He was the hottest shit ever. Then he got seriously injured on the set of the movie City Heat and didn’t turn up again for two years, where he was instantly persona non grata with the fans.
As I was born a bit too young to figure this out, I gotta ask…why did this happen?
This is all just speculation (the 80’s were my teenage years), but I think it was a combination of alcohol abuse and typecasting that cost him his popularity with studios, plus a string of repetitious, low-quality movies that dimmed his appeal to fans.
Smokey & the Bandit, Smokey & the Bandit II, Cannonball Run, Cannonball Run II, Hooper and Stroker Ace pretty much all cast him, to varying extents, as “the charmingly self-destructive, drunken womanizing good ol’ boy”, which may not have been too far from the real him. From what I’ve heard (no cites), he had an extensive entourage of drinking buddies whom he tried to involve in all his films around this time, which probably didn’t endear him to studios and more probably contributed to poor career decisions on Burt’s part.
The style of films that were making money also changed: endless car chases and mass brawls set to country music went out of style, which took away the only genre Reynolds’ had going for him at the time. Clint Eastwood’s string of wandering brawler movies (Any Which Way But Loose, Any Which Way You Can, etc.) petered out around the same time, and he might have ended up in the same boat as Reynolds if his Dirty Harry character hadn’t continued to be popular through the 80’s.
As I recall the story being told, Burt was injured in such a way that it was painful to eat. He lost a lot of weight and there were rumors that he had aids. This diminished his popularity amoungst the good ol’ boys.
Bad movies. He made a bunch of interchangeable cop films that were not particularly successful or interesting. The films didn’t deliver entertainment, even for his fan base, so people stopped coming.
I’m glad he got the “Man-law” commercials.
Everyone was collectively jealous that he had Lonnie Anderson.
A rare example of a man getting too old to play his typical roles.
His arm was in the way in the Cosmo spread.
A combination of the above plus his appearances in the films Paternity and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
I always thought it was people’s tastes abrubtly swinging away from what was popular in the 70s. In the 80s people suddenly remembered the 70s as being incredibly cheesey (disco, cannonball run, etc.) and wanted to seperate themselves from it.
They left behind some big names like Burt Reynolds, John Travolta, Jane Fonda, etc. and dropped them like a bad habit.
70s stuff wasn’t considered “hip” again until well into the 90s.
I think studio heads saw the opportunity to dump him. From what I understand (weak cite: E!:THS) Burt fell into that “Life is too short” category of difficult stars.
Kind of like a certain star who jumped on a couch and yelled at Matt Lauer.
A sign Burt’s popularity was waning was in an episode “Police Squad” (1982).
Remember it was a whacky show so this sketch may seem a little strange.
The lab technician is testing a pistol by firing it into a row of videocassettes of Barbara Walters’ interviews.
He then says “The bullet completey destroys the Burt Reynolds’ interview”.
It seems to me that even though this was the early 1980’s Burt was beginning to be perceived as a joke.
If nothing else, it was a funny sketch (and TV show for that matter).
He got too old to continue his movie type. He was a tough guy who suddenly was a wrinkled geezer that weighed about 30 lbs.
Unlike William Shatner, his ego probably wouldn’t let him exploit that joke to take his career to new heights.
Reynolds let himself get typecast into a certain genre of movie - the good-old-boy action/comedy - and then that genre lost its popularity. In the nineties, he regained some popularity via his series Evening Shade (which lasted five seasons) but then he lost it again by going through a really bitter divorce.
Don’t forget, he did have a moderately successful TV show, Evening Shade, that ran from 90-94.
Of everything but his bear suit.
Not to mention that he underwent some really bad plastic surgery sometime during those years. He’s almost unrecognizable.
It happened during filming of City Heat, which came out in 1984. He talks about it with Larry King here (short excerpt):
He also has the notorius reputation of being very difficult to work with, Russell Crowe style. That can hurt your career more than anything.
I remember a story about how he hated Boogie Nights and told everyone it was a mistake to take that role and during filming all he did was complain. Then he gets an Oscar nomination and all of a sudden he’s proud of it.