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Los Angeles, California – August, 2006 The following is an excerpt from the LA Times best-seller There Are Worse Things I Could Do by Adrienne Barbeau. The Cannonball Run is a comedy about a huge cast of characters, played by a huge cast of stars, all trying to win a cross-country car race. Burt (Reynolds) wanted me to play a girl in a purple Spandex jump suit who wins the race driving her black Lamborghini. That I could do. Well, except for the driving part. I was too short to reach the pedals. We needed a stunt man for that. We started filming in Georgia in June 1980. On Friday, I was at the film festival in Cannes, eating croissants and drinking café au lait at the Hotel Majestic. On Saturday I was alone on a highway 12 miles south of Atlanta, eating orange cheese on white bread and drinking powdered Sanka at a Best Western motel. I was one of the first to arrive. I sat out at the motel pool and watched this fascinating line-up of celebrities make their way to the lobby: Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Roger Moore, Jamie Farr, Farrah Fawcett, Jack Elam, George Furth, Terry Bradshaw, Bert Convy, Mel Tillis, and Jackie Chan. Valerie Perrine, Molly Picon, Peter Fonda and Bianca Jagger would be joining us later.  HOF Cast created a cult comedy classic. Apart from the day he'd invited me to his house to discuss doing the movie, this was the first time I'd spent with Burt since the infamous note on my windshield. I kept waiting for him to talk about our break-up but he never did. He had someone invite me to join him for dinner in his room one night, but when I got there, he was ensconced in front of the TV, and there was no mention of food. After 45 minutes of silence while we watched some sports show, I left. Filming started, and everyone was having a good time, but I can't say anyone was thinking about acting. Burt's buddy and stunt double, Hal Needham, was directing. Hal's idea of a good day's filming was one in which we finished by noon. More time to party. Jackie Chan was already a star in China. This was his second American film. He didn't find out until he arrived on the set that the character he was playing was Japanese. He wasn't happy about that. I wasn't happy about any of it. I hated that no one took what we were doing seriously. Burt's attitude seemed to be "It doesn't matter what we do, we can just screw around, and the audience will buy it." He improvised most of his scenes with a humor that bordered on being vicious. At one point, he struck Dom across the face, supposedly in character and in jest, but he was out of control, and he slapped him hard. It took a second before Dom made the decision to laugh and then the ass kissers on the set followed suit. If you look at the outtakes at the end of the movie, you'll see him do this again and again. And you'll see me not laughing. I suppose my problem was that I took it too seriously. This was only my second feature film, and I approached it the same way I approached The Fog and Maude and Grease and all the television films I'd made since Houdini and Someone's Watching Me. I had a character to create. I was making choices. Deciding what my motivation was. Everyone else was having a great time, and I was acting. It never once crossed my mind that my character was simply the crux of a running tit joke: stupid male becomes blithering idiot when faced with exposed mammaries. I was also dealing with the insecurity of feeling that I'd been hired only because I was a friend of Burt's. I'd done The Fog because of my relationship with John (Carpenter). I was grateful to Burt but here was another job offer coming out of a personal relationship and not an audition. I needed to prove I was talented. In Cannonball Run? In a purple Spandex jump suit with a workable zipper? All the talent I needed was attached to my breastbone. But I didn't think that. I was worried about acting.
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