Inspired by real life, The Cannonball Run finds its creative genesis in the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash: automotive journalist Brock Yates’ cross-country rally from the Red Ball Garage in New York City to the pier in Redondo Beach, California. Originally intended to be an action film for Steve McQueen, the actor’s untimely death led to a re-imagining of the film as a comedy starring Burt Reynolds. The film brought together an all-star supporting cast for an all out, thigh-slapping slapstick comedy, including such greats as Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Farah Fawcett, Roger Moore, Jamie Farr, Terry Bradshaw, Mel Tillis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tara Buckman, and even a pre-Western-breakthrough Jackie Chan. The film’s zaniness begins from the very appearance of the 20th Century Fox logo, which was re-animated specifically for the film.

In order to win a high-stakes, high-speed, and highly illegal cross-country race, numerous contestants will do anything and every-underhanded-thing to satiate the need for speed. Former racer J. J. McClure and his mechanic Victor Prinzi (Reynolds and DeLuise playing variations of their Smokey and the Bandit II characters) drive an ambulance (the one driven by director Hal Needham and writer Brock Yates in the real-life Cannonball Run) with a soused doctor (Jack Elam) and phony patient (Fawcett). Martin and Davis are featured as an ex F-1 driver and gambler posing as priests. In a brilliant self-parody, Moore plays an Aston Martin DB5-driving nutcase who is convinced that he is James Bond star Roger Moore. Despite his Chinese heritage, Chan portrays a Kung Fu Japanese Subaru driver with a car full of high-tech gadgets including night vision. Bradshaw and Tillis appear as a pair of rednecks in a supped up stockcar. Barbeau and Buckman play a pair of Lamborghini-driving hotties who can talk their way out of any ticket. And of course, the only character to show up in every film in the franchise, Farr plays Rolls Royce Silver Shadow-sporting Shiek Abdul ben Falafel. The film follows them and others as George Furth’s car-hating Arthur J. Foyt does everything in his power to stop the race.

The film represents one of the best examples of audience/critic disparity as it remains one of the most successful “panned” films of all time. Its opening weekend brought in more than ten million dollars on its way to over seventy million total, placing it sixth for the year behind the likes of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman II. Its success was enough to generate two sequels, Cannonball Run II (which brought back most of the original cast) and Speed Zone! (alternately titled Cannonball Fever or Cannonball Run III)