Eastwood
I always thought Clint Eastwood was the genial, George H.W. Bush type of Republican voter. Didn’t care much about the social issue stuff, didn’t much care to pay taxes, bought into his own character, whatever.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s actually the type of Republican who buys into the first half of Gran Torino.
Yet another good reason not to watch a single second of either convention.
And just to be snarky, it’s as good as time as any to note that Eastwood is vastly overrated as a director.
As for Romney, he probably wishes he was an Eastwood character, but he’s really just Mr. Morton, the old railroad tycoon from Once Upon a Time in the West.
What’s great about this is that the Republicans are the ones always ranting about how liberal Hollywood supposedly is, and they’re also the ones who basically give ridiculous amounts of attention to any Republican celebrity they could find.
The Democrats don’t give prime time speaking slots at their convention to George Clooney.
They did give one to Tommy Lee Jones in 2004 – but then, he was Al Gore’s college roommate.
It’s been the Token Convention so far. Look, we really have a Hispanic person in our party! Look, we have a black person, too! And some women! So the token celebrity fits right in there.
GOP’ers are obsessed with their lack of celebrity support and thrilled when the get one.
Openly and proudly conservatives celebrities drowned in the ocean that his liberal Hollywood has been a staple of the mental diet of rightists since the 1930s. Clarke Cable and Tyrone Powers are older examples. So was Cary Grant but he never openly advocated any particular policy.
Republicans are the ones always ranting about how liberal Hollywood supposedly is, and they’re also the ones who basically give ridiculous amounts of attention to any Republican celebrity they could find.
Ronald Reagan
Sonny Bono
Fred Grandy
George Murphy
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Shirley Temple
Hell, P. T. Barnum
“The Democrats don’t give prime time speaking slots at their convention to George Clooney.”
Maybe they should — and add Robert Redford for good measure.
Christ, the last person we need to see is Redford. Can we show Lions for Lambs too?
Can we show Lions for Lambs too?
Alas, I’m pretty sure John Yoo has specifically said that this would be legal.
Redford may be the strongest possible evidence for forced retirement laws.
That movie makes me long for the relative subtlety and lack of didacticism one expects from Aaron Sorkin.
The Newsroom got better (less bad) after hitting bottom in episodes 3 & 4.
Which number episode had Jeff Daniels BLOWING REPUBLICAN STRATEGISTS’ MINDS by being a slightly more obnoxious Tim Russert towards someone pretending to be Newt Gingrich?
All of them?
And just to be snarky, it’s as good as time as any to note that Eastwood is vastly overrated as a director.
This is true, though his best films (like Unforgiven) are basically about vindictive assholes who know that their time has passed and that they’ve lived morally suspect lives, but then go on living that way anyway.
So, in other words, Clint Eastwood makes movies about Republicans. He just happens to be somewhat self-aware, is all.
Looking forward to the Japanese version with Ken Watanabe…
Morally suspect indeed. The Dirty Harry films (Yes, I realize he didn’t direct) were reactionary and racist and did much damage to out country, Hollywood’s support for “tough-on-crime” policies.
Regarding those films–it should be said that while Dirty Harry was by far the most influential character coming out of that genre, that was a hugely popular genre of film in the 1970s and shouldn’t just be pinned on Eastwood or Don Siegel or whoever. I mean, it got a lot uglier than that. Cruising? Shudder. Hardcore? Death Wish? These are all ugly movies. And then of course classics like McQ.
True. And they spoke to widespread anxieties. But then so did George Wallace. I’m sure papers have been written about the way those films reflected/perpetuated anti-60s backlash.
Don’t forget the McBain movies
I always thought McBain was more in the 80s/Lethal Weapon class.
McGarnicle, on the other hand…
Stallone’s Cobra is the eighties contribution to the “tough-on-crime” genre.
Dirty Harry itself was iconic, the sequels rather less so. I got the impression as a kid in the 1980s that the films really capturing the vigilante-justice, kill-all-the-scum feeling that was in the air were the several indistinguishable Charles Bronson films. But they may simply have been on television more.
No argument from me there. Dirty Harry is, to put it charitably, problematic. But that’s what makes Unforgiven interesting. The whole film is basically Eastwood trying to come to terms with those cold, tough, violent characters he played for so many years. I never have any sympathy for Will Munny at the end of that movie, but I also can’t be sure how Eastwood feels about him. I think, despite it all, he kind of likes the guy, even if he is damned. It’s an ethically confused film, which is appropriate since the Western is an ethically confused genre.
Of course, the best Western ever is McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
I think you’re onto something: trying to comes to terms with but also letting off them off the hook.
There also seemed to be an attempt at atonement, perhaps sincere, in A Perfect World, which I thought was a pretty good film. Eastwood plays a cop who ends up killing, although he’d prefer not to, a sympathetic criminal.
“You see, Mr. Beauchamp, in most Western movie towns the violence of the gunslingers, or at least some of them, can be provisionally and tentatively harnessed to some project of order and justice. But not in the town of Big Whiskey!”
The best western ever is The Apple Dumpling Gang.
and the best Best Western ever is the one in John Scalzi’s Red Shirts
Thing is, Dirty Harry isn’t exactly Dirty Harry, if that makes sense. After all, Eastwood’s Harry Callahan is a good cop, but he’s also kind of a creep–nobody seems to remember the whole sub-plot that he’s a peeping tom–and then, the very next Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, is actually a repudiation of vigilantism and an affirmation of the rule of law.
Mr. Morton, nah. He’s Headly Lamarr from Blazing Saddles.
That genial HW kind of Republican has been relying on the votes of kooks for quite a while now, so I don’t see why you have to be wrong.
McGravitas nails it. Decent, moderate Republicans have been putting up with the paranoid kooks who rile up the voters for ages; don’t see why Eastwood (who was the Republican mayor of Carmel, after all) should be immune.
An adequate director, especially when he was good material and actors to work with (Gene Hackman was robbed in Unforgiven), and a tremendous, limited, highly effective genre actor. He never got better than The Outlaw Josey Wales, but that film would have been a high point for anyone.
Oh wait, Hackman did get the Oscar for Unforgiven. My mistake, and good for him; well earned.
Someone should tell the idiot that the Ryan-Romney ticket isn’t moderate or socially libertarian.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-clinteastwood-idUSTRE78C7XZ20110913
“I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War,” Eastwood tells the magazine. “And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let’s spend a little more time leaving everybody alone.”
Hah.
I imagine most Republicans think the Romney/Ryan ticket supports their particular philosophy.
You just have to listen to the right Romney clips. Maybe they have time allotments on Fox? “From 4-6 Libertarians should tune in, from 6-8 evangelicals should tune in!”
Romney clips for every audience.
To be fair, quite a few liberals thought that Obama supported their philosophy.
To be fair, he does support the philosophy of the vast majority of this country’s liberals.
Not prosecuting self-admitted torturers is in the philosophy of the vast majority of this country’s liberals?
Or maybe it’s showering banks with public money, without requiring in exchange a suitable amount of shares?
Introducing the (quite unpopular) mandate for health care, but not a public single payer?
Punishing whistle-blowers instead of the government malefactors they exposed?
Wait, let me try again: it’s refusing to prosecute the wall street crimes, right?
Like it or not, the vast majority of this country’s liberals support Obama and approve of the job he’s doing.
Maybe you should stop calling yourself a liberal, since you seem to disagree with the rest of us.
Scroll down for Obama’s job approval among liberals.
They don’t seem to have an entry for poorly-informed internet poseurs.
Joe — If Jay Carney steps down after the re-election (knock of wood), you have got to submit your resume.
Yawn.
Joe would be pretty good at telling all those unemployed 20-somethings to sit in their childhood bedrooms and stare at the yellowing Obama posters while their economic prospects get worse and worse…that was such a great line from Ryan, but that’s exactly what Joe does.
In many ways it was a compliment. Practically every one of my friends bitches about Obama being a moderate, and you occasionally convince me otherwise.
Your comment is interesting in one sense, though: it highlights nicely the difference between the argumentation of the (order of magnitude larger) body of pro-Obama liberals, and the teeny, tiny little fringe you represent.
You never, ever see any of the massive body of people on my side of the fence write disparage an anti-Obama argument merely on the grounds that it is an anti-Obama comment.
Whereas people like you pretty much make “You must be wrong because your comment is pro-Obama” your central talking point.
It’s just not a fair fight; that’s probably why the numbers are so grossly imbalanced.
Joe would be pretty good at telling all those unemployed 20-somethings to sit in their childhood bedrooms and stare at the yellowing Obama posters while their economic prospects get worse and worse…
No. Joe would be pretty good at explaining why its not Obama’s fault, and he would be correct.
Fascinating, Mr. Kael.
Whereas people like you pretty much make “You must be wrong because your comment is pro-Obama” your central talking point.
Joe, was this addressed to me? If so, you are mistaken.
Honestly, Sherm, at this point, I’ve lost track.
Joe, was this addressed to me?
For what it’s worth, I didn’t think it was.
how about people that think they are liberal but are only so by the standards used by Republicans? Do they have that category?
How about people who make up excuses about why their politics aren’t a miserable failure among the people they’re trying to convince?
Sounds like you just give a great description of the Obama Administration and its apologists.
The Obama administration’s politics have made him the prohibitive favorite to win the presidential election.
You should visit the real world on occasion, Jennie. It’s nice here.
LMAO!
Still drinking the Hope & Change flavored Kool-Aid, I see.
Obama is in deep, deep trouble, and Romney is surging in the polls.
I used to argue about how the election was going back in 2008 with a guy with the handle “TallDave” who sounded just like you, Jennie.
Obama was doomed then, too. I seem to recall that he was quite convinced that Democrats were panicking over Sarah Palin. Good times, good times.
And McCain/Palin were surging into the lead until Lehman Bros. and the bailout which caused a lot of Republicans to stay home in disgust.
It’s called a convention bump. Every presidential candidate has one. When the only time your candidate is leading is during and immediately after the convention, that’s not a good sign.
Well, it’s a good thing for the Republicans that they nominated Mitt “The Base Machine” Romney this time. I hear turnout will be severely high this time.
Anon,
18-29 year olds give Obama his highest approval ratings of any age group.
But I’m sure you understand their lives and interests better than they do.
They won’t approve for long. Paul Ryan, Gen X Republican, is going to bring in the youth vote.
Bring it where, Jennie?
The Saginaw Plaza Hotel?
Um, Denial is in Egypt. This is America.
Now he’s up there in Alaska digging in the cold, cold ground
The greedy fool is a looking for the gold I never found
It serves him right and no-one here is missin’ him
Least of all the newly-weds of Saginaw, Michigan.
Paul Ryan, Gen X Republican, is going to bring in the youth vote.
Ha, the Jugenbund.
I think we’re going to be hearing more about Janesville, Wisconsin and its shuttered GM plant than Saginaw, Mich.
Shuttered on December 23, 2008. Damn Obama. If only there was some reason why he didn’t he stop that.
In Saginaw, in Saginaw,
Bartenders think no ill;
But they’ve ways of indicating when
You are not acting well:
They throw you through the front plate glass
And then send you the bill.
Anon,
I know you are not one to let facts get in the way of arguments, but Ryan’s bold-faced lie about the GM Plant is evident from a review of the National Review.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/16839/i-now-i-i-times-i-laments-suv-layoffs/greg-pollowitz
“Kathy,” I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
“Michigan seems like a dream to me now”
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I’ve gone to look for America
I think we’re going to be hearing more about Janesville, Wisconsin and its shuttered GM plant than Saginaw, Mich.
Oh I hope so.
What are the chances his speech refers to it being “Halftime in America?”
I’ll be really surprised if the clip of Eastwood saying “GET OFF MY LAWN!” doesn’t end up getting a really long standing ovation…
He may try to pull an Arthur Davis “I had no idea that supporting Democratic policies would be tantamount to supporting Democratic policies GREEK COLUMNS!” gambit.
More and more, I’m coming around to the realization that the Baby Boomers get more criticism than they deserve (not too much more, but a little), while the Silent Generation gets way less than they deserve. I think main difference between them is that the Silents tended to have tougher childhoods than the Boomers, though both had much easier adulthoods than they perceive. It’s just that Silents maybe never expected to be successful when they were children, so when they “made it” as adults, they were more apt to attribute it to their gumption and values rather than their good fortune in living during America’s golden age.
“it’s as good as time as any to note that Eastwood is vastly overrated as a director.”
I’m glad somebody said this. And not just his directing, of course, but his alleged acting.
I remember back in the 80s when Eastwood started a long streak of Ok-but-not-great films I read critics rave about the greatness of these mediocrities and wondering what in the world they were seeing that I wasn’t. All I could think of was that they had grown so used to seeing him in stultifying and embarrassingly acted action and comedy movies that they went overboard the other direction when he stepped it up a notch.
Don’t denigrate the whole Clint-with-Orangutang genre.
When was the last good movie with an ape? It feels like we’ve been in a long dry spell for at least the last 15 years or so.
There was that disaster with the guy from Friends. That seems to have convinced studio execs that Americans were over movies featuring people and apes.
Matt LeBlanc bears a heavy burden if he truly killed the ape buddy genre.
Not as long as it’s been since we had a good Women-in-Cages film. I yearn for a good “Bust out at the Buxom County Jail” flick.
I think that internet killed this genre. Women in cages films were for men who couldn’t quite get their sense of shame and guilt to low enough level to go to porn theatre or store. Thanks to the internet, they could watch all the porn they want in the privacy of their dwelling place.
Hey! Let’s not forget about MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate!
(I have never seen MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate. I just like saying “MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate.”)
What did the “MVP” in the first MVP stand for?
Most Valuable Primate, natch, which is still good, but, I think you will agree, not quite on the same level.
So what you’re saying is that the “MVP” series is sort of like the Godfather movies.
I haven’t seen either MVP, but I can only assume that this is accurate.
The first two MVP movies make the Air Bud franchise look like the Scarface of basketball animal films.
Wrong. The first Godfather is in almost every superior to the sequel (exception: John Cazale’s performance in II). I genuinely do not understand the argument that II is better – the De Niro parts are slow and dull, and the Pacino parts are basically just a recapitulation of the last few scenes of the first movie, made more extreme and spread out over an entire film.
does Planet of the Apes count?
Or Gorillas in the Mist?
Neither. I am referring to the specific genre of “uproarious” comedies that features a real ape living in modern urban society.
The problem is that CGI is muddling this. Didn’t that Jim Carrey film that looked awful (and I assumed that nobody watched but, appallingly, made money, especially overseas) involve filming with a mix of real and CGI animals? No reason you couldn’t do that with apes.
It’s good to have the CGI muddling it because ape trainers pretty much beat the hell out of the apes to get them to do stuff until the apes get independent enough to hit back.
Oh, sure. Absolutely. But the art form must be considered dead.
And not just his directing, of course, but his alleged acting.
Seen years ago in The Guardian;
Clint Eastwood playing Tristan would be a case of aggravated Yseult.
There’s a reason why Once Upon a Time in the West is Sergio Leone’s best film. Yeah, Charles Bronson made revenge films too, but at least he had a great face.
Leone wanted Eastwood to play one of the villains in the beginning. I defy anyone to tell me those scenes would have been better with Clint.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone credible say that Clint Eastwood could act well.
Can you cite, please? Because apart from rare glimpses of talent, Eastwood is about as good an actor as the scenery, particularly on set.
Altho he was funny in Paint Your Wagon.
He has been nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award a few times.
Tangentially…
BURT REYNOLDS: I truthfully didn’t think I was good long after I was working.
LARRY KING: Really? You mean in those years you were making it you didn’t…
REYNOLDS: No, not in those, but in the earlier — because I went under contract to Universal in 1958 and was fired in 1959.
KING: With Clint Eastwood.
REYNOLDS: Well, Eastwood was — I always tell the story that we were fired the same day, but we weren’t. We were fired the same year. And he was fired because his Adam’s apple stuck out too far. He talked too slow. And he had a chipped tooth and he wouldn’t get it fixed. And I said, “Why are you firing me?” And they said, “You can’t act.” And I thought…
KING: Was that a blow, Burt?
REYNOLDS: No. I said — no, I said to Clint, you know, you are really screwed, because I can learn how to act. You can’t get rid of that Adam’s apple.
and clean shaven….
And with Clint Eastwood, Romney sewed up the old rich white guy vote.
Exactly.
Maybe he’s actually the type of Republican who buys into the first half of Gran Torino.
Right, because Glenn Reynolds totally doesn’t imagine himself dying in a heroic gun battle with cartoonish minorities. He just has to pretend that Re-Animator is the sequel.
I have no use for Eastwood politically and he’s far from my favorite director, but he’s leagues ahead of most other actors-turned-director (which may seem like damning with faint praise, but he really is good) and has often used his clout to choose dark and difficult subjects that were risky projects to undertake. He’s probably received more than his fair share of attention at the Oscars and he may be somewhat overrated here and there, but that doesn’t negate the overall high quality of his work as a filmmaker. He deserves a lot of the praise, and it give me no great pleasure to say so.
I don’t care, I still like him. And Robert Downey Jr. Mel Gibson I never liked and was very happy to learn that he’s a Republican.
Respectfully, let’s never link RDJr and MG in the same breath. One was a druggie, possibly a douche, but has evolved past that phase.
The other is an abusive, anti-semitic *sshole with zero plans to change that trajectory.
RDJ has stuck up for Gibson recently, although he made it clear that it was mostly returning an old favor that Gibson did for him back in the day (specifically, paying RDJ’s insurance for Air America so that he could do the film). Gibson seems to inspire that sort of loyalty in people, as Jodie Foster (not the sort of person you’d expect to stick up for him, as she’s Hollywood’s most prominent female closet case) has done the same.
I thought Mel helped him get sober so they were buddies or something. I was just trying to think of prominent Hollywood conservatives I have strong feel towards.
I was disturbed to learn recently that David Foster Wallace voted for Reagan. I assume, and hope, it was in 1980, when he was 18, and not 1984.
It could have been during his heavy substance abuse phase.
Every film Clint Eastwood directs looks like it was shot inside of a coffin.
Nutpicking at Power Line comments (a thread begun when it was still a mystery, but continuing after Clint became known:
If it was David Mamet, even I’d watch.
Even better: a speech by David Lynch, who is reportedly a Republican.
Talk about a beat that would sap anyone’s…
Why not Hologram Ron Silver?
Bill Clinton? The head of government of a foreign country? The current director of the CIA? There are really people who thought any of those people were plausible speakers at the Republican National Convention?
The funny thing is, I can imagine the alternate universe where Ambassador Jon Huntsman becomes a Republican hero by trashing his boss in primetime.
I prefer to evaluate actors and directors on whether they are actually, well, good at what they do. Downgrading them because of their politics reminds me too much of Zdanovism.
I like the old spaghetti westerns, thought Unforgiven was extremely good, and hated the vigilante stuff. Given his history, Clint endorsing republicans is roughly as surprising as the Sun rising in the east.
Yea. It was news when he did the Chrysler commercial for this precise reason
Since part of that history includes holding office as a Republican, I agree it’s very unsurprising.
I prefer to evaluate actors and directors on whether they are actually, well, good at what they do. Downgrading them because of their politics reminds me too much of Zdanovism.
Is anyone actually doing that here?
Laffed.
I had a crush on Clint Eastwood in the late 50′s ad 60′s when he played a regular, second-tier character on TV’s Rawhide — Rowdy something. (The show ran while I was in my 8-15 years.) I can still sing the theme song. Then in college I discovered Sergio Leone movies — absolutely loved them (still do), and there was my heartthrob, Clint Eastwood — but I enjoyed these movies no longer for him as heartthrob but for, well, many things, including Leone’s leftist take on American westerns (so we interpreted them then — plus, Leone’s west corresponded much better to the tales told by my Montana-raised father, b. 1918, than did any movie or TV show I’d ever seen out of Hollywood). I remember reading somewhere long ago that Eastwood had to go to Italy to get parts since Hollywood wasn’t interested in him (for movies) — the pattern then of American actors to Italy for sword and sandals and spaghetti westerns, but with a twist, as it turned out.
Maybe a combination of formative immersion in the strange world of American TV westerns and initial rejection by Hollywood for movie roles, along with whatever predispositions he brought to these experiences, created the talented but seriously stunted director Eastwood we came to know later. (No, he was never much of an actor. Okay, sometimes pretty good, but even at his best, a journeyman.)
For that “fundamentally stunted”: I’ll cite Mystic River, a very good movie (with some great performances by some truly great actors), but a conventional movie, in the end, compared with In the Bedroom, of which it felt to me like a pale remake (though probably, given production times and such, it wasn’t, actually). (Compare the way Forrest Gump feels like a version of the incredibly better Being There — but the former gets all the attention, has all the Hollywood glitz and approbation attached to it.)
All this suggests to me that, possibly, Eastwood has always sought the Hollywood approval he didn’t get as a young actor, has a true creative streak (on the directing side), but never develops it fully in his search for approbation (which he’d never accept anyway, since he’s come to define himself as out of reach of that approbation: you ignore me; now you love me, as you should have all along, but I thrived without your love, so now that I’ve got it and basked in it briefly, f you).
Rowdy Yates. I loved that show as a kid. And Four Feather Falls.