Smokey lost the Bandit

Burt Reynolds has passed-away last Thursday...he was 82.

He's remembered as The Bandit in Smokey and the Bandit, J.J. McClure in Cannonball Run, Paul "Wrecking" Crewe in the 1974 The Longest Yard, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Jack Horner in Boogie Nights, and...we can't forget his role as Charlie B. Barkin in All Dogs go to Heaven.

Now he's with Dom DeLuise on the other side...I wish I can find a pic with Charlie and Itchy that's a Burt Reynolds dedication...

My favorite film and character of his was not any of his comedic roles, but a much more dramatic one for him and one that I think was quite personal for him.

This would be "Sharky's Machine." A film out of Burt's production company which he also directed. Burt stars as Det. Sgt. Tom Sharky a Narcotics detective that gets transferred to Vice and ends up working a case even more involved and politically connected than he could ever imagine handling out out of narcotics. I won't go into all the details in case you haven't seen it. But I will mention one thing.

One of my "life's mysteries" involved this film... one for which I had hoped to meet Burt one day so that I could get the mystery solved. As it turns out, I was able to solve this mystery maybe two months before Burt's passing. One of Burt's main enemies in the film is an assassin by the name of "Billy Score" played to perfection by Henry Silva. Billy's targets are those who become problems for "the man" in this city. In this case, usually, one of the "call girls" that goes astray from his ("the man's") fold. When Billy is preparing to take out one of his targets, he'll get close enough to them and say something like, "Hello my sweet, blind, Angel..." And then he said something in a foreign language I did not understand. I though it was Latin (classic) as one of the words sounded like the latin word "Adeste" (come), and then a word "essplooorea." I though he was saying, "Come let us explore." Boy, was I wrong....

For years, I struggled with what he said, having binged watched the film many times. And then, one day, I was watching my "Blu-ray" edition when it occurred to me that I could turn on the Special access language track and read the captions. Wouldn't ya know... The track does show Billy the assassin saying "Hello my sweet blind Angel." But, then, all it says after that is,, "Speaks Italian." Hmmmmm.. Not quite what I wanted, but one step closer. I now know the language is Italian. This makes sense, as both the screenplay author (Gerald DiPego) is Italian and the actor, Henry Silva, is part Italian (and could, thus, deliver the line authentically) and is playing an Italian (Billy "Score..." short for "Scorelli"). All I had to do was find a native speaker of Italian. Believe it or not, thanks again to another Forum like this one (YAY!) involving Italian culture, I found that native speaker and got him to look at the clips (two of them where Billy Score says the line). Lo and behold, he provided the correct translation (which makes sense watching the clips now and seeing Henry Silva deliver the line):

English: "Your head will explode."

One life mystery solved! Thank you Burt for putting your soul into that film.

RIP.

PS. As a bonus trivia thing... See if you can identify the actor who escorts Burt (Sharky) through a party of guests to see "the man" (played by Vitorio Gasman) for their first direct encounter with each other.