Messages

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General Discussion / What was the moment you fell in love with Clint Eastwood, and why?

« on: November 14, 2022, 01:45:06 PM »

Its occurred to me that there is no better way to explain ourselves than the moment you became a die hard Clint Eastwood fan. For me it was when I was 12 years old.

I was in the seventh grade and was skipping school. I had to do that because three of the local gangs in my neighborhood had taken to terrorizing me and jumping me in school, at the mall, in the street...wherever they found me. So for awhile I just did what I figured to be logical...and hid.

In Washington DC in the early 80s we had what was called the MID DAY MOVIE, usually older movies... and it was watching this that I saw him. This person that was unbelievably cool and controlled. He didnt show fear and he was minimalistic. He even took a beating like I did, alone with Lee Van Cleef (that should tell you the movie I was watching). I became obsessed, he was everything that a scared, scarred and awkward teenager could never be.

You could find me later standing in the mirror, working on a squint...talking in a hushed tone...trying to walk laconically.....some of that survives to this day LOL.

So.....whats your story?

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Sudden Impact fails because it removes Harry from SF

« on: April 12, 2022, 11:56:58 AM »

I have to let Mr. Eastwood off the hook here a little bit.  Clint was not obsessed about rape, well...maybe..but at the time he wasnt the only one.

The feminist movement gained real ground in the sixties and its effects in cinema were showing thru in the seventies. Before this rape was terribly portrayed in movies like "Oh she was raped ..but.. give her a nights rest and she will be back to work tomorrow"...completely devoiding the psychological effect it had on its victims.

The psychology of rape became an overcompensation in movies AND in tv, to try to restore some balance to the terrible narrative that Hollywood had set before hand. Clint Eastwood, in my opinion, always saw himself as a socially conscious person. Even in the Dirty Harry character, there was more to his psychology than "Brutal cop big gun shoot bad guys", and with each DH series the progressiveness showed. Having a hispanic then a black partner, then a woman partner (all of these things were unheard of at the time these movies were made). I think C.E was trying to do his part to oversteer and correct a terrible narrative.

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Dirty Harry reboot debate: Casting of Jeffrey Dean Morgan

« on: September 01, 2021, 01:54:53 PM »

AKA23 hi again.

I admit I have thought of Olyphant (good pull by the way) for Harry...Ill admit on a TV show level, Rayland may be the coolest character...short of Kojak, that has EVER existed. It would be almost a seamless transition....except....

....and I say this VERY VERY cautiously...lol....

In my assumptive reboot world...where I am assessing passing the mantle...there is one thing that bothers me a little about Olyphant. Harry, seems to have some dirt under his fingernails. Hes a cop by trade, but hes does non cop things (picks locks, carry a switchblade). Its almost implied that hes been out in the street and has some grub on him.

Now can you pick a human being, that looks more like they are covered in grub, than Jeffrey Dean Morgan in ANY role he has ever played? LOL. A bit of the mystique of him, in my opinion, is just that.

Where I will give Olyphant ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND on the cool points....for both Justified AND Deadwood....he just seems a bit...clean? Too good to be Dirty Harry.

To me it has to look like Harry could, with any given bad day, teeter on being the bad guy.

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Five Reasons For A Dirty Harry 6

« on: September 01, 2021, 01:48:10 PM »

AKA23, I have MISSED our convos...please lets liven this board up .

I hear the slight tongue in cheek each time you say "woke", and I get it, cancel culture IS very heavy handed. But at some point, we have to sit back and reflect on when realities have to be....in a sense....checked. To use your pendulum swinging anology, there is a point where the pendulum can swing TOO far (point of no return) and break the pendulum, ending the swing. This is why I dont think a Dirty Harry movie, at least not in its purest incantation, would even be considered by a movie studio. They would have to change the character SO MUCH, it would no longer BE Dirty Harry.

In the 1970s, police officers being so passionate about doing the right thing, that they constantly beat up, or murdered the perpetrators it was just accepted. Not just in the movie theater, at home. Starsky and Hutch, Mannix, Baretta, Kojak....none of them were slow to violate a suspects rights, if they thought it was necessary.

Now here is one of the problems. In all of these shows, and movies (I mentioned Charles Bronson), the suspects were ALWAYS minorities. I mean come on there is a serious message to the first "Do you feel lucky punk" scene, that all the bank robbers were minorities. Now in an age when minorities had VERY LITTLE representation of themselves on TV or movies, that was just accepted...but it DID have dire ramifications to the people that they represented.

Flash forward: George Floyd, the straw that broke the camels back. It was not the fact that the police departments havent had an open kill policy on minorities since the 1800s, almost every minority (myself included) can tell you a personal story of a person THEY know the police assassinated for no just cause.

Now, do I think that Dirty Harry would be represented as an officer like that? No I think any script written around him would go to great pains to avoid making him look ANYTHING like that....which is the problem. A large portion of Dirty Harry, whether we like it or not, is that he is a rogue cop that does things on his own terms. That type of policing is quite frankly, not loved anymore.

Which leads us to the other part, the messaging. You mentioned that you dont think you needed social commentary to make a DH movie. The last two installments of DH had zero messages, and they FLOPPED. No one cared about Sondra Locke, or the one where he was partnered with an Asian American. They just were ...BLEH.

I would argue that quite a bit of Harry's responsiblity to the viewer, is to make them question why he is there, or else he runs the danger of turning into Alonzo from Training Day, amoral and dangerous (as you mentioned, like John Wick).

There has be a cause.

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The Dirty Harry Films / Dirty Harry reboot debate: Casting of Jeffrey Dean Morgan

« on: August 29, 2021, 07:44:48 PM »

Yes, I admit I create these posts to upset people and cause all kinds of mayhem. Buuuuut the board seems quiet and Ill admit.....I have a little time to think on it.

So, as we agree that Harry Callahan is, despite all critics notions, a VERY complex character that is not a one trick pony, would we see someone like Jeffrey Dean Morgan as having the chops to play him in a reboot?

Aint I a stinker?

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Five Reasons For A Dirty Harry 6

« on: August 25, 2021, 02:08:22 PM »

I would agree with you only except that THE ENFORCER was a vehicle that introduced Tyne Daly. For that I would suffer it....Cagney and Lacy was my mothers favorite show 

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Clint Eastwood Westerns / Re: Hang' Em High is highly underrated...

« on: August 25, 2021, 02:01:31 PM »

"Very good write up.  It IS a impactful film.  I also agree its one of the better CAST Westerns.  One more thing.  You said that this is a western with Clint acting out of his normal bad guy element as a white hat.  I kinda disagree.  Though he played "bad" characters in the Leone films, he was still considered the hero or at least the least bad of the bad, lol."

Hey Moorman,

You pointed out something I did not make clear, thanks for that, and sorry that I didnt.

I think in the regular "Western formula" there was a white hat (good guy) and the black hat (bad guy), and later even when they stopped the hat colors they still stuck with that formula. Its a proven one, one that still works to this day.

Clint, IMO, always operated as a "Grey hat", he was either BOTH or NEITHER "Good and bad". Alot of his actions could be construed as either.  I have often said that the title "THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY" was operational and rotational, you could make the case that any of those characters in different points in the movie, could change names from Good, to Bad, or Ugly.

Luckily, thanks to Clint, Hollywood realized that the "Grey hat" and morally questionable character is much more interesting to this day. Its why the Riddick (Vin Diesel) character is so interesting. From a writers viewpoint, Riddick is a child of the Man with No name. Manco cleared the way so that Riddick could exist, cinematically.

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The Dirty Harry Films / Re: Five Reasons For A Dirty Harry 6

« on: August 25, 2021, 01:33:42 PM »

I say this with a heavy heart, but in truth, I think Dirty Harry's time has passed.

This is independent of Clint being too old to carry an action role anymore, although I believe that is evident to everyone on the board.

Harry had a much larger responsiblity to the movie viewer. Harry, in each movie, ran a commentary against the system he worked for, and its different aspects in which it fails. Whether it be with administrative overhead (the inability of an inept police department to catch Scorpio) or a commentary on sexism (that Tyne Daly's character was his equal as an officer, not a popular held view at the time)...Dirty Harry was always MORALLY for the people, and in most cases against the system he worked for.

But, the idea of an hyper violent police officer taking the law into his own hands doesnt exactly have the market appeal it did forty years ago. As a matter of fact I would argue the opposite....the very things that were completely lovable about Dirty Harry forty years ago, no movie studio would get with five miles of a script like that anymore.

Think of it this way, my daughters generation refer to the movie franchise DEATHWISH as "Wow Charles Bronson must really hate minorities".

I hate to say it but some things dont age well.

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: THE ENDLESS, POINTLESS thread

« on: August 25, 2021, 08:34:23 AM »

I saw the comment about cicadas..had to chime in.

I live in Maryland, which basically every 15-17 years turns into a cicada love zone. I now know how the people who LIVED in the town of Woodstock must have felt when all those hippies arrived and took over their neighborhood.

Strangest thing I have ever seen.

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Web Site Announcements / Re: KC, our beloved Board Administrator, our Everything, has passed away

« on: July 30, 2021, 06:56:10 PM »

I don?t have words, and I feel awful just hearing about this.

KC isn?t ONE of our best on this board, she is THE best of us, hands down.

We could easily say how brilliant and how funny she is, how much each one of us had brilliant and
Thought provoking conversations with her.

I will say this one thing, she alone, made this place to be a safe space for
ALL of us. Whether the conversation be serious, Clint, or just being silly,
She made sure that everyone knew their voices mattered here .

KC was and is a irreplaceable one of a kind. A person I can say I will miss.

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: 2018 Movie Discussion

« on: October 29, 2018, 08:27:13 PM »

I am refusing the Halloween series this round....

Michael is a MINIMUM by the timeline 61 years old.

I mean can a 61 year old maniac still be that strong? Swinging an ax that long has to cause arthritis in the shoulder.


Just saying....his mask should have age lines.

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Clint Eastwood Westerns / Re: Hang' Em High is highly underrated...

« on: September 27, 2018, 09:08:04 AM »

You know, when I read this thread my first thought was "Hang em high? Whatever!!" I really in my mind dismissed it, initially.

But when I REMEMBERED how impacting the movie was, I had to take a breath and respond to this.

As far as western movies go, Hang em High was a top five movie of ALL of them, even if I don't rate it a top five of Clint Eastwood westerns.

It humanized capital punishment, which was a scary thing. It is easy when you believe bad guys get what they deserve, its different when you hear someone whimpering in fear because the hood has been put over their head by the hangman.

Or the scene where the brother says goodbye to the other one before they are hung...JESUS that still gives me chills.


Thats regarding the message of the movie, getting into the gristle of the movie is a seperate critique.

This was really Clints first walk away from the "Man with no name" type character he was used to playing, and it was a little awkward for me seeing him that way. Clean shaven, highly moraled, non ambiguous. I didnt really think it was a character he was made to play. Quite a bit of his western personas arent about what you see, or what he says, its about what you DONT see and what he DOESNT say.
All of that to basically say, I wasnt really comfortable with Clint being the "white hat" good guy, even if he did play it well for the movie, it wasnt really..."him"...at least to me.


For me this movie was made by an outstanding supporting cast that took away the notion that you were watching Clint out of his element...and it was very well cast.


The storyline in itself is worth praise, high praise. That frontier justice was often very cruel and unjust, and that good people died at the hands of a madman judge, like real life judge Roy Bean who was called "The hanging judge" because that was his solution to everything, no matter how slight or small the infraction.


Clear message, challenging premise, moral dilemma, strong cast....definitely a GRADE A western, above many, IMO.

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Clint Eastwood Westerns / Re: A high school students study of THE GOOD THE BAD and THE UGLY

« on: September 27, 2018, 08:57:12 AM »

Good to be back KC 

Sadly he went off to college and I moved so I haven't kept up with him. Maybe Ill go onto FB and see if I can find him.

Hopefully all good things.

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The CEWB Movie Club / Re: CEWB Movie Club - Who wants in?

« on: September 27, 2018, 08:56:21 AM »

This will be awesome for me, honestly other than "THE BIRDS" I haven't really watched an Hitchcock film with a scrupulous eye....looking forward to it. Count me in. 

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General Discussion / Re: The empty chair interview

« on: September 11, 2018, 09:27:37 PM »

I personally don't know AKA23, I am a little confused by the phenomenon myself.

I do agree, I think because of OJW's strong message about Native Americans, a lot of people thought CE was liberal and were disappointed that he came out as conservative, although personally I don't really care about politics as much as stance...and I believe the stance he made in OJW was genuine.

I think it was more the clownishness of the "chair interview", it seemed awkward and unprepared...like for the first time Clint looked feeble and....well honestly...old.

No one likes to see their legends fall.

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General Discussion / The empty chair interview

« on: September 10, 2018, 10:55:26 AM »

Do you think that this political \ humorous stunt, hurt Clint Eastwood's reputation in Hollywood? I have always lurked on this site and did notice that the activity plummeted after that.

If you think it did, do you think it is something he could recover? If so, how?

Personally independent of that I think his work stands by itself.

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Current Film Discussion / Re: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: The Story 6: The War

« on: September 08, 2018, 09:13:05 PM »

There could be outside forces that lead to that statement as well.

Keep in mind that the movie was released in 1966, and there was a very strong anti Vietnam war movement happening. In all honesty I believe it was the first time in America's history, that the people questioned whether we belonged in that war.

That may have played a lot into needing to show how wasteful war is.

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Clint Eastwood Westerns / Re: A high school students study of THE GOOD THE BAD and THE UGLY

« on: September 08, 2018, 09:09:52 PM »

Exactly, and although was Tuco was "tough", he was hardly the toughest on the screen between the three. Honestly I don't see him winning a gunfight between either The Good or the Bad, even in a straight up one to to one.

I think the kid definitely projected his perspective into the movie and went a little "Gay subtext" with his assessment, but its a hell of a take on the story line.

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Off-Topic Discussion / Re: THE ENDLESS, POINTLESS thread

« on: September 08, 2018, 09:04:08 PM »

LOLOL hold on Matt, I gotta get a grasp of this flight.

As in a "FLY LIKE AN EAGLE" moment flying turkey? Or as in Sully going a few feet and then needing to circle around and land in a pond?

See what I did there?

Endless....thoughtless...pointless....

IT AINT OVER BABY

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Clint Eastwood Westerns / Re: The secrets of High Plains Drifter

« on: September 08, 2018, 09:00:19 PM »

A sheriff had a town, a marshall had a territory.

In most cases the Marshall had rule over the local sheriff.

FYI.