Even Burt Reynolds can’t believe he’ll be at Metrograph on March 14 to talk about Deliverance and more
Who: Burt Reynolds
What: “Burt Reynolds x 5”
Where: Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
When: Wednesday, March 14, 7:00 (series runs March 14-18)
Why: In preparation for the March 30 theatrical release of Burt Reynolds’s latest film, The Last Movie Star, the eighty-two-year-old sly sex symbol will be at Metrograph for the kickoff of its six-day festival, “Burt Reynolds x 5.” On March 14, the Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated Reynolds will be on hand for the 7:00 screening of what just might be his best film, John Boorman’s blistering Deliverance, in which Burt plays Lewis Medlock, a rugged adventurer who, while on a canoe trip with three friends, encounters some unforeseen trouble in the mountains. “Machines are gonna fail and the system’s gonna fail,” Lewis tells Ed (Jon Voight). “Then, survival. Who has the ability to survive: That’s the game — survive.” Reynolds is certainly a survivor, having made more than one hundred films, from classics to some real dreck, and he was married twice, to Judy Carne and Loni Anderson. The festival continues with Reynolds’s Gator, Michael Ritchie’s Semi-Tough, Hal Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit, and Bill Forsyth’s Breaking In.