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Aw, here I thought I was being tricky, but most of you had no problem. Almost everyone nailed it, though there was one guess of Encino Man. Um, no.

Jessica was first with the right answer, followed by Paul N. in second (Paul's closing in on a win one of these days!) and Christopher Welch in third.

Here, take another look at the close-up view of this movie poster:

Hang on, I'm about to make it way too easy for you:

Follow me over the jump for the full poster and some fun, informative facts!

 

So what's the first thing you notice about the poster? That's right, the film's true star is not pictured! Sorry, Jerry Reed, not you… No, there's no sign of the famous black '77 T-top Trans-Am with the gold Firebird hood! The car that became so famous thanks to the movie that sales of Trans-Ams nearly doubled over the next two years. (In The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard–out on DVD and in the redboxes this week–one of the five "actual Bandit Cars" supposedly used in Smokey and the Bandit plays a pivotal role. In reality, all five of the film's Trans-Ams were pretty much trashed by the end of filming.)

Originally the movie was intended to be a low-budget drive-in flick with Jerry Reed playing the Bandit, but once Reynolds saw the script by his pal director Hal Needham he wanted in and the film's box-office potential jumped much higher. Released the summer of '77, Smokey and the Bandit ended up being the year's second-highest grossing movie–after Star Wars. I saw both of them twice in the theaters that summer (my mom loved Smokey and the Bandit), and while I ended up a devoted Star Wars fan, I learned many interesting, lasting vocabulary words from Smokey and the Bandit.

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