Hal Needham

Director

1931-03-06

Quotes by Hal Needham

• When the 55 mph speed limit came in and the oil crisis caused fuel rationing, the truckers began to look like the last American cowboys.

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• My first job was as a treetopper, and I was so damn good at it they called me 'Squirrel.' And then I joined the military and became a paratrooper. And later on in life I raced motorcycles and cars.

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• I was damn sure that I was not going to be a lawyer or a brain surgeon.

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• The night before we began shooting 'Hooper,' I threw a $7,000 bash for the whole crew. I told them, 'Get as drunk as you want tonight, because for the next month and a half you're going to be working your tails off.' And it worked.

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• I was a sharecropper's son. That's as low as you can get on the totem pole.

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• When I came in, Westerns were the big thing, so I did horse falls, transfers, bulldogs, big fights. That's where you could really shine if you were really good at it. But then all the Westerns stopped, and I was capable of doing car stunts, motorcycle stunts and high falls. I could do it all.

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• I've wrecked a lot of good cars in my day.

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• We try to reduce the danger to a minimum, of course. And then we prepare for accidents with alternate plans. For instance, if I'm turning over a stagecoach, I try to take into consideration what moves I have to make if it flips in the wrong direction. Without those emergency plans you get hurt.

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