Trivia / The Cannonball Run

• Acting for Two: Dom De Luise also played Don Canneloni in the sequel.
• All-Star Cast: One of the main draws of the film is piling in as many famous actors as possible into various little plotlines.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Frank Sinatra appeared in the sequel after hearing how much fun Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. had making the first film.
• The Cast Showoff: Jackie Chan (who was virtually unknown in America at the time the first film was made) gets to show off his kung fu skills in a random fight scene near the end.
• Channel Hop: 20th Century Fox for the first film, Warner Bros. for the second. Both films are now owned by Warner Bros.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Jackie Chan appeared in the sequel because of contractual obligation. Both films were produced by Hong Kong's Golden Harvest films, who also produced his many Hong Kong martial arts films.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Burt Reynolds hated the film:
    "I did that film for all the wrong reasons. I never liked it. I did it to help out a friend of mine, Hal Needham. And I also felt it was immoral to turn down that kind of money. I suppose I sold out so I couldn't really object to what people wrote about me."
  • Charles Nelson Reilly, who appeared in the sequel, disavowed it on an episode of Body Language.
  • Allegedly, Jackie Chan isn't too happy about him portraying a Japanese character, which the studios didn't inform him until filming had wrapped.
• The Danza:
  • Jackie Chan as...well, Jackie Chan.
  • The first sequel features Frank Sinatra As Himself, the second one has Brooke Shields as herself.
  • Played in a very interesting fashion with the guys in the stock car (played by Mel Tillis and Terry Bradshaw). In the first film, they're not given names. In the second film, they are named Mel and Terry. The interesting part: 1)Terry has been recast (as the trope namer no less) and 2)he erroneously gives his name as Tony. (He's still listed as "Terry" in the closing credits.)
• Development Hell: In 2016, Etan Cohen was set to write and direct a remake entitled Cannonball with Andre Morgan and Alan Gasmer as producers. In June 2018, Doug Liman was in early talks to direct the film from a script by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Jackie Chan and Michael Hui (both Chinese) both play Japanese characters.
  • Lebanese-American Jamie Farr plays the Middle Eastern Sheik. In the second film, the Sheik's father is played by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán.
  • British racer Alec from Speed Zone is played by Matt Frewer, who was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Canada.
  • Also from Speed Zone, Italian mechanic Valentino is played by Israeli actor Brian George.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The film was originally a serious action film starring Steve McQueen. McQueen turned it down because he was dying from stomach cancer and it became a Burt Reynolds comedy.
• Money, Dear Boy: Burt Reynolds said he did the film for the paycheck as well as to help out his friend and Smokey and the Bandit director Hal Needham.
• On-Set Injury: The first film's production became infamous for the horrible on-set car accident that resulted in stuntwoman Heidi von Beltz being left a quadriplegic, and the subsequent legal pounding she unfairly received which put her in dire financial straits for the rest of her life: In one scene, Seymour is forced to drive his Aston Martin blindly and weave through traffic after his smokescreen springs a leak. A second take at higher speed resulted in the driver crashing into a van that was part of the traffic; von Beltz was in the van's passenger seat.
• The Other Darrin:
  • The Lamborghini girls, Jill Rivers and Marcie Thatcher are played by Tara Buckman and Adrienne Barbeau respectively in the first film. The characters return in the second film, but there they are played by Susan Anton and Catherine Bach.
  • Terry from the stock car team. He's played by Terry Bradshaw in the first film and Tony Danza in the second. That's right. His first portrayer makes him The Danza while his second is the trope namer for The Danza.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Seymour was originally a man thinks he's James Bond. For legal reasons, this was changed to a man who thinks he's Roger Moore.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Don Rickles was originally cast as Fenderbaum before the part went to Sammy Davis Jr..
  • Roger Moore declined to return for the sequel, feeling that the joke with his character had run its course. Upon learning that Frank Sinatra was in the film, he quipped, "Regrets - I've had a few".
  • Tom Selleck turned down a role because it interfered with Magnum, P.I..
  • Jaclyn Smith was originally meant to play Veronica in the sequel, but dropped out. Needham believed that she was put off by the improvisational style.
    I think she was scared to death to be up there against Burt and Dom. I don't want someone on the set that's gonna be that scared. So we went somewhere else.

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