- published: 22 Mar 2016
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Hal Brett Needham (March 6, 1931 – October 25, 2013) was an American stuntman and film director. He is best known for his frequent collaborations with actor Burt Reynolds, usually in films involving fast cars, such as Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper, The Cannonball Run, and Stroker Ace.
Needham was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Edith May (née Robinson) and Howard Needham. He was raised in Arkansas and Missouri. Needham served in the United States Army as a paratrooper during the Korean War, worked as a treetopper, and was a billboard model for Viceroy Cigarettes while beginning a career in Hollywood as a motion picture stuntman.
Needham's first break was as the stunt double for actor Richard Boone on the popular TV western Have Gun, Will Travel. Needham trained under John Wayne's stunt double Chuck Roberson and quickly became one of the top stuntmen of the 1960s on such films as How the West Was Won, The Bridge at Remagen, McLintock!, The War Lord, and Little Big Man. He doubled regularly for Clint Walker and Burt Reynolds. Needham moved into stunt coordinating and directing second unit action, while designing and introducing air bags and other innovative equipment to the industry. Needham at one time lived in Burt Reynolds' guesthouse for the better part of 12 years.
Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds (born February 11, 1936) is an American actor, director and producer. He starred in many television series and feature films, such as Deliverance, The Longest Yard as well as its 2005 remake, Smokey and the Bandit and The Cannonball Run. He also won two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Actor in a Television Series Musical or Comedy for Evening Shade and one for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for Boogie Nights.
Reynolds is the son of Fern H. (née Miller; 1902–92) and Burton Milo Reynolds (1906–2002). He has English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, and Dutch ancestry, and is also said to have Cherokee roots. Reynolds was born in Lansing, Michigan, on February 11, 1936, and in his autobiography stated that his family was living in Lansing when his father was drafted into the United States Army. Reynolds, his mother, and sister joined his father at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and lived there for two years. When Reynolds' father was sent to Europe, the family moved to Lake City, Michigan, where his mother had been raised. In 1946, the family moved to Riviera Beach, Florida. His father became Chief of Police of Riviera Beach, which is adjacent to the north of West Palm Beach, Florida.
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (/ˌtærənˈtiːnoʊ/; born March 27, 1963) is an American filmmaker and actor. His films are characterized by non-linear storylines, satirical subject matter, an aestheticization of violence, utilization of ensemble casts, references to pop culture, their soundtracks, and features of neo-noir film.
Tarantino grew up as a devoted film fan and worked at Video Archives, a video rental store, while training to act. His career began in the late 1980s, when he wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday, the screenplay of which formed the basis for True Romance. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of Reservoir Dogs in 1992; regarded as a classic and cult hit, it was called the "Greatest Independent Film of All Time" by Empire. Its popularity was boosted by his second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), a black comedy crime film that was a major success both among critics and audiences. Judged the greatest film from 1983–2008 by Entertainment Weekly, many critics and scholars have named it one of the most significant works of modern cinema. For his next effort, Tarantino paid homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch.
In linguistics, a word is the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning). This contrasts deeply with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own. A word may consist of a single morpheme (for example: oh!, rock, red, quick, run, expect), or several (rocks, redness, quickly, running, unexpected), whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word (in the words just mentioned, these are -s, -ness, -ly, -ing, un-, -ed). A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes (rock-s, red-ness, quick-ly, run-ning, un-expect-ed), or more than one root in a compound (black-board, rat-race). Words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases (a red rock), clauses (I threw a rock), and sentences (He threw a rock too, but he missed).
The term word may refer to a spoken word or to a written word, or sometimes to the abstract concept behind either. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, and written words of symbols called graphemes, such as the letters of the English alphabet.