Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry (1971).
This film which rang-in Eastwood’s arrival as a leading man in Hollywood was made in 1971, the year which also saw him make his directorial debut with Play Misty For Me. Interestingly, Clint asked Dirty Harry Director Don Siegel to cameo as a bartender in the psycho-thriller about a radio jock and an obsessive female fan with a personality disorder, played by Jessica Walter.
But in the context of Dirty Harry, the referencing continued. If you look closely early in the movie when Harry walks down the street after shooting the bank robbers, a cinema in the background has across it’s advertising boarding “Play Misty For Me”, a little in-joke between the two Directors. Post-modernity at work, before the phrase was even coined.
The entire street was a film-set in Burbank California. It was such a good build that people watching the movie couldn’t understand why some streets were closed off as dead-ends in the film when they are actual real, open-ended streets in San Francisco.
The hold-up guy Harry holds his gun on outside of the bank and recites his famously cheesy soliloquy to is Albert Popwell, who plays a different character in the next three Harry Callahan Films. Perhaps he was wise to say no to The Dead Pool…
The real life Zodiac killings were the inspiration for Dirty Harry; even the killer (Andy Robinson) was called Scorpio in reference to the real life cases.
The excellent and historically accurate 2007 David Fincher Film Zodiac recognizes this in a couple of scenes, notably when the central characters investigating the case attend Dirty Harry’s premiere. The cinema used in Zodiac was the same actual cinema used in 1971, which hasn’t changed in terms of renovations since then.
I guess you can tell I really know a lot about Dirty Harry…
Enough geek-trivia; do you feel lucky..?
This film which rang-in Eastwood’s arrival as a leading man in Hollywood was made in 1971, the year which also saw him make his directorial debut with Play Misty For Me. Interestingly, Clint asked Dirty Harry Director Don Siegel to cameo as a bartender in the psycho-thriller about a radio jock and an obsessive female fan with a personality disorder, played by Jessica Walter.
But in the context of Dirty Harry, the referencing continued. If you look closely early in the movie when Harry walks down the street after shooting the bank robbers, a cinema in the background has across it’s advertising boarding “Play Misty For Me”, a little in-joke between the two Directors. Post-modernity at work, before the phrase was even coined.
The entire street was a film-set in Burbank California. It was such a good build that people watching the movie couldn’t understand why some streets were closed off as dead-ends in the film when they are actual real, open-ended streets in San Francisco.
The hold-up guy Harry holds his gun on outside of the bank and recites his famously cheesy soliloquy to is Albert Popwell, who plays a different character in the next three Harry Callahan Films. Perhaps he was wise to say no to The Dead Pool…
The real life Zodiac killings were the inspiration for Dirty Harry; even the killer (Andy Robinson) was called Scorpio in reference to the real life cases.
The excellent and historically accurate 2007 David Fincher Film Zodiac recognizes this in a couple of scenes, notably when the central characters investigating the case attend Dirty Harry’s premiere. The cinema used in Zodiac was the same actual cinema used in 1971, which hasn’t changed in terms of renovations since then.
I guess you can tell I really know a lot about Dirty Harry…
Enough geek-trivia; do you feel lucky..?
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