Thursday night at Eissey Theatre, radio stationLegends 100.3 was hosting a living legend.
"Burt Reynolds, the star the legend," says Legends morning host Jill Switzer.
Outside were the iconic cars from Mr. Reynolds' movies.
I was about to start speaking to Mr. Reynolds, when another legend got in the shot; former Buffalo Bills Quarterback Doug Flutie who's famous for throwing a hail mary shot against the Miami Hurricanes winning the game in 1984 for Boston College. He wanted some autographs.
Right from the get-go, Mr. Reynolds had funny jokes. I wanted to know about his Hollywood escapades.
"I can't talk about escapades because we'd be blacked out," jokes Reynolds.
Censored for sure. But being a Jupiter resident I wanted to know how he feels to be affiliated with the town.
"Well I love that town, you know it's a great little town. I hope it stays a little town, it's growing by the minute but its a great little town. The people there are wonderful and we don't have too many snowbirds, they've all gone back; so you know, the drivers are better," says Mr. Reynolds.
His family has a long history in the Palm Beaches. His dad was even the police chief of Riviera Beach. I asked him what that was like when he was younger.
"Tough. Threw me in jail three times. And the third time he came down and went 'your father is here you can go home, your father is here you can go home' he looked at me and said, 'Your father didn't show up (Mr. Reynolds hangs his head)'. Every drunk he arrested he threw on top of me. So it shaped me right up, I didn't want to go through that again," remembers Mr. Reynolds."
Thursday night Mr. Reynolds was raising money for the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre. I asked why that was important to him.
"It's important to me because you got to have somebody give you a hand in this business otherwise you won't make anything. So, I had somebody who was wonderful to me, [a] bunch of people actually. There some really talented, talented kids here that I wanted to tell them where the minefields are so, they're going to step on them anyway, but you got to tell them where they are. Just really that, just to kinda' get them started in the right direction," said Mr. Reynolds.
With all the stunts in his movies, I wondered if he'd ever been hurt.
"I ran around end one time and Ray Nitschke (Linebacker for the Green Bay Packers) hit me I went through the table, over the bench into a bunch of glass, Glass and crap fell in there and I got up and I went like that (shakes his head disorienting) and I said, 'Ray it's just a movie!' and he said (in a deep dark voice), 'Not to me!'"
