If you’re not familiar with Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham’s incredible, decades-long bromance, then Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt’s friendship in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood might feel like an idyllic exaggeration—a slick, Quentin Tarantino–scripted fairy tale about a Hollywood star (DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton) and the loyal sidekick (Pitt’s Cliff Booth) willing to put his life on the line for his best friend. But the real-life story of Reynolds and Needham—which Tarantino has said was partial inspiration for his script—is somehow even sweeter, funnier, and more outlandish than what is depicted in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

Reynolds and Needham met on the set of Reynolds’s breakout television series, Riverboat. “Burt came up to me,” Needham recalled of that introduction, “and said, ‘Mind if I do this fight?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘go ahead.’ So he went over the barrels, and I gave him a round of applause, pocketed my money, and went home.”

Needham was a former Army paratrooper who had worked with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart—but something about Reynolds instantly felt familiar to him. In addition to sharing a love of adrenaline, a macho swagger, and a dry sense of humor, both men boasted incredible ’70s style. In archival video included in The Bandit—Jesse Moss’s heartwarming 2016 documentary about the duo—Needham appears in a tangerine shirt unbuttoned down to the navel, with gold chains nestled in his chest hair that match the frames of his aviator sunglasses, the jangly bracelets on his wrists, and his chunky rings. “My name is Hal Needham,” the stuntman tells the camera, nonchalantly leaning against a sports car. “You may not know my face. But I bet you’ve seen a lot of my work.” At other points in the documentary, Reynolds appears in a wide-lapeled purple leisure suit and explains how danger is an important element of sexiness. The brotherhood was apparent. “That was the closest relationship I’ve ever seen in the picture business,” confirms a mutual colleague in The Bandit.