While the 1975 trucking film "White Line Fever" may not have received the same level of widespread acclaim and recognition that 1977’s "Smokey and the Bandit" earned, “it’s a hidden gem; it’s a treasure,” according to trucking superfan and past host of the "American Trucker" documentary series on the Speed Channel, Robb Mariani.
For Mariani, "White Line Fever" is the movie that really began his obsession with trucking, he said. First exposure to it? The July 1975 issue of Overdrive, which featured the image of the iconic stunt with a blue and white Ford cabover, "Blue Mule," launching through the sign of the corrupt “Glass House” trucking corporation.
The July 1975 issue of Overdrive included an extensive feature on the film.
“When I saw the cover and then the spread of 'White Line Fever,' I was going nuts as a little kid because I was into semis and certainly cabovers,” Mariani recalled.
The theatrical release poster for the film.
When Mariani's “American Trucker” was still airing and in production, he had the idea of an episode centered around the flick, but it never came to fruition.
The idea never fully left him, though, and with this year being the film’s 50th anniversary, Mariani got to work to try to put something together to commemorate the movie and, even more so, the iconic stunt.
From the pages of that July 1975 issue of Overdrive.
His first call was to trucking enthusiast, truck racer and Hollywood stuntman Mike Ryan to see what it would take to re-create the stunt. Ryan’s filmography as a stuntman includes "Terminator 2," several movies in the "Fast & Furious" franchise, "Mad Max: Fury Road" and many, many more.
Ryan is well-known in the truck racing community, including for his racing at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb event.
Over the course of his career, he “became one of the truck [stunt] guys” in Hollywood, and there’s really only about three who work with big trucks today, he noted. Ryan’s father was a nuclear engineer, and he has used that engineering background in his stunt work -- “the anatomy of a stunt has been kind of my guiding light," he said. "How … are we going to get this done?”
Ryan said that while he wasn’t involved in the production of "White Line Fever," he’s grown to know those who were, including Buddy Jo Hooker, lead actor Jan-Michael Vincent’s stunt double for the film.
[Related: Way-back machine: Never-before-seen footage from Overdrive's late-'70s N.J. diesel drag races]
Overdrive's feature went into detail about the movie and what it took for it to hit the silver screen.
With the help of Hooker, Mariani and Ryan have set out to co-produce and co-direct a documentary that would include a re-creation of the "White Line Fever" stunt, going behind the scenes to reveal how such a stunt is put together and executed.
The end direction the documentary film takes is still up in the air, but Mariani and Ryan have a few ideas.
Ryan noted that with technological advancements, he fears “that AI is going to make stunt people obsolete” if it advances to the point where the viewer can’t tell the difference in what is real and what is artificial.
- Option 1 for the doc: Re-create the stunt themselves and also create an AI version and analyze the differences.
- Option 2: Compare and contrast how the stunt was created in 1975 with how it would be created today with advanced technology and other factors. In Overdrive’s 1975 reporting around the movie, the stunt was credited with having a $130,000 price tag. Ryan said today that same stunt would probably cost 10 times that to create.
Logistics of all that are still being pulled together and ironed out, but Ryan and Mariani are beginning to gather support for the project through a Kickstarter fund-raising campaign. View a video and read more at that page about the idea behind the stunt project.
[Related: 1974 'Low Patrol' Ford W900: Robb Mariani's 'White Whale']
