BURT REYNOLDS R.I.P.

I only have one Burt Reynolds story. I was in Amsterdam in 2001 working on a film I had helped write for director Ate de Jong. My first time in that city, and I fell in love with its beauty and manageability. It's like a college campus with canals.

One day I was waiting in the hallway outside the sound stage where the film was being shot, when what appeared to me to be an older man came out of the door on the sound stage across the hall. The hallway was all white, as I remember it, and bright, and the entire length of it was empty except for the man and me.

We nodded to each other, acknowledging each other's presence, and as we did so I realized it was Burt Reynolds. I don't remember if we talked, though I feel like we did and he cracked a joke, maybe at the expense of the movie he was making, maybe asked about the one I was involved with. I just remember thinking how amazing it was to be in the presence of this icon.

I always liked him, from his early days on TV in RIVERBOAT, and later playing the "half-breed" blacksmith on GUNSMOKE, to his performance in DELIVERANCE, and AT LONG LAST LOVE (one of the only people I know who loved that film when it came out), and STARTING OVER. And I loved his self-deprecating, but also self-loving, attitude that made him seem like he fell out of bed and into one of the most successful movie and TV acting careers in the history of the entertainment business. He didn't.

He obviously worked very hard for it, but made that work seem easy. Not an easy thing to do, though those who can do it are often underrated. It's not surprising that the only other movie star in history who, like Burt, had a five-consecutive-year run as top box office star, was Bing Crosby, who perfected the same veneer of seeming to be not working at all as he conquered radio, TV, movies, and records.

May Burt rest in eternally well-deserved plaudits.