Chapo Trap House - Movie Mindset 06 Teaser - Clint Eastwood's Sudden Impact

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Will, Hesse and John Semley review Clint Eastwood’s 1983 Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact. Go ahead, make my day. Subscribe today for access to the full episode and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

go ahead make my day clenis wood dirty harry sudden impact this is the fourth in the fourth entry in the dirty harry series uh... this is the only dirty harry movie directed by clenis wood uh... i would love to talk to the original dirty harry directed by dawn seagull but we already did already did one dawn seagull movie on our our little movie mindset run here

But some impact I would say is like is one of the more interesting ones for our reasons that we've talked about but Maybe come clear so basically the movie opens and it's it's San Francisco, baby, and like it's just night time helicopter shot It's the my first note is Mario Kart-ass music my first note is Mario Kart-ass music. Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. The opening credits, I want to point out that the opening credits for both of these movies are exactly the same. Yeah, one is Mario Kart, the other Saturday night live music.

The music is, inside an impact is by Lalo Schifrin, who did the, enter the dragon soundtrack, I believe. But yeah, also to talk, you mentioned the like Clint Eastwood economy, both of these films have multiple scenes where it just seems like they're not lit at all. Oh, yeah. I was actually shocked. I was really struggling for a while. So yeah, it opens and we are, you know, high on the bluffs up the coast, we see the beautiful golden gate bridge. And it's a, it's a man and a woman in a parked car and as the camera zooms in we realize there you know in a state of Congress they're necking by the bridge. The woman undoes his

pants but instead of taking him out she takes out a gun and shoots his dick off and then walks away and we realize it'sondral lock and now we really can't talk about certain impact without talking about the real life relationship between clinton eastwood and sondral lock this would be their last on screen collaboration and indeed the last movie sondralock appeared in that reachieved any kind of wide release so i mean uh... they had a a fraught relationship to say the say the least in her nineteen ninety seven autobiography the good the, say the least in her 1997 autobiography, the good, the bad and the very ugly, a Hollywood journey. She called Eastwood a completely evil,

manipulating, lying excuse for a man. Oh my god. Could I say, because I literally have that book right here? There's an amazing anecdote in that book where she talks about giving a custom, I just posted about this on Twitter, which I think there's a custom made wig to a child with cancer where she like requisitions the Warner Brothers private jet to try to shell be villed Tennessee to give a wig to a dying child who like loves Sandra Locke and she said so much time about like what an amazing person she is and then Clint's just like what the hell are you doing with that for you? You should be around kids with cancer.

Like it's like the most evil person of himself that you can imagine. Yeah, like, they started their relationship. They made many movies together. And like Clint was married at the time. It already had a couple of kids, but it was sort of like, I don't know. The companion in marriage, they lived separately.

And like Sandra Locke always felt like she was tired with being like the companion in marriage, they lived separately. And like Sandra Locke always felt like she was tired with being like the other woman or breaking up a marriage. Needless to say, you know, by her accounts, Clint she did her rather coldly. And there's a lot of that. So she had to say was marriage. She was married to a gay sculptor that she had a platonic marriage with. And this guy ran the game, baby. Like he lived off Clint Eastwood's dime for like a decade. Where like he was like setting Eastwood was setting this guy up at a house in California and it was like Sandra Locke's platonic husband,

this guy named like Gordon Anderson or something like that. Oh, that's so sick. That's great. That's great. You know, sculpting like Cox or whatever he was probably sculpting. He sculpted dolls on the lot. He even was like nine pages talking about his doll sculptures and then be like,

I think we make sudden impact. It was okay. He's a quintess bottomlessly. Oh my gosh. Is there he was? Yeah. I think he passed away. No, R.A.P.

Um, my, John, another one of my favorites from the Sandra Lock memoir is that she talks about how Clinton movies constantly makes references to the Korean War to give people the impression that he's a veteran who served in one of America's wars. But she mentions that his military service during the Korean War consisted of him being a lifeguard of the US military base for a year. Yeah, and he would screen movies to the GI's. Like he was a projectionist and lifeguard. I love being on the other hand, he'd be a lifeguard

for the US military. It's just like, hey, no rough housing, no running by the pool. The beautiful generals, you have to screen movies for the beautiful generals. Pulling out a call 45, because you guys are playing Marco Polo. That's actually my grandpa grew up in Sicily during World War II and he told me this kind of tangential, but he told me a story one time of him when he was like 10 or 11, him and

his three friends playing soccer against American GIs. And the American GIs lost so bad that one of them shot the gun with the shot the ball with a gun not far off that's great that's a nice like counterpoint to the armistice like germany uh... britain football game and you know that i mean that's about America. We don't like losing. We're a nation of winners.

A nation of losers that nonetheless has this psychopath that need to win everything all the time. And I guess just like the Sandra Lock, like they're fraught real life of romantic relationship and how it relates to this movie, is that this was originally written as a movie for Sandra Locke. It was basically, it was supposed to be about her character

and sort of like a serious movie about like a rape revenge story or whatever, and then Clint Sawett and basically just gave it to his screenwriter and they were like, yeah, we can throw dirty Harry in here too. And the end result really shows. It makes this movie true. The end result is what makes this movie true. The end result is what makes this movie baffling and fascinating because it really is like

two different movies in one. And one, the Sandra Locke story is this like really queasy, like nasty, like rape revenge movie. And like the killings really turned your stomach. And then the other half is just Dirty Harry up to his old goofs and spoofs. Chopin it up, having fun, and everyone he kills in the movie is like a cartoon. It's literally, it feels frank pentanglia from the godfather at a wedding.

He just gives him a heart attack by showing up. Literally, it is like, it is like Wiley, Hyode and Roadrunner. Clint is a Roadrunner, and he's like, it's like, there's this insane dissonance, and I texted Will about this when I was watching the movie, but like, there's this crazy dissonance of everyone telling him, we don't know you'd people like you anymore,

it's a different time now. And then meanwhile, he takes five steps outside and six people are trying to kill him. Like, yeah, it's crazy. It's like, there's such like, and people are like, stop causing trouble. There's like 10 scenes where he gets reprimanded for trying, for someone trying

to assassinate him in the course of like three days. Well, yeah, that's that, that's a thing that you mentioned the opening scene, but it's like, it doesn't even come back to her character for like 25 minutes. It just becomes like a dirty, hairy short. And this is the movie that gives us like go ahead make my day and all those classic scenes where he takes out like nine guys

who were robbing a coffee shop for probably $45. But then he essentially gets put on like forced R&R and goes to this seaside town where the two of them kind of link up I guess. Um, yeah, they link a building this movie. This is also one of my dad's favorite movies. So when I knew we were doing it, I texted him up like, we're doing sudden impact on the podcast and he was like, okay. Because your dad restored antique carousels really?

Yeah, he was really into the carousel parts of the movie. Like not. You could take your leave the other stuff. And you know, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's like a template like stock plot line in all the dirty Harry movies of Harry Callahan being, being chewed out, as you said, by like a,

a procession of like the stupid police commissioner, the stupid judge, the stupid DA, the stupid human rights activists and social justice warriors. But yeah, it's just over and over again, getting chewed out by being like, damn it Harry, you can't do this, you're on for sleep. And he's just like, what do you want for me?

Yeah. Baring those criminals cost the city $12,000. It's like, like, and like, yeah, like, and the first time we see Harry, he's like, he's late to court. He like, he turns like, and the first time we see Harry, he's like, he's, he's late to court. He like, he, he turns out to court late. And like as the judge dismisses a case against some, some young punks.

Yeah. Like, you know, as she says, he was like, you know, in the eyes of the court, the evidence you obtained illegally doesn't exist. And he lets these episodes out. Subscribe and like, they try to like slash talk, talk, talk, sweet to him in the elevator. And he's like, to me, punk, your dog shit, not scrap up dog shit anytime I see dog shit on my shoes.

He just gives a long. Yeah. Yeah. And then John, as you said, then he goes to get his morning coffee and notices that there's something I miss because the lady behind the counter just like dumps sugar in it and he's like I've never had sugar in my coffee and then like for the full that was because subscribing to be on the top of the track youths are robbing this diner so he just like goes through the back entrance comes in and shoots like six guys and then of course that's

that's when we get the the famous, go ahead, make my day. And what I love about the delivery of that line is that at this point, it's one of the most iconic dirty Harry, like, one-liners. And it's like, it's not for the full episode. Subscribe at patreon.com slash chapo trap house.