That 70s Movie Podcast
A look back at the films that defined cinema's greatest era - the 1970s!
That 70s Movie Podcast
Dirty Harry
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This week on "That '70s Movie Podcast," Jonathan and Michael are on the prowl for the 1971 action-thriller "Dirty Harry."
We had mixed feelings about this film, with Jonathan offering qualified praise for its first 71 minutes and Michael unequivocally labeling it a fascist movie.
In fairness, Jonathan called the third act a "catastrophic train wreck," but he liked the night-for-night shooting and thought the first two-thirds of the movie was an extremely effective police thriller. Michael praised Lalo Schifrin's evocative score and found elements of the movie attractive, but neither of us could get away from the fact that "Dirty Harry" is fundamentally reactionary and exploits fears about rising crime rates in the early 1970s.
So grab your gun, don't lose count, and join us for this week's episode of "That 70s Movie Podcast."
Please take a moment to follow us, rate the podcast, leave a comment, subscribe, or even buy us a cup of coffee.
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SPEAKER_01Welcome everybody to the latest episode of That 70s Movie Podcast. I'm your host, Michael A. Cohen, joined by my co-host Jonathan Kirshner. Jonathan, how are you doing today? Well, as you know, I'm a little breathless right now, but otherwise fine. We were having some audio issues, which I think we have rectified. I hope we have. So that's it was a little bit of a uh of a fire drill before we got on the air. But we're here now. That's all that matters. Um before we get in, we've so much to talk about today, but I have uh want to ask you first and foremost, Jonathan, have you seen anything good recently?
SPEAKER_02I did see Gus Van Zant's most recent film called Dead Man's Wire. I'm an enormous admirer of Van Zant, and one day we're gonna definitely have to do a 70s, not 70s podcast of Drugstore Cowboy. And I thought it was pretty good. But again, you go in and you hear you hear good talk about the new Van Zant. I was very, very excited. My expectations are sky high, and it was just very good.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm gonna do something very provocative right now, and I'm gonna say my favorite Ghost Van Zandt movie is Goodwheel Hunting. Wow. I'm joking. Uh actually, I just wanted to bastard you a little bit by saying that, because I'm sure I'm sure that you do not feel the same way. It's not my favorite uh Gus Van Zand movie. I'm not sure what my Garrett Gus Van Zanne movie would be, to be honest. Uh I you know, although I think you and I could have disagree a little bit. I've never been a huge fan of his. Uh he did that uh Columbine movie that I thought was sort of interesting, Elephant, I think it was called, and obviously Drugstore Cowboy, which I haven't seen in years. Uh you're a bigger fan than I am of his work.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Well, he had a couple of early features, and then he did Drugstore Cowboy, which I think is one of the great, great films of the 80s. And then he followed that up with My Own Private Idaho, which is a fantastic film. And I agree, you know, I don't think he's ever, for me, uh soared those heights again. Although, did he um do the Nicole Kidman movie whose name is currently a DIY? Oh, that's a great movie. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: That's if that's him, and I think it is. I think it's written written by Buck Henry, that's a wonderful picture. So, you know, you got three great films uh uh in your docket there, and it's good enough for me. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And and Goodwill Hunting. Yes, not to mention not to miniature Goodwill hunting, and I mean that literally. Jonathan, it's not your fault.
SPEAKER_01It's not your fault, Jonathan. All right, we're moving on. Okay, so actually, I saw a couple things this week because of Jonathan's uh encouragement. In fact, last week on the podcast, we talked about the 1949 or 48 uh feature, Act of Violence by Fred Zinneman, the man who had uh directed Day of the Jackal. And I gotta say, what a fantastic movie. Thank you so much for recommending that. That is a kind of 70s, not 70s film from the late 1940s, and just that thematically it is so far ahead of what you expect from movies in the late 1940s. It's astonishing.
SPEAKER_02Astonishing that they got to pass the production code.
SPEAKER_01It's just all yeah, it's all about World War II veterans dealing with PTSD and acting like really uh badly during the war. It's themes that you just don't think of for late 40s Hollywood cinema. So really, really great film. Uh, highly recommend it. Um and since we now here's the thing one of the best things about this podcast is Jonathan and I figuring out what we're gonna do each week because this involves a lot of back and forth, negotiations, and emails and so forth. And this week we had a lot of back and forth. We discussed things, it was very fun. And one thing we talked about was how I brought this up, actually. We need to do a Stanley Kubrick film. Here's the problem: there's two 70s Kubrick films. There's Clockwork Orange and there's Barry Linden. Clockwork Orange, I think we agree, is a great movie, but neither one of us are dying to watch it again since it is a disturbing movie with maybe one of the most disturbing scenes of any movie uh that is considered a great film. I'm taking it. Yeah, I think that sums it up well. Uh there's lots of disturbing scenes, other movies that aren't great movies, but the rape scene at the beginning of the movie is incredibly disturbing, and I don't think I want to watch it again. There's also Barry Linden, which is a great movie, but it's three and a half hours, and I just saying it out there now, I'm not gonna do it on the podcast until I can see on the big screen again. So we have to wait for that to happen. I just it can't watch it on TV. It's a it's a theater film. So we were like, okay, what do we do then? What should we talk about? I mean, should we do 2001, which would probably take about five or six hours to discuss since I have so much to say about that movie? Uh Doctor Strange Love, one of my all-time favorite films. We kind of settled on thinking maybe it was like Eyes Wide Shut or Paths of Glory or maybe The Killing. But this is where you're gonna come in, audience. We want your recommendations. No, we don't care if it's a 70s film or not, because Kubrick, and I and Jonathan, tell me if I'm wrong here, you revere Kubrick and would put him on your rushmore of great directors, correct?
SPEAKER_02I would say that a dozen people reached out to me with concerned messages when he died. Wow. Really?
SPEAKER_01Well, it was suddenly unexpected. Okay. I'm sure that' what what is your what is your Desert Island Kubrick film?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell It's very tricky because he's made 13 films and six of them could easily qualify for the Desert Island. And so I'm I'm paralyzed at what I would choose, but I might ultimately settle on Eyes Wide Shut because it's kind of a summary statement.
SPEAKER_01Wow, really? I mean, I would put that up there. I mean, for me it's got to be Strange Love or 2001, maybe Barry Linden.
SPEAKER_02But Strange Love's automatic, and I've taught it like 50 times in classes and stuff.
SPEAKER_01It's almost like I have it memorized in my family, we love that movie growing up. We used to recite the lines all the time. It's it might be my favorite movie ever made. I just love it uh so much.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr.: To be clear, it's a spectacularly great movie.
SPEAKER_01So I'll put it, it's Desert Island worthy.
SPEAKER_02I have no doubt about it.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell But then how do you reject 2001, which I just think is a masterpiece. I think it might be his best film.
SPEAKER_02Um it's an extraordinarily special film, but for me, again, that old thing I always say, close personal relationship, that's why Strange Love Yes.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. That's how I feel too, actually, about Strange Love. And you mentioned Pass of Glory, which is one of the I think the second or third Kubrick film that I saw when I was very young, and I was just uh blown away by it. And whenever I see it, I am it's maybe the best anti-war film ever made. Um so anyway, so the so my question for for the viewers though, if we're gonna do a Kubrick film, what would you want, what do you want to talk about? Which one would you like us to do? Okay, we could if you want us to do Barry Linden, we'll figure something out to do Barry Linden. If you want us to do the shining, I don't think that's our favorite. Uh that I like it. I mean, there's things about it that I like it, I'll love it, but we'll do the shining. Let us know what you think. Give us your votes, tell us what you want us to uh to do, and we will uh we'll take it on. Because as we said before, there's no podcast police. We can do the hell you want to do. If we want to do a Kubrick film, we're gonna do a Kubrick film. So nobody can stop us. Uh before I get into today's movie, I want to just mention very quickly some comments we got. Uh, first from Scott, who said, Great podcast as usual. I'm a fan of the film. You're talking about Day of the Jackal. Haven't been thinking of re-watching the Blu-ray again. And then he referenced something that I talked about in the episode about Bob Dylan being the greatest position of the past hundred years. He said it's debatable. He said I would put Miles Davis in the conversation, especially if invoking Mozart as part of the discussion. And Scott, well, we appreciate your comment. Sorry, Bob Dylan. He uh basically, in I don't say invented, but let's say built the foundation for the singer-songwriter for confessional lyrics in rock and roll. The 66 UK tour, maybe the greatest musical uh uh um episode in music history. Almost kind of made a grunge music in that tour. It's incredible. Then he created modern folk rock with John Wesley Harding. He's the greatest. I love Miles Davis too, but come on. Anyway, that appreciate your comments, Scott. Then we got another uh a comment um from somebody who mentioned the exploding melon scene, which we did not reference in the last episode. That's maybe the most famous scene in the entire movie, and we didn't mention it. It's kind of an oversight on our part, I think. Especially because you had in our in our back chat, you had mentioned it at least twice. I know, I'm surprised. So that is a great scene in the movie. Uh, it's one of the highlights of the film. It's I wish we'd gotten into it, but thank you, James O, for that comment. Uh, we also got another listener who suggested that we do Return to Macon County, which is a knockoff of two-lane blacktops starring Don Johnson and Nick Nolte. I don't know that film, but I will certainly we'll we'll take a look. Uh, and then I want to mention Spencer Steele, who had a great comment. He said, celebrate the one-year anniversary of the podcast. He did a little bookkeeping, and he said 75 and 76 have dominated with 13 episodes combined. 77 and 79 compromise just five podcasts, and 72 has none. It's crazy. None 72, which he mentioned, Godfather dominates that year. But he also suggests covering Deliverance, The Candidate, or The Heartbreak Kid. Those are all films we have talked about doing. I have pushed for deliverance. I know you have some mixed feelings about doing that film.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell And maybe um Cisco Pike might be a 72 Pike film, which I we definitely want to get to at some point. It's it's it's in a relative obscurity, and we are under some pressure to do The Godfather at some point.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell We were talking about actually laying out our strategy for The Godfather, because we I fear that it's going to be a very long episode that might have to go into two parts. So prepare yourself. I also want to mention before we get into the episode today that we're I'm going to be on vacation next week. We're not going to be recording. So we are going to have a probably a bonus episode up. I'm going to put out the Another Woman podcast we did with the British podcaster a couple of months ago. And I am hoping, knock on wood, I can finally get the long lost episode that we did at the beginning of The Last Days of Sheila up. And that will be a bonus episode for subscribers.
SPEAKER_02But uh Wow, you know, if we ever had obsessive fans, the the hunt would be on for the l the last of Sheila can be found somewhere in Brazil. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Bootleg copies are like Sami Stat are circulating among the fans of the show. So anyway, so that's what's going on. And uh before I get into today's movie, I just want to mention really quickly, please, if you haven't had a chance to subscribe, to uh give us a thumbs up, to rate the podcast, please do it now. We really appreciate it. It helps so much when you do that. And if you want, of course, please feel free to buy us a cup of coffee. So today's movie, what are we talking about? It is the 1971 action crime thriller Dirty Harry. It is directed by Don Siegel. I believe this is our second Don Siegel film. Is that correct? We did one earlier, didn't we?
SPEAKER_02We did um, you know, the Charlie Varrick.
SPEAKER_01Charlie Varrick, right. Charlie Verrick. That's what I was gonna say. Exactly. That's what he was gonna say. Uh and it's okay. You know, sometimes we sometimes the words escape us at our age. Screenplay by Harry and R.M. Fink and Dean Reisner. Story by Harry Fink and R. M. Fink. They are a married couple, I believe. I think this is one of their only screenplays they ever did. Uh it uh cinematography is by Bruce Surtees, not the first Bruce Surtees. And by the way, I remember correctly, his father, Robert Surtees, was a cinematographer for Act of Violence. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02That is that would make sense. He also did the graduate. He was uh old Hollywood cinematographer who also worked on some new Hollywood pictures.
SPEAKER_01Right. Um so let's see, they edited by Carl Pingator, music by Laylo Schifrin. Uh, it stars Clint Eastwood, Harry Gardino, Reddy Santoni, Andy Robinson, John Larch, and John Vernon. This is our second actual John Andy Robinson and John Vernon movie. Also, they were both in uh Charlie Varrick. And uh what is it about? A renegade San Francisco cop pursues a serial killer and chaos and suits. Uh, this movie was nominated for No Oscars. It is not on the Indy Wire list of top film 1970s, not on the BFI list, not on the AFI list. However, Dirty Harry, Harry Callahan, was selected as the 17th greatest movie hero on AFI's 100 years, 100 Heroes and Villains. So Hero. Heroes and villains. Oh. And we can discuss, we can discuss if he is a hero or a villain. That's going to be a very important part of today's conversation. So, Jonathan, we've come to that point. Took us a little while, but we've gotten here eventually. Dirty Harry. Is this a good movie? Is this a bad movie? Or is this a great movie?
SPEAKER_02This is, and this is going to be controversial with you and our listeners. Uh two-thirds of a great movie and one-third of a catastrophic train wreck.
SPEAKER_01Man. Wow. Okay. So can you sum that up with one word or one expression or just one thing?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the first 71 minutes of this 102-minute movie are an extremely effective police thriller that has things to say. They may not be things I agree with, but they're done extremely well. And then it just loses its fucking mind and becomes. I mean, we'll talk about this. It it becomes an advertisement for fascism.
SPEAKER_01So, okay, that's a good segue from where I'm going to go with this movie. Because I want to say at the outset, there are things out of this movie that I liked. I think the score uh by Layla Schiffin is phenomenal. I love it. It's one of the best scores of any movie that we have done. But we've done other Layla Schifrin scores. This one is excellent. I love the night shooting. Um, I actually think the Eastwood's pretty good in this movie. Um but this is a bad movie. This is a bad movie because this is a fascist movie. And I, you know, tried to look past the obvious fascist elements of this film, and I simply couldn't do it. And I'm going to disagree a little bit with you and say that while the first 70 minutes of this film are not as bad as the third act, which is a horrendous train wreck that should have been burned and never subjected uh to any movie viewer to have to see, um I think the fascist elements of this film are very evident in the first two-thirds of the movie. I will say one more thing in defense of this film, which is that it is heavily cliched, but that is because this movie was copied by every action crime thriller, screenwriter, and director of the next next you know, 50-something years. Uh I mentioned this on when we were having a conversation offline. The entire lethal weapon franchise, which, you know, I I don't I don't think either one of us are huge fans of, um, is really just kind of a variation on Dirty Harry. Uh and you could even argue the same thing about Die Hard to a lesser degree. This movie has been copied over and over again. So it's funny, I think seeing it now, it feels very cliched, but that's just because it's been copied so many times over the years.
SPEAKER_02So I just want to pause to respect what you have to say because I think this is crucial in movie watching. A lot of people, especially nowadays, see characters doing unpleasant things and they get all squirmy about it. Oh, that's not a good character. Well, too bad for you. It's a bad character. There's a big difference as to whether you have a bad character on your hands or whether you have a movie that is morally suspect. Those are two very different things. I think Travis Pickle and Taxi Driver is a racist misogynist character. I don't think Taxi Driver is a racist film, although people can argue that out. This, as Pauline Cale said, is a deeply immoral film.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna actually quote from Pauline Kale's review, because I pulled it up and she said, Dirty hairy is not about the actual San Francisco police force. The opening of the movie, by the way, is this moving shot of this memorial for San Francisco police officers, as if to set the stage for this is a movie about cops in San Francisco. It's not. It's about one particular cop. Anyway, so she says it's not about the San Francisco Police Force, it's about a right-wing fantasy of that police force as a group helplessly emasculated by unrealistic liberals. The conceit of the movie is that for one brief, glorious period, the police have a realist in their midst and they drive him out. And in the same review, she says, the audience is led to identify to totally with Harry and to feel victorious because the liberals don't succeed in stopping him. I want to pick up on that point. Before I do, because that's I think a crucial point, I want to read to you something that Don Siegel said about this movie in 72. He got a lot of crap for this movie. He's a liberal.
SPEAKER_02A liberal humanist in everything.
SPEAKER_01A liberal humanist. Here's what he said. He said, I enjoy the controversy, because if you make a film that's safe, you're in trouble. Okay, right at this right off the bat, that's worse shit. I'm a liberal. I lean to the left. Plint is a conservative, he leans to the right. At no point in making the film did we ever talk politics. I don't make political movies. I was telling the story of a hard-nosed cop and a dangerous killer. Now, here's where the bullshit attacks is going to go off. Ready? What my liberal friends did not grasp was that the cop is just as evil in his way as the sniper. Sorry, Don. That's bullshit. That is completely not what this movie does. This movie treats the serial killer, Scorpio, as an absolutely horrible, terrible human being who kills children, who kills Catholic priests, who kidnaps children. He has no redeeming quality. Dirty Harry.
SPEAKER_02Who is and who is what? A hippie with a peace sign on his jacket.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Thank you. Thank you. Dirty Harry is not presented as though he is the other side of the coin of the circular named Scorpio. He is presented as the person sort of standing in the breach, stopping the degradation of society from people like Scorpio. Tell me, am I wrong?
SPEAKER_02No, and and that's why it took a long time for this movie to be in development because every major actor turned it down. Paul Newman, obviously, but even Robert Mitchum, no shrinking violet, uh, and also leaned conservative in his politics, thought the character was kind of too distasteful to even touch.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and in fact, I read somewhere that that Frank Sinatra was even asked.
SPEAKER_02That was an early incarnation. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01That's unimaginable.
SPEAKER_02So look, this movie It is imaginable, though, because he did a couple of cop films in the mid-late 60. That is true. Tony Rome and uh one other, a sequel to that, The Lady in Cement. Not great movies, but he did kind of as as they used to say, show up in movies and walk around. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right, right. He did.
SPEAKER_01And he did like a New York cop movie that was like about a serial killer, also, right?
SPEAKER_02I don't remember, but that's eminently plausible.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. So so yeah. So Financho was considered for this role. It went to uh to Clint Eastwood, who and he had worked with Don Siegel previously. They worked together on a number of films together. Um and uh there's a lot of ways we can talk about this movie. I I want to get into Quan Kell's criticism, but I think before we do that, let's talk about Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood is a monumental figure in in American cinema. Um he his career stretches from first of all, he was started up in television, right? On Rawhide in in the 50s. Right. Uh in the 60s, he did the Spaghetti Westerns, I've I've spoken before, which I love. Um The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, uh Fistful of Dollars, those are great films. And then this was a kind of an I think sort of an obvious evolution from those movies where he played this, you know, um silent but deadly uh uh assassin in in the old West.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm gonna actually say it's a four-picture evolution, starting with his first Don Siegel collaboration, Coogan's Bluff, in 68, which in many ways is a kind of dress rehearsal for Dirty Harry and a little more sophisticated in its presentation of similar issues. Lee J. Cobb takes a nice turn there. And then he works again with uh Siegel in a couple of off-beat films, I think The Beguiled and Two Mules for Sister Sarah. Right. And then Siegel signs his DGA card, Eastwood's DGA card, and and Eastwood directs play Misty for Me, his directorial debut. Siegel shows up as a security blanket and plays the bartender, and then they do Harry. So Eastwood is obviously becoming ambitious and moving away from his earlier persona in that period. The problem is Dirty Harry is a monumental hit, and other things that Clint tried to do then, um, including a very interesting small picture he directed called Breezy with William Holden, and another one of his westers, I think, failed at the box office. So he went running for Back to Harry. He did Magnet Force, he did The Enforcer. And these movies, they were they were just printing money. And this kind of skewed the direction of Eastwood's career for some years because it's, you know, as they say, show business is a business, and these were the things that kept him bankable.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell But what I think is interesting about Glenn Eastwood is that seeing what's in seeing this film, this is such a simplistic sort of binary of a character, right? It's a good versus evil kind of a situation. There's not a lot of nuance to here. You can you can pick in a little bit here or there, but really not much. But his later films I I one thing I like about his later films I think he is a wonderful director. There's a lot Nuance in those films. Yeah. I mean, I think Mystic River with the phenomenal show and pen performance in Tim Robbins is a magnificent movie, a wonderful sort of meditation on grief and memory and luck and chance and uh it's and guilt. It's it's a fantastic fantastic movie. There's a lot going on that movie. I think Letters from Iwo Jima is as good a uh anti-war film as been made in the last 20, 25 years. I think it's fantastic. And, you know, I've said before, I think Unforgiven is one of my favorite movies of all time. And it's an incredibly nuanced, sort of anti-Western. So I think what's interesting about Eastwood is he made this movie, by the way, like late 30s. He was a late comer to Hollywood, uh, and he kind of defined his career, but he did not let it define him as an artist and as a director later in life. Right.
SPEAKER_02Sometime in the mid-late 80s, essentially, he put childish things away. Absolutely. He never took the Harry pictures very seriously. He hired hacks to write and direct them and slept walked his way through them, and each one more ridiculous than the previous. Sorry to our fans who are viewers of them, but if you watch these in order, you will watch the quality decline from picture to picture. It's astonishing. But then he shows up and directs Bird, and then he does the picture I'm very fond of, uh, White Hunter, Black Heart, and and he starts to say, you know what? I'm entering he didn't know he was going to live to be 100, so he said, I'm entering the last phase of my career, and I want to do serious things. I want to do pictures that are important to me. Now he still did commercial pictures in there too, because again, he's the master of the one for them, one for me. Absolutely. So many, you know, pictures that he wanted to make because he had something to say and that was challenging to him as an artist. So you do have these three phases of his career, the early years that you talked about, and this middle period dominated by the Harry series and other pretty silly films, and then he becomes an American institution, a major American filmmaker.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell I mean, I didn't even mention, by the way, uh Million Dollar Baby, which of course won Best Picture, he won Best Director, I think, for that. I mean, that's a that's an excellent movie. I don't love that movie, but there's a lot in there that uh I think is is is is excellent. And I think, you know, he is what I really impresses me about about Eastwood is he has a really um, for lack of a better way, like uh just a lot of curiosity. He did Flags of the Um of Our Fathers uh and Leslie Wojima, which were basically Iwo Jima films, but one from the American perspective, one from the Japanese perspective. The Les Iwo Jima is Japanese perspective, I think it's much better. It's a really strong anti-war film. Not a movie I think you'd expect from him. He did a movie a couple years ago called uh Richard Jewel, which actually is a pretty good movie, which I don't and he also did one on uh Sully, the guy who landed the plane in the uh in the Hudson River. And a Hoover pick, right? And Jay Edgar, he did Jersey Boys, which I think is a musical. Whatever he's interested in, he does. And he has that kind of uh um, you know, leeway in Hollywood to do it. He did one a couple years ago, I think the last one he did was called Jur Number Two, that I saw. It's actually a it's a good film, not a great film. It's fine. It's the kind of film that used to get made all the time, like in the 80s and 90s, maybe. It's like a sort of a procedural, it's interesting. It's not great, but it's I think it shows it shows kind of his range and what he's able to do. And I will say one thing, we talked about this offline. Right after Unforgiven, he did a movie called The Perfect World, which performed the almost unimaginable feat uh of delivering a movie starring Kevin Costner that is actually watchable. And it's actually quite good. It's a really good movie. Uh and you know, we both have a no a a pretty strict no Kevin Costner rule. Uh but uh but that movie's actually excellent. I recommend it to the viewers who haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_02What's also interesting about late period Clint is that in a number of films, thinking most obviously of uh Unforgiven and Mystic River, in the middle phase of his career, uh he has a cavalier attitude about violence. Violence is almost, you know, meaningless. And in the late pictures, he often considers closely the consequences of violence, something that would have never occurred to the characters in in this in these middle period films.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Absolutely. I uh it's a really fascinating evolution. And I think he is uh he directed something like 44 films, I believe it is. Uh he starred in, I don't know how many uh uh dozens. Uh and so I think he's just one of the most interesting uh sort of artists. He reminds you a little bit of Woody Allen in some respects, although I think thematically he's way all over the map, way more way more over the all over the map than Woody Allen has been. Although Woody Allen is some somewhat that way as well. Um so but but to go back to the second, this movie I think had came to define his persona. Yes. Yes. And not for the better. And I do think I wonder if to your point that some of what he's been doing in his later part of his career is trying to distance himself from that uh persona. Because even though he is a conservative, I don't think of his later movies as being conservative. This movie I do, but I don't think of that way of his later films.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I don't I think that's probably right. I mean, definitely I go out of my way to leave space for his political views that are different from mine, but then you gotta call him when you think they go over the line. And again, you know, Roger Ebert drops the F-bomb on this movie. He also calls it a fascist film, and it's you know, we're in the Trevor Burrus.
SPEAKER_01Although he gave us three stars, though. Ever gave us three stars, and I don't quite understand that, actually.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. It's for the first 71 minutes. I guess it was And you know, there is there is that distinction that I that I think is so important. But he's you know, again, just a major, a major American filmmaker who will be taken seriously, I think, years from now. Aaron Powell I agree. I agree.
SPEAKER_01Um I want to I want to get into uh that mentioned the Pauline Kale quote about this being really kind of an uh attack against liberals. But before I do, please, Jonathan, explain to me why the first 73 minutes of this film are worthy of not greatness, but very goodness.
SPEAKER_02So I think it's just delightfully done. Uh I I say that about a serial killer movie, but the the the opening kind of vistas of San Francisco, they're very attractive, and they quickly establish, you know, the the in the initial murder, and then you have the cops come on the case, and then you have the problems, and then you have the pursuit. And once you get into the pursuit, you have all of these glorious kind of night-for-night shooting sequences, and you have new problems that emerge, and there's a lot of tension that develops as one victim is followed quickly by another, and then you have the kind of, you know, whatever you call Harry, the rebel cop who's who's pushing back against the brass, you know, and and we're we like to root for him when the mayor says, What have you been doing on this case? And he says, well, for the last 45 minutes, I've been sitting on my ass outside your office. You know, that's that kind of thing. And then there is the kidnapping of the young girl and the 12-minute chase sequence, single-man chase sequence of delivering the money. It, you know, it has dialogue, but it's near silent. It's bravora, 12 minutes. I mean, I I live for that sort of thing. It's extremely well done, all in night for night. And then you have the confrontation of the cross, and all the locations in San Francisco, especially at night, are used beautifully. You know, Certes gets, you know, and I guess Siegel, you know, in charge, but Certes' work here is just spectacular. And then you have Harry and and and Scorpio have their confrontation. Right. And and then you have i bef before you realize it's a fascist film, or at least before I realize it's a fascist film, you have this spectacular confrontation where Harry tracks him down, chases him through the stadium. It's a famous stadium whose name escapes me at the moment. He's our stadium. Yes. Get the bright lights going, gets him on the football field. You know, what is he, shoot him in the leg or is he limping from the stabbing? I don't remember. He's limping from the stabbing, and then apparently I guess he also apparently does shoot him. It's not really clear, but it seems that he shoots him. And then he tortures him by grinding his foot against the wound to get it from. I mean, there is, you know, for people who are pro-torture, and I'm not one of them, I'm pretty passionately opposed to the practice. Um, but it is at the very least, they're throwing you the bone of the ticking time bomb scenario where you can at least make yourself think that there's an instance in which that could conceivably be something you could do, so or at least understand why the character, that character, would do that in that setting. And Eastwood said he didn't think most actors would have dared do that. So I thought it's really ballsy to have your protagonist actually torture the suspect, and then you pull away. Uh and then what I love about it is, but of course it's too late, the girl is dead. You cut to a scene of Harry at dawn, or you know, dawn is breaking, the poor dead girl is being pulled out of uh wherever she had been buried, and he's failed, right? He he doesn't save the girl. For me, if you roll the credits there, you have a really thoughtful rumination on police power and its abuses and choices that are made. And and you know, certainly even then Scorpio is a rather unsubtle character. But I also have a soft spot for this part of the movie because I once had a student demand, or not to to write about this movie. He's a a listener of the podcast, so I hope he hears this. And I gave in, he's he wanted to do it for my 70s film class, and he said, you know, come on, it's it is a new Hollywood film. And I said, No, it isn't. And he said, Yeah, you don't understand. You like the counterculture. This is the ultimate counter-counterculture movie. And in that sense, it's just as rebellious as the counterculture movies because it's pushing back against what has become the predominant view, and that's why it was so important that they move it from New York to San Francisco, the very epicenter of the counterculture. So, for all those reasons, I think it's kind of those 71 minutes. I'm I'm I'm a fan.
SPEAKER_01You have now done what I usually do. You've given me a lot to respond to. Okay. So let me say a few things. I agree with your student. I think this is absolutely a new Hollywood film. I think it's it it's very much pushing back against conventional wisdom. Now it pushes back against in a way that I find distasteful, but I think that it I would definitely put this in the realm of new the new Hollywood. Um I certainly would say, and I think we would agree here, this kind of a film doesn't get made uh in any other era than the Man, I shouldn't know, I shouldn't say that. It doesn't get made sort of four or five years before. Right? You're not gonna have a portrayal of police officer that is this uh um negative, right? I mean I I just think that that is a a a crucial part of why this movie sort of fits into i it came about came out when it did and it fits in the in the sort of the but look, we think of movies like this today. This would not be an unusual movie today, but that's because this movie got made when it got made in 1971. Um so I think in that sense it does fit in the New Hollywood. That's also I think it is a movie that we can say is hugely influential. Um you mentioned the torture scene at Keysar Stadium. I have to say I give a shout out. Because I said I think it's a bad movie, but I think there are things about this movie that are really good. The aerial shot where they of Eastwood torturing Scorpio and the way it pulls back, I don't even know how the hell they did that. Was it a helicopter? I mean, it's a good thing. It must have been.
SPEAKER_02It must have been.
SPEAKER_01They don't have drones back then. It's an incredible, incredible shot. Um and uh, you know, it's one of the highlights of this film. And I agree with you. The scene also after that where the girl is is pulled out of the well where she where Scorpio had buried her. The the whole thing of this movie is that um he has already shot two people at this point. Scorpio, he's a he's a serial killer. He had kidnapped this girl, and he had told the police that he was burying her and that and that one cop was gonna have to like bring him money to get her free, and that that cop ended up being dirty Harry. But he spends the entire day in this 14-minute chase. And then and at the end of the chase, we do find out the girl is dead, which Harry is, these assumed at the beginning. But um didn't stop from torturing Scorpio, even though he thought the girl was dead. Um but I want to step back to just one second, because you mentioned uh the location shooting. The opening of this film is incredible. You know, first of all, you have this great Leila Schiffer soundtrack. You have this shot of this of this woman, she's in a rooftop pool, and then you sort of pan back to this even higher building where Scorpio has a sniper rifle and he shoots her. And this whole opening where first of all I don't know what that building is it's you get an incredible view of San Francisco of the of the of the Golden Gate Bridge and of the entire sort of city laid out before you. And then you see, you know, Harry, he figures out where the shot came from, he goes to investigate, he finds the bullet casing, he finds a note from Scorpio. I mean, this is uh you get a sense of him as being a good police officer. Um and so I think in that sense, you know, i i it it's a good it's a good scene setter for the film. Unfortunately, the film kind of goes in a different direction, but it's a good scene setter. Um but I want to get to this point earlier about uh we talked about that I I mentioned earlier this thing with Cat Pauline Cale saying this movie was you know, it's the audience to identify with Harry and to feel victorious because the liberals don't succeed in stopping him. But a lot of what happens in his pursuit of Scorpio, there are moments in which um liberal archetypes or care I should say caricatures, characters as caricatures try to stop him. That that's an insult to the word caricature. You know, you're right. It's it's you're right. It's it's so ham-handed. So in one shot, he's on a rooftop and he sees a naked woman. She's in her panties and a bra, takes her bra off, and then she brings these people in, I guess, during a sex party. He is looking for Scorpio, but he's distracted by this naked woman and her free love, you know, uh lifestyle, right? And then there's a shootout in which, okay, Scorpio with a machine gun shoots a billboard that says, Jesus saves. Oh, here is a a guy, it's a serial killer with a peace sign on it, shooting like a religious, you know, symbol, right? I mean, again, like the idea that sort of uh um uh the the liberals are are basically attacking uh traditional uh you know elements of society, like religion.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, but it's it's so beautiful. I mean, that is a neon blue thing spinning at night, providing the illumination for this shootout. And there's I haven't really wrestled with the religious iconography of this film, but you also have that, you know, scene at the giant cross in that in that park. I don't know what the point of all that is, but but the the Eastwood looking at the girls with the binoculars, I thought that was at least at least they were throwing us a bone. I mean, that does that did not reflect well on Eastwood. He's supposed to be working.
SPEAKER_01He's not supposed to be I I agree. But and also when he does the peeping tom thing as well. But the idea is that he is being distracted from what he needs to do, which is clean up society by these degenerate liberals. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Definitely. He's definitely being stopped from cleaning up society by degenerate liberals. He even goes Travis Bickle in an early scene where he says he wants to throw a net over all of them. He says, Yes. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Right. Drives through this sort of uh um, you know, neighborhood with like strip clubs and and and he says I want to throw a net over them. Later, when he's on his chase, he is distracted by hoods in a tunnel who try to uh uh uh um uh mug him. My favorite thing about this is the I mean not favorite, the the worst element of this is when he is he uh on the chase, he gets to this cross, and I forget what the name of the park is, and there is he sees somebody there who turns out to be uh a gay man who is looking for uh, I guess, a hookup, and he says his name is Alice. And uh, you know, it's it's like again, Eastwood being distracted from what he needs to do by degenerate liberals. And actually, this is a really I know I'm I'm reaching here a little bit, but when he gets to the cross, uh Scorpio sees and says, take your gun out. He takes his gun out with his left hand, not his right hand. His right hand would have made more sense. His left hand, he reaches like inside of his pocket, takes it out, and uh he says, with your left hand, throw it. And I totally read that as like, oh, they're the liberals saying, throw your guns away because we don't need we don't need cops anymore. Let the criminals run free. There's just so many elements here.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's such a beautiful scene. Okay, you know what and he and you also stepped on the best line in that scene. He pulls the gun out, you know, it's this famous point of her magnum, and Scorpio says, My, that's a big one. That's a big one, yeah.
SPEAKER_01He says that. My response to you, Jonathan, is Lenny Stahl had a good eye also. All right. She also shot some good things as well. Absolutely. I'm not comparing Don Steele to Later Refensal, but my point being that, like, yes, it's very well shot. I I think I made that point earlier. I agree with you there. But to what end? And and by the way, at the cross, like the way that I viewed the cross thing is that he makes him turn toward the cross, he looks up at the cross as if to ask for some sort of divine intervention. But the way that I read the scene is that Dirty Harry, he is the savior. He is the person who's going to save San Francisco from the degenerate liberals like Scorpio, like Alice, like the Nikki Loving Sex Parties, like the people in the tunnel, and if you later find out, like the permissive judges and district attorneys.
SPEAKER_02See, this is why how why we all bring ourselves to the movies. I just saw that towering, towering cross with Scorpio there, with Harry about to be beaten to death, and you know, as just a reminder that we're living in a godless universe.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think yes, that is one way to look at it. But I don't think that was the intention by doing it. I don't maybe.
SPEAKER_02That was how it read, that's just how it read to me. So I mean, I I could that could not have been their that may not have been their intention, but I I found that powerful, right? It's like I can almost see Edward G. Robinson, yeah, where's your cross now? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01And I and again, to your point, like the shot of him looking up the cross is beautiful. The shot of uh looking down the cross at Scorpio and Harry is a beautiful shot. I mean, really great work. And I look, I think you're you you could be correct. I I I I can certainly buy that argument that this is supposed to sort of talk about this being godless society. I also could see it as suggesting that uh Harry being the savior, being the person who is going to uh to clean up this this degenerate city. And by the way, we didn't even talk we didn't even talk about the opening of the movie after they the sniper shot, which is the uh do you feel lucky scene. This is maybe one of the most crucial scenes in the in uh not just the entire movie, but like you know all the 70s filmmaking, right? This is a hugely important moment. Yeah. You have this scene that by the way, I I and this is about it's a well-done scene, except for the fact that he's so clearly shot on the back lot at whatever studio. Um but you have these bank robbers who are black who are robbing a bank. Harry sits down to have have lunch, he has a hot dog because he's a simple man, right? He he doesn't need a man of the people. Although I did notice later that he mentions he has a $29.50 uh pair uh pair of pants. That's a lot of money in 1971, just for the record. That's not cheap. Um so Harry realizes there's a crime going on, uh, there are these bank robbers, he's he he tells the the guy at the at the where he's at where he's having lunch to call the police, then the alarm goes off. He comes out with his giant phallic Magnum 44, right? He blows away three of the bank robbers, sh wounds another one, and then walks up to him and delivers this incredible you know monologue where he says, you know, in all the excitement, I don't know how many shots I fired, was it five or was it six? And the guy, the guy's rabbing for a shotgun and says, Do you feel lucky? It's it's it's one of the great lines in cinema history. There's no question about it. Whether, even though if I find it gross. And then after the guy says, I got to know, right? He takes the gun and he points it at him and he pulls the trigger. That would not be acceptable in most police departments.
SPEAKER_02So it's an unpleasant scene, but it's it's carrying a lot of narrative water. Yeah. It's showing you that Eastwood is a regular guy with his hot dog. It's also supposed to tell us what a great copy is in two ways. One, in observing things. Yes. I mean, I I think they took that a little far. It's like if I walked past a car and there were a lot of cigarette butts outside the window, I wouldn't just know for a fact that they were waiting to be the escape car for bank robberies. I don't know if he had enough clues to actually draw that conclusion, but it's it's supposed to show that he's a savvy observer and a man of action, because then he can, you know, take them all out even before any kind of backup arrives. But also for the movie itself, you know, Eastwood always knows, or Harry always knows how many bullets are in his gun. So he knew he was out of bullets when he was having that confrontation with that guy, and he essentially effectively disarmed him with rhetoric by scaring him to thinking maybe he did. So when he pulls the trigger, it's not actually that terrifying for the audience because Harry knows how many bullets are in his gun. And also, Harry knows how many bullets are in his gun at the end of the movie as well. And he goads the guy with the same speech for the exact opposite end.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell No, no, I'm gonna push back. He did not need to do that because the guy was already wounded and he was reaching for the shotgun. Harry could have just picked up the shotgun and ensured that he did not get it. He wanted torture rights. He wanted to torture this guy. That's what he wanted to do. And that's why this is a fascist movie.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, but the scene which, again, more which more than flirts with racism, nevertheless, I do think puts down several markers for the movie proper.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Absolutely. And the next scene, by the way, which is, you know, this is you mentioned the black sidekick as a uh in the Tarry Inferno. Like he goes to the hospital where the doctor is black and they're friends, they grew up together, and he mentions his wife who is dead. And you know, the idea here is to again humanize Harry. He's not, oh sure, he tortured this guy, threatened to shoot him, right? Okay, that's about But he has a black friend. Yes. Okay. And his wife died. So he's not that bad. I mean, by the way, like again, this feels like cliche. I don't I I can't I I generally don't know what it would have been like in 71 to see this film. But today, it just feels like such a cliche. Such a cliche. Uh that's a good one. You know what's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um I again, I believe the movie is the movie, and so I don't like to talk about the backstory too much in that regard, but I am not the least bit surprised to learn that Siegel insisted upon and inserted that scene. Because it was, you know, it's the one the one in the hospital or the doctor, yeah. The black doctor. Uh look, look, Dirty Harry is friends with the black doctor scene. He has a black friend. Yes, that's a Don Siegel scene, and it was it's done inserted at Siegel's assistance. But I do want to add that this can be done better. Um In Bullet, you know, Steve McQueen has an interaction with a black doctor at a hospital, a beautiful hospital sequence. And I think the fact that the doctor was black was relevant uh to understanding the context of the story at that time, and I didn't find it ham-handed at all. But of course, he hadn't just shot some black guy in a different scene, so it was a little different.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. No, I let me say that for the record. Uh I think you make a great point. Like my other complaint with this film is that I don't I think it it's just not that good. There's a lot of really ham-handed stuff in the film. Like that scene is so I would the line I would say is like you can see the strings like from the puppeteer. There's lots of scenes like that in this film. I think I think also the dialogue is a little wooden at times. I just think this could be done a lot more effectively. Um and I want to just mention also one other scene that is actually the one of the worst scenes in this entire movie. Not just saying something. They get called to this uh suicide jumper. Right. This scene is horrendous because basically what happens is guy's gonna jump. You would think that they would have somebody who's trained to get people down from top of a building. No, they just asked Harry. They could have asked his partner, Chico Gonzalez, by the way. Chico Gonzalez, really, um, who has a sociology degree. Maybe send him up there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02A Stephen Colbert-like figure, you know, where he's saying, my friend Chico Gonzalez is here today.
SPEAKER_01Chico Gonzalez is here. Yeah. And that's and that, by the way, leads up to this whole thing where he says, I don't he says, I hate everybody, I hate blacks. I mean I won't use the epithets. Right. Goes down the list, right? So anyway, so we get to the scene and he goes up to the top of the building and is like, well, listen, just give me your name and number because you're gonna jump. And you know, once you fall, like we can't identify you because your body's gonna be all mashed up. And then this guy tries to punch Harry, but somehow in doing so grabs on to the what's it called? Like the cherry picker. Right. No, not just damn it. He knocks him out. Yes. Some other guy is holding on to it, but he's still knocked out by Harry and he's still holding on. It's it's it's by the way, interesting, interesting little sidebar. That scene was directed by Eastwood. Yeah. Siegel was sick, and Eastwood directed it, and I think that's actually what got him. It was supposed to be done in like five or six days, and they did it like in one night.
SPEAKER_02And the key word there: night. I'm telling you, anything that happens uh anything that happens in this movie at night, I'm enjoying.
SPEAKER_01But the right. I no, and look, it's one of the best things about this movie. Uh that it's beautiful. It's really a really a very attractive film. And you know, but again, this scene is been to get this idea of like, you know, why is he called dirty hair? Because he gets the dirty job, he gets all the dirty jobs, like having to talk the guy down, the jumper down. In reality, he's dirty hairy because he's just like a he's a bad cop. I mean, you know, he tortures people, he doesn't abide by the Constitution, he engages in legal searches and seizures and what have you, all this kind of stuff. So that's why he's dirty. But anyway, I just think that whole opening thing, it's just so it's ham-handed. That's the word I used before, but it's also like it's it's so obvious that that Siegel is making out liberals to be bad, as to be like responsible for public disorder and for preventing police from actually doing their job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and if we can just pull back on the fascism a little bit, you know, it's this is alive with American politics. This is really a Nixon type movie. The guy ran on the slogan of law and order, and you had, you know, a lot of permissive, I don't know, all of which I favored, you know, court decisions about the the rights of the accused and things like that. And there was a serious societal pushback against that, and it also coincided, um, did not cause, but coincided with a major increase in urban crime in this period. And so a lot of kind of regular folks did react viscerally to the to the to the comforting fable that if only we quote unquote got tough with these people, we could solve all our problems. And that that resonated with audiences.
SPEAKER_01So I you know, I wrote a book on the 68 election, and one of the things that I was struck by in working on that book was that, you know, people were worried about crime, and rightfully so. Yeah. Crime increased exponentially in the mid to late 1960s. I mean, it was stratospheric increases in crime rates across like every amount, like rape, murder, larceny, auto theft, you name it. Everything got got worse. And so you have this increase in crime, and then you have this reactionary idea that we have to get tougher and we have to like, you know, ignore civil liberties and not worry about rights. I mean, how many times in this movie does somebody say, I have rights? Scorpio says it, the DA says it, the judge who's reviewing the case says it. It's it's such an attack on the left, and permissiveness is responsible for increases in crime.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And we haven't even gotten to where all that shit hits the fan, but before we do, I do want to say one quick one one more shot. I just want to call out before before we turn to the to the dark side of this movie. Right. Um, after they visit his partner who was shot by Scorpio in the hospital, he's with his wife. This isn't really plausible to me, but there's a very attractive staircase that's open, open to the air, that they walk down and and and Harry and Chico's wife uh have a conversation. I like it because I thought it was an attractive shot, maybe too attractive. Also, it kind of slowed the movie down a little bit, which is not typical for this type of movie. And I just wanted to get in that little that little hat tip before we now I think we're about to turn it on. Well, actually, what we all agree upon is just the horror, the horror that is this movie.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. But I want to say about that scene that so he it's first of all, the only real interaction you have with a woman in the film, right? This is Chico's wife, they're walking down the thing, and he says, she asked if you mentioned asked about his wife, he says, My wife is dead, she could get killed by a drunk driver. And it's and she she says, like, well, you know, why do you keep doing it? And he's like, I don't know. I'm like, that's the best answer you I it it just felt like such an underwhelming answer. Like I and I I found it like really uh you could have done more with that, more to explain a little bit of his of his background. But he's like, I don't know, I don't know why I do it.
SPEAKER_02He's a man of few words. You know, if the little bubble in his head was saying, I do this because it's a dirty job that someone has to do and I'm capable of doing it. That's what he would have said if he was a person who spoke.
SPEAKER_01I guess. I guess. I I just found it a little bit like sort of underwhelming and and I don't know. It just it's what it's again, it just felt a little bit uh you can see again, you can see the strings. That's how I that's how I describe it. Um So I I again I I think that I think Pauline Kale has this exactly right. I just think this movie it pr promulgates this idea that we are dealing with crime and we're dealing with disorder and and and civilizational decay and you know degradation of traditional norms because of liberals. Because of liberals. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Those damn liberals. Those damn liberals. Exactly. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Every last one of them.
SPEAKER_01But the ladies, the blacks, the Jews, the the you know, you name it, like the ACLU, whatever it is, right? They're all responsible for how things have gotten in America. And so to your point, like I guess you could see something redeeming in those first 73 minutes.
SPEAKER_02I just think it's struck. So I would not say that there weren't debatable or problematic elements in that seven first 71 minutes. I'm saying if you roll the credits with Harry on the Hill and the dead girl being pulled out of the thing and that's it, the movie is over, you have something to talk about. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's fair. That's fair. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And whereas at minute uh 102, you don't. Right.
SPEAKER_01Because right after that scene, literally the next scene is he goes to see the DA who tells him, again, Scorpio had rights, you broke in, which by the way, he was warned by his former partner that he was violating the law by breaking into the stadium and not getting a warrant. Uh he uh breaks in, he tortures uh Scorpio. Yes. And all of that basically means that like none of this uh evidence is admissible, and Scorpio is out on the street.
SPEAKER_02Which is such utter bullshit. But let's just recall who tells him this. It's not just the DA, it's a liberal judge who moonlights as a professor at Berkeley. I mean, we're just checking off boxes here.
SPEAKER_01Literally. How many liberal boogemen can we hit in this scene? It is a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_02And there is no way. I mean, so maybe I mean, even if some of the things from that search gets tossed, there's no way Scorpio's walking away from this. Absolutely no way. It's just it's it's a it's a fantasy. It's a fashion fantasy.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely fantasy.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous, yes. And then the idea that and only Harry would want to keep tabs on this guy afterwards, right? Right. Yes. Not only is he completely free and clear from any legal liability for all the many crimes he has committed up to that point, but Harry's the only one who wants to kind of keep an eye on it.
SPEAKER_01Right. I uh 100%. And and it's ridiculous. And it's also like it's again, it's it's presenting this idea that like he is a savior. So that actually brings me to a question I want to ask you about.
SPEAKER_02I mean, but that line that you've said, I think you've said it, but let's repeat it again. That man had rights. I mean, it's it you it it is it's unfair to the word caricature to call that a caricature. It is.
SPEAKER_01And I can assure you that no ADA uh is going to say that. Right? They're gonna say this is, you know, you screwed up because this guy is a dirtbag and he's a killer, and we want him in in in in in custody, and like we need to figure out a way to do it. Not he had rights. That's not what he would be saying. Terrible. It's terrible. Um and that's where the movie kind of falls apart for you, and I think it's for me as well. I mean, it's it's obvious at this point what the what the movie's intentions are. Um But I want to ask you a question because I was thinking about this a second ago. I mean, is this character is not the first anti-hero, but like is it a model? Because anti-heroes have especially in like modern, mostly in television, with sopranos and uh and breaking bad, like anti-heroes have become really like just you know the framework for a lot of modern television and cinema. Is this kind of the first anti-hero character, or is it maybe the most uh resonant anti-hero character? You mean Harry? Yes.
SPEAKER_02Um I don't think that can be. But it can't be, right? It can't be. And they're not popping into my head, but it was, you know, but there is a there is a tradition of of anti-heroes. I mean, the It's tricky because of the production code. The classic Western structure was for someone who would had was operating outside of the law. But again, their their good standing within the law had to be restored by the end of the picture because of the production code. So they couldn't be a full fledged kind of anti-hero in that sense.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Right. I mean I I just I I I don't know if it's I don't there's never I mean it's never a first anything really. I mean, but I think it's more a question of is this does this anti-hero character, anti-hero trope, become one that gets widely imitated? And that's kind of what I was getting at earlier. I feel like this particular this idea of the renegade cop who's who's fighting against not just the criminals, but the system, people are trying to stop him from you know doing his job. Um that that is I feel like it it's it's this is sort of the crystallization of that kind of stereotype.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell It's also 1971 out there, which is very important for a number of reasons, some of which was always discussed. But in movie land, this question of cops and violence and things is very fresh. Um, you know, 71 is also a French connection, and that's another cop who, let's just say, you know, pushes boundaries at the least. Uh 71 also had a series of films that were were we already talked about one of them, Clockwork Orange, that were really pushing the barriers on violence. And and speaking of immoral films, not amoral films, but immoral films, you had Peck and Paul's straw dogs. Also, 71, 71, 71, 71. So there's something about the the presence of violence in society that is making its way on screen in a very significant way in that particular year. And this is part of all that.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell That's interesting. Now I know for a fact that that this character Scorpio was based in part on the Zodiac Killer, who uh has well, we didn't know who he was until recently found out he was Ted Cruiser's father, right? That that's we know that we now know that I'm just kidding, he he's not Ted Cruiser's father. That's a big that's a big joke. Uh but no, but seriously, this was based on the Zodiac Killer. But one thing I'll say about this this character, played by Andy Robinson, who again was in Charlie Varick. I it's interesting that I've seen a lot of people praise his performance and praise his character. I think this character in Sorrent is just uh terrible. I really didn't like it. It's so over the top. He's so uh irredeemable as a character. I mean, again, this is a character who shoots kills a child. Okay? She's uh she's a black child in the face. By the way, the black child, we see the mother who shows up when this happens, we see Harry responding to it again to humanize Harry in some of the show. He actually doesn't hate all black people, he has empathy, he has empathy for some of them. Look, um he kills a priest, he kills a police officer, um, he kidnaps a bus full of children. He is uh he was going to kill Harry before before his partner interfered. This is an irredeemable character. And I just thought I don't know. Like come on. That doesn't do anything for me.
SPEAKER_02It just he's uh both a sociopath and a sadist and entirely irredeemable and has not one hint of a redeeming feature. So I agree with you on all that. And villains are usually much more interesting when they have at least some something to say. But I do think that was the character Robinson was given. I mean, I think I mean he scares the hell out of me. Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely. Trevor Burrus, Jr. So I just but you kind of dumped on the the character and the performance. And I wanted to separate those two out. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I guess that's fair, but the it's hard to separate the two for me because the performance is I mean, yes, as the as it's written, I guess you could say it's a good performance, but it's it's also very over the top.
SPEAKER_02Um and by the way, all I know is if anybody has a peace eye on his jacket, he's definitely a serial killer. Definitely a serial killer.
SPEAKER_01She in a Don Siegel film, it seems. Um and I will say this about Andy Robinson. His career was kind of ruined by this role because he was like he got death threats, he was hypecast as a sociopath. Um but I just thought, you know, to your point, like, and this is a I'm I'm reaching here, but just as an example, like think of the diehard movies. Like Alan Rickman is a great villain. Why is he a great villain? Because he's charismatic, because he's kind of funny, because you know, you don't you don't root for him, I'm not rooting for him, but you can you find something sort of compelling about him. There's nothing compelling about Scorpio. And the scene like in the school bus is just horrific.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's uh uh yeah, let's not get into the school bus. But I I want to agree with what you're saying. No, let's let's get into the school bus. But that's not fascist, that's just idiotic.
SPEAKER_01But it's so but that's my point about this movie. This movie, like it, it it just says, like, you know what? Like Donskill's like, I don't want any fucking nuance in this film. Don't give me any subtlety. I'm gonna slap a kid and call him Fatso. That's how that's how bad a guy this guy is. That's what he does. And where they're singing the nursery rhymes, it's just so hackneyed. Uh, give me a break. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But to get back to your more subtle point, sorry, sorry.
SPEAKER_02The appeal of the charismatic villain is that you can believe that they can take on the protagonist, right? That they and that's what's exciting about a more charismatic villain. They are a true challenge to the hero that we're uh purportedly rooting for. Whereas just some you know, uh caricature of a bad guy or i is is is less interesting in that regard.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Absolutely. And in fact, the what's interesting about Scorpio's character is when he gets stabbed, he lets out this like almost subhuman wail. Um when he is uh he's trying to kill somebody on top of a church and he sees the police, he almost begins to like cry. He he he gets into like almost like a feudal position. Like he's he doesn't handle adversity well. He probably had a trouble childhood. I'm guessing he might have. That that seems possible. But you would think, like, you know, when when we compare Day of the Jackal we talked about last week, Edward Fox, now really he's a professional, you know, uh uh hitman, he's also a sociopath, too. And he at least, when he when adversity hits, he's able to sort of figure out the situation. Scorpio just screams and complains and whines and says, I have rights, and blah, blah, blah. I mean, that it's it's again, it's it's not an interesting villain to me at all. It it is a one-dimensional villain. And this whole movie is just one-dimensional. I mean, I hate to be shitting on it so much because there are things about it that I do think are compelling and well done, but it's just not it it we expect a lot in the 70s movies of having nuance, of showing some level of moral ambiguity. There's none of that in this film.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I agree. Again, I I'm I'm prepared to continue to make the case for my beloved 71 minutes of this movie. But uh the balance of the film is so ridiculous, and you get the I have rights thing. Kind of sociopathic sadists, I don't think they reach for that line even. You know, I the movie wants us to say, oh, you know, yes, of course he has rights. We need to maybe we should quickly read him those rights and let the girl die, is you know, what the movie seems to be saying about the concept of, you know, accused suspects having rights. But I don't think, you know, when they captured David Berkowitz, he said, Hey, hey, you you didn't read me by rights. This there's a serious problem on our hands here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't think so either. Um so and then of course, the movie, there's a couple things that that final thing, obviously. Um I wasn't aware that school buses had cages around them, which allowed which allowed cleans to jump on top of it. And then, you know, then by the way, again, just to point out like how awful Scorpio is, he takes his kid hostage, threatens to kill him, and then Harry, I mean, I again he incredible thing he does. He literally shoots at Scorpio with the kid holding the kid hostage, and with the case. Hell of a shot. Hell of a shot. But I don't think that would be uh allowed in most big city police districts that you would be able to do that. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02It's those stupid liberal rules that inhibit you from shooting at suspects who are shielded by a young boy.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right, exactly. The boy runs away. Scorpio, who's now been shot, I think, s twice and stabbed once, still has enough power, I guess, or strength and stupidity to try to reach for his gun while being being uh you know, Clinton's holding a magnum at him and he blows him, Wayne kills him, and then he throws his police uh badge in the water, and then the movie is over, thankfully.
SPEAKER_02I mean I'm pretty confident about this because I had the misfortune of watching them all. I do believe that every dirty Harry film ends with an extrajudicial execution, which technically is what this was.
SPEAKER_01Let's see. Uh in the In Magnum Force, right, Hal Holbert blows himself up and blows him up in a car. Right. In the Enforcer, he fires the right the the handheld like bazooka thing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Bazooka thing, right. Yes, that's right. I think you're right, actually. I think you're right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And in one of them, he uses some kind of thing that harpoons a whale or something. I don't know. I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01Remember the sudden impact, the one that came out in the 90s, uh, 80s or whatever it was. I don't remember that one at all. That's the make my day one.
SPEAKER_02Um but again, it the common theme is the only justice available to us is extra ju extrajudicially.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Well, what I think is interesting what you said is that the next movie is Magnum Force, I believe. Which is which is the story of the these renegade officers who are killing bad guys and eats what has to stop them. Which just feels like a okay, we went a little too far at Dirty Harry, so now we're gonna roll it back by saying, no, he's not really in support of like just randomly killing criminals because you know he's gonna kill cops who do that. Yeah. So and I actually think David's soul is a bad cop. Right, right. I mean, that movie is not a good movie, but at least it's an effort to reckon with some of the excesses of Dirty Harry. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That is true. It was speaking to its audience. Right. And it's critics, right. Right. It's mostly its critics, I would say. Yeah. But I and I but again, I'll go back to what I said a second ago. I I I have a lot of respect for Clint Eastwood. I think he's an amazing director. And I think what is I think really impressive about Eastwood, and you made this point earlier, is that you really do see his evolution as an artist. Uh and as somebody who sort of began his his his rise to fame uh taking on sort of These very one-dimensional characters and with not a lot of subtlety and not a lot of nuance, and really then taking his art in a different direction. And I have a lot of respect for that. I think he's made you know decades of really interesting films. He's made some schlock too. I mean, you know, no director is perfect. But I, you know, by and large, I think his movies, even the bad ones, like a movie like In the Line of Fire, which is um what's it like '93 or something with John Melkovich. That's a fun movie, actually. It's a well-designed movie. Yeah. It's a really good movie. And, you know, he's just he's a talented, talented uh filmmaker. I don't think he's an amazing actor. Like I let's just mention this really quickly. What do you think about him as an actor in this movie?
SPEAKER_02I think he's one of those actors who plays within a limited range. And when he does, he does it extremely well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Totally agree.
SPEAKER_02But that's a you know, that's uh an old Hollywood thing that that, you know, worked for decades and decades and decades.
SPEAKER_01Right. I I mean I off the top of my head, the one movie I think that he delivers a stellar performance is Unforgiven. Um, but even there, it's within a range, right? It's it's not like he's he's breaking a lot of new ground there. I mean go ahead, sorry. Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell So I thought in in that movie that no one's seen, I saw it because it's uh he's portraying John Houston during the making of The African Queen in a movie called White Hunter, Black Heart. I thought he was acting there in a way that he doesn't normally act. It wasn't, you know, it's not going to read the phone book and make me cry, but he was not playing a Clint Eastwood character. And I haven't seen The Bridges of Maris County, but apparently there's a scene in that movie in which his character or he as an actor started to cry and he looked away from the camera and someone said, Why did you do that on set? And he said, Nobody wants to see Clint Eastwood cry.
SPEAKER_01Did he really? Yeah. That is a movie that I really want to see. I have never seen that movie. Uh it it and and the more I read about it, the more I think it's something because I I do it's a it's a romance with him and Meryl Streep. I I'm sort of fascinated to see it. But he did things like Bronco Billy, like honky tonk man. He did things that were push the envelope a little bit of his own range. But I think you're right. I mean, I think that he has a persona, he has sort of a range, and he can't really sort of pivot too far away from that. Um so even in this movie, you know, he's good, but I I don't find his performance all that compelling. Uh and and really nobody in the movie I find all that. I mean, we do have some a John Vernon cameo as the mayor. We love John Vernon. He's great in Charlie Varrick. We love him.
SPEAKER_02And you know what the mayor of San Francisco loves to do is give money to extortionist criminals over and over again because there is no lesson he's capable of learning.
SPEAKER_01Every one of these freaking movies. The mayor's like, just pay the guy. Let's pay him. I always want even when the mayor gets kidnapped, I think that's in the enforcer. They still try to pay him off. And I remember that movie is that that is that Harry blows away the guy who's like holding the mayor hostage. He's thinking on some kind of like uh, what's it, like light the tower, right? Kills him, and then you hear in the background them saying, We have your money, we have your money, let the mayor go. Anyway. All right, well, look, I'm glad we did this film. It's an important film to talk about. And and you know, I think I saw it a few months ago because we thought we were gonna talk about it a while back, and I remember liking it a little bit more, but this watch, I just really came back from it, you know, thinking this is just a this is just dreadful, dreadful fascist movie. Um, even though I, as I said before, I think there are things about it that are redeeming. Um so we'll do maybe we'll do another Eastwood at some point. I just watched Play Misty for me, which I kind of say didn't do much for me, to be honest. I didn't love it. Um but Jessica Walters gets a lot of credit for that performance. I think it's a little bit um one note. I do really like uh High Planes Drifter, which he did, I think, right after or soon after this one. Um that's one of his Western movies that I think is interesting.
SPEAKER_02I want to revisit Breezy, which he did not appear in, but it's an early directoral effort of his with William Holden, and it's I I remember liking it a lot. And it was a very, very not Clint Eastwood type movie.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, but it was the synopsis I read, I was like, well, that doesn't look like it sounded at all. Um and I think we probably could do Unforgiven at some point, because that is kind of a 70s-ish, 70s style film, and I do love that film, but we could we'll figure it out. Actually, that's a good thing. We have give you a homework assignment to give us some suggestions on Kubrick films, give us some suggestions on some other clean news with films you can want to do. Um, I can see Mystic River also. I think that actually kind of has a 70s like two, too. And we love Sean Penn, who is fantastic in that movie. Um that's it for now. I think we're gonna be off next. Uh well, we're gonna be doing again. I'm gonna be putting out the Nether Woman, putting out uh hopefully the last days of Sheila for next week, if I can find it. I'll believe, I'll believe Sheila when I see it. I think it's a myth. Exactly. It's like some some random like Beatles alb that never got released or something like that. Um anyway, so uh if you are enjoying the podcast, which we hope you are, please subscribe, please uh leave a comment, uh, give us a thumbs up, buy us a cup of coffee, tell your friends, and uh we'll see you next week. All right, thanks a lot. Bye bye.