Private funeral for Reynolds

Burt Reynolds has been laid to rest at a private funeral in Florida.

The Hollywood legend passed away earlier this month at the age of 82 and was cremated at the Gold Coast Crematory in Florida. On Wednesday, Reynolds’ family and friends gathered to remember the late actor at Family Church in West Palm Beach, Florida.

According to Us Weekly magazine, the funeral began with an opening prayer and then singer-songwriter Cooper Getschal, who was a student in Reynolds’ acting class at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre, performed “Forward to the Moon.”

Reynolds’ friend Mo Mustaine and his Last Movie Star castmate Todd Vittum offered up eulogies, while pianist Copeland Davis and Broadway star Avery Sommers also performed.

The service concluded with a prayer from Burt’s Smokey and the Bandit II co-star Patrick Moody.

Reynolds’ manager, Erik Kritzer, previously revealed the actor had suffered a fatal cardiac arrest, but his death certificate reportedly does not list an official cause.

The Smokey and the Bandit icon had a son named Quinton, who was adopted during his marriage to actress Loni Anderson, but his remains were released to his niece, Nancy Lee Hess, who is also the personal representative of the estate.

It has not been revealed if the family will be scattering Burt’s ashes at a significant location or if there are plans to stage a public memorial for the beloved movie star.

RIP Burt Reynolds (1936-2018)

RIP Burt Reynolds (1936-2018)

Always In Our Thoughts Forever In Our Hearts

Burt Reynolds joins Tarantino’s next film

Burt Reynolds is in talks to join Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Tim Roth, Kurt Russell and Michael Madsen, who all starred in Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, are in talks to play smaller or cameo-style roles in the film.

In the movie, set in Los Angeles in 1969, Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), a former star of a Western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor…Sharon Tate.

Burt Reynolds will potentially play George Spahn, a nearly blind man who once rented his Los Angeles ranch to studios for Westerns.

Charlie Manson and his followers stayed on the ranch during the months before they murdered Sharon Tate – who Margot Robbie has been confirmed to play – and six others. Rumour has it that Manson would coerce female followers to sleep with Spahn in exchange for rent.

Tarantino wrote the movie and will produce. Sony has dated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for a worldwide release Aug. 9, 2019.

The Last Movie Star

Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was the biggest star in Hollywood, a college football legend turned stunt double turned leading man. Now, in his eighties, he’s convinced by an old friend (Chevy Chase) to accept an invitation to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at a two-bit film festival in Nashville. The trip launches him on both a hilarious fish-out-of-water adventure and an unexpectedly poignant journey into his past.

IN THEATERS MARCH 30

Dog Years’ premiering at Tribeca Film Festival

“Dog Years,” the upcoming movie that was filmed in Knoxville and stars Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter, will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival coming up in April.

Photo: Bob Franklin

Tribeca’s synopsis of “Dog Years” describes the story of an aging movie star.

“‘Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, known for his mustachioed good looks and cocky swagger,” the synopsis reads. “With his Hollywood glory a distant memory, the now-octogenarian Vic is prompted to reassess his life with the passing of his beloved dog and the arrival of an invitation to receive a lifetime achievement award from the (fictional) International Nashville Film Festival. With Ariel Winter, Chevy Chase, Clark Duke, Ellar Coltrane, Juston Street.”

Burt Reynolds set to star in “Dog Years”

Reynolds will take on the meta role of an aging actor set to receive a lifetime achievement award in Rifkin’s dark comedy.

Screen legend Burt Reynolds is set to star in Adam Rifkin’s dark comedy, DOG YEARS. Rifkin will direct from his own script.

The story revolves around an aging, former movie star who is forced to face the reality that his glory days are far behind him when he’s invited to receive a lifetime achievement award from a tiny East coast film festival. Embarrassed by the low rent event, he bails on the award and forces the emotionally unstable girl assigned to be his driver to take him on a soul searching tour of the landmarks of his youth.

Rifkin is producing alongside Gore Verbinski, Orian Williams, Gordon Whitener and Jarred Hoffman. Michael Mandt and Neil Mandt will also produce through their Mandt Bros. Productions.

Reynolds, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in P.T. Anderson’s drama Boogie Nights, is currently working on the boxing drama Shadow Fighter. Reynolds will be at this year’s South By Southwest festival in Austin to premiere the documentary The Bandit, which tells the story of Reynold’s friendship with his stunt double during the production of the classic comedy, Smokey and the Bandit.

Rifkin is best known for the 1998 family comedy Small Soldiers.

Source: tracking-board.com

Amy Smart and Burt Reynolds in ‘And Then There Was Light’

Amy Smart and Burt Reynolds will star in the inspirational family drama “And Then There Was Light”.

Sweet Tomato Films and Character Brigade are producing the movie with Dori Rath and Joseph Restaino producing through Sweet Tomato Films. Castille Landon is directing from her own script.

The story centers on a young girl who loses her eyesight after a traumatic accident. Her parents seek out various options to help her adjust, including enrolling her in a program for seeing-eye dogs, but she is unable to connect until the head trainer of Southeastern Guide Dogs trains a miniature horse to be her companion.

Smart will play the mother of the girl and Reynolds will portray the trainer.

“It’s a really beautiful story about the bonds between family and overcoming adversity as a unit,” Smart said. “I felt a strong emotional connection to this project and I’m so excited to be participating.”

Landon teamed with Rath and Restaino on “Albion: the Enchanted Stallion,” starring John Cleese, Debra Messing, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Morrison and Daniel Sharman.

“I feel extremely fortunate to be able to tell this story, shedding light on an experience that nearly 300 million people worldwide have had to go through, but which is rarely portrayed in the media with such accuracy and in such vivid detail,” Landon said.

“And Then There Was Light” is set to lens next month in the Bradenton area in Florida, in conjunction with Southeastern Guide Dogs.

Reynolds received a best supporting actor nomination for “Boogie Nights.” Smart starred in Tyler Perry’s “The Single Moms Club.” Griffo is in the Nickelodeon series “The Thundermans.”

Sweet Tomato Films is an independent film production company of female filmmakers, which recently shifted to producing female-driven, gender-balanced family entertainment. Character Brigade is an independent film company based in Los Angeles and founded by Ryan O’Nan and Restaino.

Source: Variety.com, Dave McNary

‘Elbow Grease’ to screen at festival

He was one of Hollywood’s leading hunks of the ’70s, and was still starring in major films in the 1990. He’s kept working in movies and television in recent years and his 2015 memoir reached number 3 on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

In a phone interview from his home in Jupiter, 80-year-old Burt Reynolds sounds much frailer than he does in his in his most famous roles, in films such as “Deliverance” and “Boogie Nights.” But he’s not slowing down.

His latest film. “Elbow Grease,” will screen at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival. Reynolds is the only big name in the cast.

“It’s a very sweet film, family film,” Reynolds said. “I got to work with actors that I like very much. Keith Harris, especially, who plays my son, I really like.”

Publicity photo: Jason Shirley

Writer-director-co-producer Jason Shirley and co-producer Paul Papadeas grew up in South Carolina, Reynolds said, “they wanted to spotlight what it was like to grow up in the South in the 1990s.”

Reynolds plays the patriarch of the Barnes family, who are having trouble enough keeping their lives together when wayward son Randy comes home and infects the whole town of Guppie, S.C., with the family’s craziness.

Harris, who actually goes by R. Keith Harris, is a lot like Mark Wahlberg, who starred with Reynolds in “Boogie Nights,” Reynolds said. It was the first major film role for Wahlberg, who had been known as a rapper.

“They’re both young tigers,” Reynolds said. “They’re going to do well.”

Reynolds’s other recent project is “But Enough About Me,” his memoir that came out last year, in which he chronicles, among other things, his roles in such films as “Semi-Tough and “Smokey and the Bandit,” his marriage to Loni Anderson and his relationship with Sally Field. The ending of that relationship, Reynolds writes in the memoir, is the biggest regret of his life.

“What I found out in writing this book,” he said, “is that I have another book in me.”

He doesn’t live to far away from Sarasota, so he’s hoping to make it over here for the screening of “Elbow Grease” at the film festival, but he hasn’t committed to it.

“You say ‘yes’ and then the New York Times calls and you have you have to go somewhere else,” he said. “You know how it is.” Actually, though, not many people who aren’t Burt Reynolds — movie and TV star, former sex symbol, best-selling author — really know how that is.

Source: http: bradenton.com, Marty Clear

Burt Reynolds Added To 2016 TCM Film Festival Lineup

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) announced that renowned actor Burt Reynolds is set to attend the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival, taking place in Hollywood April 28 – May 1, to participate in a sit-down interview about his life and career. In addition to the interview, Reynolds will be on-hand to introduce a screening of The Longest Yard (1974), for which he received a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Actor. The interview will be taped Saturday, April 30 in front of a live audience of festival pass holders at The Ricardo Montalbán Theatre.

“For more than five decades, Burt Reynolds has been both a superstar and a force to be reckoned with on screens around the globe, having ranked among the top ten box office attractions in the world on 13 different occasions,” said TCM host Robert Osborne. “He is one of the great talents of our time and a true film icon. I’m thrilled our fans will be able to hear him discuss his life as a movie star, the classic films he’s had the privilege of working on and the talented artists he’s worked alongside.”

In addition to directing four feature films, Reynolds movies include Deliverance (1972), The Longest Yard (1974), Gator (1976), Hooper (1978), The End (1978), Starting Over (1979), Sharky’s Machine (1981), Breaking In (1989) and, of course, Smokey and the Bandit (1977).

Each year, the TCM Classic Film Festival features an extended interview taped in front of a live audience for telecast on TCM under the Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival banner. In 2010, the first TCM Classic Film Festival welcomed two-time Oscar® winner Luise Rainer, who was 100 at the time. In 2011, Peter O’Toole was the featured guest, followed in 2012 by actress Kim Novak. In 2013, Oscar-winning actress Eva Marie Saint participated, followed by Academy Award®-winner Alan Arkin in 2014, and last year, Academy Award®-winner Sophia Loren was featured as was Norman Lloyd.

Reynolds joins an already exciting roster at this year’s festival, including previously announced appearances by director John Singleton for the 25^th anniversary screening of his coming-of-age classic Boyz N The Hood (1991), Carl Reiner with an extended conversation and screening of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) Elliott Gould with screenings of his Golden Globe nominated performance in M*A*S*H(1970), The Long Goodbye (1973) and Eva Marie Saint who will be on hand to introduce a screening of the political comedy The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming (1966).  Actor Stacy Keach will be discussing John Huston’s gritty look at the world of small-time boxing in Fat City (1972) and French actress Anna Karina will be introducing Band of Outsiders (1964), Jean-Luc Godard’s riff on gangster films.

Source: http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com

Happy 80th birthday!!!!

Happy 80th birthday to Mr. Reynolds!!!

Congratulate Mr. Reynolds by signing the guestbook.

Photo by Stephanie Shadden