Hal Needham is a legend among stunt people. He started out as a forester and logger. In the army he performed numerous parachute shows in his spare time. Hal's first stunt job was doing wing walking and parachute cutaways  for the 1957 film The Spirit of St. Louis. He then spent nine months looking for a second stunt job. Hal promoted himself on the original 1950's  series of the TV show You Asked For It jumping out of a plane to bulldog a man off a horse. Before long he was doing stuntwork and coordination for a large number of films and TV series. Hal became a close friend of the star Burt Reynolds and worked on many of Burt's movies. Eventually Hal moved onto directing. His first film was Smokey and the Bandit (1977), based on a story by Hal. It was a huge success. He followed it with a great, fun movie about stuntmen called Hooper (1978). Burt Reynolds and Sally Field starred in both movies. Other movies directed by Hal were either not as succesful, or simply not great movies (e.g. Megaforce and The Cannonball Run).

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