus's big rig.

Anyway, I spent this past Saturday night watching Smokey again for the first time in decades, and while I can't say that there's…