to become a pioneering stuntman in Hollywood, personally bringing many safety and technique innovations to the business. When he wasn’t falling from high places, Needham directed 10 films, including “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Hooper” and “Stroker Ace.” In his free time, he tried to break the sound barrier on wheels in a rocket car. If that wasn’t enough, he lived in Burt Reynolds’ poolhouse throughout the 1970s — very, very good years to be a houseguest and friend of Burt Reynolds. World’s Most Interesting Man? Yeah, I think Needham’s got a lifetime lock on that title. Plainspoken, with a hint of Southern twang, Needham, 80, is retired now. Little, Brown and Co. recently published his memoir, “Stuntman! My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, DeathDefying Hollywood Life.” In places, it’s a tale so crazy it sounds like fiction. The stepson of a farmer who regularly uprooted his family to follow the crops, Needham lived outside of at least eight different towns in Arkansas before he was 10 years old (I say “outside” because he said his family always seemed to light 10 to 12 miles from civilization). They were too poor to own a car, so when they moved, the family traveled by muledrawn wagon. “We were bottom of the totem pole,” Needham said recently in a phone interview. “We didn’t have running water. A couple of times we had a well out in the yard, but most of the time we had to go carry water from a spring or the river or some damn thing. No electricity, obviously, and the only heat we had was a fireplace and cookstove. We were poor. Really poor.” Continued on page 20
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