Did You Know?
The ambulance used in the movie is the actual ambulance that Hal Needham and Brock Yates souped up and raced in the real Cannonball Run. It had been modified with a HEMI engine that made it go up to 145 mph and was equipped with four gas filler holes so that the required 90 gallons could be pumped quickly. Needham and Yates didn't actually win the race (the transmission blew in Palm Springs) so Needham kept it in storage for several years until the time came to make this film. After the movie, he gave it to a church charity which raised a good deal of money auctioning it off.
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This movie was based on a series of real races started by Brock Yates of "Car & Driver" magazine. The fifth and final race was in 1978. Yates and Hal Needham actually entered the ambulance seen in the film. They had a doctor on board and Yates' wife Pamela as a patient. It blew its transmission in Palm Springs, California, and arrived in Long Beach on the back of a flatbed truck. A lot of the other vehicles were actual entries in that race.
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The producers asked the governor of Georgia if the crew could shut down the center of a small town so that a plane could land in the middle of it. The police blocked off the section that the plane was to land in and a barrier can be seen in the background.
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Roger Moore has a different girlfriend every time we see him in this movie and they are all voiced by June Foray (uncredited).
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The first highway patrolman that pulls over Adrienne Barbeau and Tara Buckman was Burt Reynolds' stand-in (note the resemblance).
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Jackie Chan, who played a small role in this movie, was very upset when he learned his character was Japanese since he himself is Chinese.
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In one of the earlier scenes in the movie, Burt Reynolds's character says "Could get a black Trans Am", and then answers himself, "Naw, that's been done." This is a reference to Smokey and the Bandit which starred Reynolds, and was directed by Hal Needham, who directed this film. DeLuise co-starred with Reynolds in the 1980 sequel, Smokey and the Bandit II.
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Victor (Dom DeLuise) tells J.J. (Burt Reynolds) that it is a good thing they have a doctor on board in case someone gets "swamp fever". This is a reference to Smokey and the Bandit II where Dom played a doctor Burt picks up. He was treating a patient for swamp fever.
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Jackie Chan makes one of his first US film appearances. Inspired by Hal Needham's notion of including bloopers during the closing credits, Chan begins a tradition of doing the same in most of his movies from this point onward.
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Stuntwoman Heidi Von Beltz was crippled in a stunt when the stunt car she was riding in (doubling an Aston-Martin driven by Roger Moore in the race) lost control and crashed on the second take of the stunt. The driver and another stunt person in the car received minor injuries, but Heidi was left a paraplegic.
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There are numerous James Bond references throughout the film, resulting in a rumor that Albert R. Broccoli had Roger Moore sign a contract which forbid him to spoof or make references to the James Bond character in any other non-Bond film.
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The movie was originally planned as an action film starring Steve McQueen. After McQueen's death, the lead went to Burt Reynolds and the film became a comedy.
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To get material for this movie, Brock Yates ran the final Cannonball in 1978. The move cost him his editorial position at Car and Driver magazine which has since been reinstated.
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At the end of the movie, during the big race to the finish, a black Trans Am appears. The driver of the car is seen in the foot race scene and Captain Chaos's dressing down scene. The driver is wearing the Bandit's jacket worn by Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit II.
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The short sequence in the beginning of the film which involves two animated cars wrecking the 20th Century Fox logo was created by Hal Needham, who did a similar one for another studio when releasing Smokey and the Bandit. At first, Fox didn't appreciate the notion of wrecking their logo, but soon found it would be appealing to audiences if it were left in.
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Dom DeLuise's character, Victor Prinzi, is named after Vic Prinzi, a friend and former college football teammate of Burt Reynolds at Florida State University. Reynolds played halfback at FSU before an injury forced him out of football, and Prinzi was the quarterback.
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Ron Rice, owner of Hawaiian Tropic, loaned his black Lamborghini to his buddies Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham. The same Lamborghini can be briefly seen in the background at the party of Big and Little Enos Burdette near the end of Smokey and the Bandit Part 3.
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The license plate number of the 1964 silver birch Aston Martin DB5 driven by Roger Moore in the film was 6633PP. The car was made famous by the Sean Connery James Bond movies Goldfinger and then Thunderball with later models appearing in subsequent Bond pictures. However, Roger Moore who played James Bond seven times never drove an Aston Martin in a Bond film and this is his only on-screen appearance with the most famous of all James Bond cars.
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George Furth's character (Arthur J. Foyt) was named as an tribute to IndyCar and NASCAR legend Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. (a.k.a. A.J. Foyt).
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The front shots of the ambulance driving down the road were some of the last to be filmed. In what Hal Needham referred to as "poorman's process" they were filmed in a garage with crewmen rocking the vehicle back and forth. The scene in the rain was filmed by simply spraying water on the windshield.
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Director Hal Needham and producer Albert S. Ruddy liked the chemistry of Terry Bradshaw and Mel Tillis so much that after this film they tried to sell a pilot to ABC featuring their characters. The head of the network loved the idea but the day before the meeting was to be held to discuss it, the head of the network was fired and the project was canceled.
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Director Hal Needham shows up in the film four times. First as the EMT in the back of the ambulance, then as the voice of the cop in the speed trap ("Remember when we use to chase speeders"), then as the truck driver who calls Roger Moore on the CB and finally at the very end of the bloopers.
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The Hawaiian Tropic NASCAR racer is apparently inspired by the very real "Fire-Am" entered in the real race by F Gregory and P Brennan. The Fire-Am had previously been run at the Daytona 24 hour race and the owner had just stripped the numbers off the doors and loaned it to the cannonballers in full race drag. As Gregory put it: "one look at the Fire-Am and any cop would know we were up to no good".
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Burt Reynolds received a then-record $5 million salary for his work on the film, which took three weeks.
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The actual correct full name of the real Cannonball Run race was the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. Besides The Cannonball Run, it was also known as the Cannonball Baker.
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Legendary odds-maker Jimmy the Greek had a cameo in this movie where he did a scene with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Jimmy the Greek and Dean Martin both grew up in Steubenville, Ohio and were friends since childhood.
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During the brawl, when one of the bikers menacingly approaches Seymour Goldfarb Jr (played by Roger Moore), Seymour tells the biker "I must warn you, I'm Roger Moore!" with the music of James Bond movies is played in the background.
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