IMMP 170 - DIRTY HARRY === [00:00:00] Music: You got yourself one question. Do I. There is one question. Inspector Callahan, why do they call you Dirty Harry? [00:00:25] Matthew: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Inter Millennium Media Project, the IMMP podcast. My name is Matthew Porter. And I'm Ian Porter. I'm his dad. He's my son, and I have made him watch a movie. Yeah, that movie that I, yeah, making you watch a movie might apply even more here than usual. [00:00:48] Ian: Yeah, I'd known of this one, but it's never quite been a, oh, I'd love to sit down and see that one kind of film. [00:00:57] Matthew: Yeah. This is a movie that I think it is necessary to kind of understand movies from that time period. But it is not necessarily gonna be everybody's kind of movie. [00:01:07] Ian: No, it's not. This is not everybody's kind of movie. And yeah, that's the thing. This is one of those instances where difference between personal preference and artistic acknowledgement are very, very clear, [00:01:21] Matthew: very much [00:01:21] Ian: because the, the 1971 film, Dirty Harry has a long comet tale in popular culture and a grand influence upon cinema overall. [00:01:37] Matthew: It, it definitely does. And it's, it's also an interesting point in the career of Clint Eastwood. We just spoke in the last couple of episodes about two of his classic westerns. Yeah. And this was kind of a turn in his, uh, in his career. He had made so many westerns, both in television on Rawhide and then a number of, uh, of westerns in Italy and the US. This kind of brought him into that late 20th century gritty, 1970s crime drama sort of genre that he's also very much associated with. [00:02:10] Ian: Yes. I mean, it says something that my, I, I'm here going like, oh, this movie is interesting and such. There's a reference to this movie in my, one of my favorite movies of all time. [00:02:24] Matthew: Oh, really? [00:02:25] Ian: Yes. When being handed the, a gun in, , big trouble in Little China Chen tells Jack Burton here, here feel like Dirty Harry as he offers him a giant. Pistol. That's right, [00:02:41] Matthew: that's right. [00:02:42] Ian: That's how, that's how like this thing has this cultural through line where the image of , the man on a mission with a large firearm is Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in that sense. [00:02:54] Matthew: Well that's great. I mean, if, if Egg Chen can use this to mock Jack Burton, then you've gotta have that background. I'm glad you saw this. [00:03:01] Ian: Thank you. Absolutely. And it is interesting 'cause having now seen a couple of the other Clint Eastwood films mm-hmm. I'm very glad that you showed me those first because they gave such context for what this film was gonna be. ' Cause he's kind of playing the same sort of man [00:03:17] Matthew: he is, and I think that's true through a lot of his career. Yeah. At least in the 20th century. Although there are times when he plays with that expectation and subverts it in some of the comedies that he does. This is, a very distinctive sort of movie. It kind of defines that time period, but it's also, I don't know that it was a very carefully made movie. No. Yeah. It, I mean for, it's, it's easy to summarize in that Clint Eastwood plays Harry Callahan, AKA Dirty Harry, a a San Francisco Police Department police inspector, who is in, as we see him in this movie, he is on the trail of a, a serial killer. A serial sniper who is very, very much pulled right out of the news stories of the Zodiac Killer from 1968 and 69 in the Bay Area. Yeah. And they've thinly disguised that and, and turned that into the, ostensible plot of this movie. [00:04:26] Ian: Yeah, yeah. They, they named it the Scorpio Killer. Yes. It's like, [00:04:32] Matthew: uh, there and he leaves taunting notes for the police, just like the Zodiac killer did. And it's in the same part of the country. [00:04:39] Ian: Yeah, exactly. [00:04:40] Matthew: But really that is just the, excuse to give us almost two hours of Harry Callahan being a, an angry, violent misanthrope who nevertheless works in the police department and who is in his own mind, at least driven by a desire to protect people. But it is, it is very much set up. Well, cops can only be effective if they have no rules, and it sets up a story for the purpose of proving that point. [00:05:11] Ian: It really is. There is something, something so unpleasant about the way he is. You can see the, the storyline completely shift back and forth to try to like, give him this opportunity to do awful things. Yeah. And then slide back to make sure he's still our protagonist. [00:05:34] Matthew: And it's interesting that one of the recurring points or themes in this movie is, why do they call him Dirty Harry? Is it because he hates everyone and he's a bigot? They may make a point that, you know, like he hates everybody and they give this long list of, of, uh, racial epithets and he hates all of these people. So if he hates everybody equally, I guess that means he's okay. Right. Well, no. Well, but that's how they present it. Or they all, and that's one of the reasons, maybe that's why they call him Dirty Harry, or maybe it's just because he hates people. Maybe it's because he's the guy who gets all the worst jobs that, , a police inspector can be given. And there seems to be a little more support for that because so much of the movie is just vignettes. There is the through line of the pursuit of the serial killer, but we also stop for all these other things he has to do. [00:06:28] Ian: He does really have a, a protagonist in a video game kind of scenario. There is something very much Clint Eastwood wanders through and you can see the little like, oh, side quest pop up as he handles another scenario. It's very much GTA. It's less, you know, Sony's Spider-Man or even Skyrim in that sense. But it's got some of the similar nature where he goes about doing everything. He's got this main quest, but he also pauses to deal with a jumper at a building. He investigates a place and gets attacked by local, uh, neighborhood watch. There's, there's all sorts of odd side missions. [00:07:12] Matthew: Yes. Oh, and another reason why he, maybe he's called Dirty Harry, is that, um, it's not a particularly safe and healthy thing to be his partner. Yeah. He has buried at least one partner. He is got another partner who's in the hospital, the partner, we see him get against his wishes at the beginning of the movie, ends up in the hospital halfway through, [00:07:31] Ian: I mean, he, the, the part his, his assigned rookie partner, Chico Gonzalez. Is definitely there in order to give us someone who has to have Harry explained to him. There's no, no hiding The fact that this is narratively important in that sense, that's what his purpose is. [00:07:49] Matthew: That's interesting. Yeah. He is an audience surrogate in many ways. Yeah. And that he's new. He's meeting these people, he's meeting Harry, learning how Harry works as the audience is. So he's us. And then our audience surrogate ends up in the hospital because he's working with Harry. [00:08:05] Ian: Yeah. And it doesn't change much. It's not like Chico ending up in the hospital, , reinvigorates or does anything to, to Dirty Harry. Honestly, this is a story where our main character. Our protagonist. I don't want to call, I'm, I don't feel comfortable calling him that. [00:08:24] Matthew: He, he is our protagonist in that we are following him and seeing if he accomplishes his mission. Yeah. You can argue about whether he's a hero, but he's clearly the protagonist of the story. [00:08:34] Ian: Yeah. Our protagonist is very much the same man from beginning to end. [00:08:39] Matthew: Yeah. He does not change. [00:08:40] Ian: He does not change. He is a stone in the river. We can see that there's evidence that he has changed over time, but his change is so slow that this movie is not long enough to show us any of it. [00:08:55] Matthew: And that's very much in keeping with what else we've seen with Clint Eastwood. [00:08:59] Ian: Yes. [00:08:59] Matthew: He, his character is the same man when he rides out of town at the end of a fist, full of dollars as he is when he rides in. It's the town that has changed. It's the world that has had to change to conform to him. And Harry is the same kind of character. One thing I see in a number of Clint Eastwood movies though, is we don't get to see him change throughout the story, which I think makes for a somewhat weak story in some ways, but there's usually something, or, or in this in Dirty Harry, there's an example of something to indicate that he has changed at some point. Exactly. That's something that wants to explain or excuse how he behaves. [00:09:36] Ian: Yeah. There's always that element where you do know that he does change, but it, he's always on a, he changes on that geologic timescale. Yeah. That's a, you know, he, he does not change over the course of a film. A film is too quick to show a man who changes this slowly. [00:09:52] Matthew: Right. It's just this little slice of time that we get. [00:09:55] Ian: Which actually, because we were just watching all the westerns adds to the character of Dirty Harry here because he very much still has that feeling of the old west gun slinger. Mm-hmm. Despite being in a modern setting, this is a man who is running by the old playbook of, force. Force makes this happen. I am a one man army change what's gonna happen by my own hands. , if something's helping me, it's helping. If it's in my way, I don't care for it, even if it's the law. [00:10:32] Matthew: And that's where it's interesting to look at the structure of this because we're seeing his, his, his pursuit of this serial killer. Mm-hmm. And that's his goal is to apprehend and arrest and convict. Or at least otherwise take off the board this serial killer. And, and at one point the serial killer has kidnapped someone who has a limited time to live. So there, there's a ticking clock. So that's his goal, but that's not his antagonist. It's not what's standing in the way of him achieving his goal. His antagonist Yeah. Is the police department, administration. And his antagonist is the da, his antagonist is the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yeah. These are the things standing in the way of getting his job done and getting this killer off the streets. [00:11:23] Ian: This is why watching this film made me upset. Yes. This is a film where I'm like, I'm glad I'm watching it for the sake of cinema. [00:11:34] Music: Mm-hmm. [00:11:35] Ian: When the film ended, I had to go walk off steam 'cause I was shaking. Just so mad at this. The, the way this was and the way this was handled, the story was investing, but it was unpleasant. And I, I didn't enjoy absorbing that. [00:12:01] Matthew: I agree. I kind of felt the same way. And this is, um, as usual, we're, we'll, we'll, we'll be spoiling things about this movie. Another warning or, or note I would give for our listeners is if you don't want any trace of politics in your goofy movie podcast, father and Son, there are other episodes of our podcast you can listen to. That's a fine thing to do. We totally get it. It's impossible to talk about Dirty Harry without talking about something political because it is a political movie. [00:12:31] Ian: Yes, it is. [00:12:32] Matthew: If you're, if you're not talking and thinking about politics when you're addressing Dirty Harry, you're not really watching it. You're just letting it happen. You're just having to wash over you [00:12:41] Ian: and letting it happen is part of the problem. [00:12:44] Matthew: Yes. Um, so yeah, this, this entire movie was set up to create an extremely, utterly unrealistic situation in which the constitution is a bad thing. And the gut judgment of an individual police officer who should have the ability and the freedom to kill people is the good thing. And it's such an artificial construct to make that point, which just doesn't happen relative to all the other abuses that these rules and these provisions protect us from. [00:13:24] Ian: There's the classic line, the five shots or six? Yes. And that is you watch as he has no care for any of proper procedure he is dealing with a robbery. But I, if I remember correctly, he fires before ever speaking. He never announces [00:13:44] Matthew: Well, that is definitely an emergency situation in which there are, there are people with guns breaking out of a bank and firing their guns, returning fire to Harry. And Harry gets hit and Harry shoots one of them and disables him. Yeah, he does. And, but then he walks over Yeah. And stands in front of the guy and the guy's shotgun is still within reach. So Harry doesn't just go up and shoot him because he's already disabled and can be taken into custody. He. But he's not kicking the shotgun out of the way. He's leaving the shotgun within this guy's reach and taunting him. Do you want to take the chance to grab your shotgun and shoot me, because I've got my gun here, but do I have a bullet left or not? Did I shoot five or did I shoot six? It's like he wants the, and this is made even more explicit in a classic line from a later Dirty Harry movie. He, he wants the criminal to give him an excuse to shoot. Yeah. Or to admit that he is not, doesn't have the guts to do that. Mm-hmm. And not try to, to take out Harry. He doesn't just walk over and cuff the already disabled, bank robber and bring him into custody. [00:14:58] Ian: Yeah. He's extremely violent in that way. And he's looking for a reason is, yeah. I guess my point, [00:15:04] Music: right, [00:15:04] Ian: his, his methodology, he, he took the man down with skill. Mm-hmm. But he did not, he did not have care for, the other people around. It was about him versus the criminal, not the civilians he's there to protect. Right. In terms of his choices and actions and how he lets the car veer off and everything else. [00:15:25] Matthew: Yep. [00:15:25] Ian: And it's, it was about wanting a reason to use his weapon, wanting a reason to have this firefight. [00:15:33] Matthew: And, and all of those things are. Our kind of stomach turning about it. And yet it's a great scene. It's a great line, and yet it's a great scene. There's no arguing with the power and how it's shot, how it's played. It is so well done. I can still, I can absolutely still enjoy it [00:15:51] Ian: weirdly enough, Dirty Harry in those sort of scenes made me realize something I am I a bit of another character that has bothered me because they're a similar portrayal at times. Yeah. There's something about Dirty Harry that is 50% old West and 50% modern James Bond. [00:16:12] Matthew: Yes, [00:16:13] Ian: yes. He's this slick man with this openness to cause devastation and this, knack for one-liners and skillful fighting. [00:16:28] Music: Mm-hmm. [00:16:30] Ian: But James Bond's situations are ridiculous enough to make his actions seem to fit the world he's in. Dirty Harry is placed in a more realistic world where the consequences of those are disturbing. [00:16:47] Matthew: Right. , James Bond definitely went through a period of that. I think that , the Daniel Craig era of James Bond as with some of the best of the novels in James Bond, they at least addressed the weight that this has. Yes. And what this job is, and what kind of a person would have this job and that it's not all, isn't he a hero? But you're right. There were periods in James Bond, especially some of the Roger Moore and the , Pierce Brosnan era where it was just, oh, a chance to kill somebody is just a chance to make a joke as a bonus. [00:17:20] Ian: Exactly. And that's the sort of thing where it's like. In, in the ridiculous world of, the grand super villain plans, it's almost s heroism in that disturbing way that fits. But Dirty Harry isn't in that world. [00:17:34] Matthew: No. [00:17:35] Ian: Dirty Harry is in a world that is much more full of people living their lives trying to do the right thing. And so his actions are unexcusable. [00:17:46] Matthew: Right? So there is this setup and this story and environment crafted , to excuse and, and promote this particular idea, I would say, of , how people who do police work or who defend society, whatever that means, should be empowered , once you accept and say, okay, this is the world that we are in. Mm-hmm. As a movie, as a story. I'd say it's uneven, but it has a lot of very good scenes and very good depictions. I'd say really as one note as it can be, Clint Eastwood's performance is very good because he plays that role and we see an occasional glimpse into a more human being under there. Uh, we learn about why he, one of the reasons why he's so bitter that he was married and his wife was killed. Mm-hmm. And his interactions with other people are really excuses to give some of this information that, that we get about him. , [00:18:42] Ian: He's definitely made more human, but that's part of where the, the swinging back and forth is we'll see him perform these actions of destruction and anger towards the systems designed to protect the innocent. [00:18:57] Music: Mm-hmm. [00:18:59] Ian: And then. He is humanized back again. Yeah. Via moments like that. And it swings back and forth. I, I looked at a bunch of the posters for this film. Yeah. And I was so fascinated by the taglines. You get taglines like Detective Harry Callahan, you don't assign him to murder cases, you just turn him loose. [00:19:21] Matthew: Yeah. [00:19:23] Ian: Or, detective [00:19:24] Ian: Callahan doesn't break cases. He smashes them. It's weirdly that he's not depicted as a person in those, he's depicted as this force, this beast, this entity in terms of the way the advertisements do it. [00:19:41] Matthew: Yeah. Or he is a weapon. [00:19:43] Ian: He is the weapon. He's always depicted with the gun in hand. Yeah. It's, it's not two items, it's one. And so the, the fact that the movie spends all that time to humanize him in between, I think says something about his starting point where he doesn't start human in that sense. He starts as something placed in a different level, in different category and that is not, that is part of this distance from reasonable and from everyone else he has. [00:20:14] Music: Mm-hmm. [00:20:15] Ian: And unfortunately, part of where this story becomes so, so messy because it places him above when his actions are so awful and it, I feel like that he's actually beneath, but it places him above plenty of times. He's not, you know, he's not balanced, [00:20:36] Matthew: Yeah. And they do, they occasionally have a little bit of nuance in terms of. Showing us the fact that yes, Harry Callahan has his specific goal with regard to this case, but when he talks with the mayor and when he talks with the, uh, the police chief or his superiors, you at least get the, the sense and you to understand that they have that priority, but they also have other priorities that they have to, take into account. Mm-hmm. They can't just destroy the entire city for the sake of taking out this one serial killer. They can't put absolutely every resource there is on this one case to the exclusion of everything else. They can't have Harry Callahan go out on his own without a partner, just because he doesn't like people. They have other considerations that they have to take into account. And the only, the only really exception to that is when he's dealing with the district attorney's office after he's arrested Scorpio. Yeah. And the district attorney is pointing out how you, you could have gotten a warrant and you didn't, and all of these other reasons why the evidence that you have, we cannot use. And that is depicted as them getting in his way as opposed to him not doing his job properly. And they set up the excuse that at this point, you know, by, by that time, Scorpio has, uh, kidnapped a young woman, a girl. [00:22:11] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:22:11] Matthew: And so there's a ticking clock. And Callahan is not going to wait around for warrants and things like that. Well, they could have prepared better and had a judge on the line ready to issue a warrant as soon as they, they had a place to have a warrant on. There are ways they could have dealt with that. Ways, ways the district attorney could have gone around, dealt with that too, in presenting evidence of exigent circumstances and the like. They just set it up so artificially where there's, there's Callahan trying to do Right. And there's the, the DA trying to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and we know who is the bad guy in this scene. It's the da. [00:22:50] Ian: And that's, that's so disturbing because this is a story that is then put into our popular culture and that become that even the nuance there, which there's little of fades away. Yep. And it becomes simpler. Yeah. And it becomes influencing. And that influence makes more stories, that create more of this and it perpetuates. Mm-hmm. And that's where you get some horrible, horrible ideas and horrible, horrible attitudes that feel for people like they are. Okay. Because media has shown them stuff. So that's one of those worries. Yeah. [00:23:38] Matthew: As far as the filmmaking, this was, I, I really liked the way this depicted an urban environment in, in this 1971 time period as the, the scene that they have set, because they use so many different ways and you, you're talking about levels before you kind of see the city from all these different levels. , Scorpio is a, as I said, is a serial sniper, so he is picking more or less random, targets shooting them from rooftops. [00:24:13] Music: Mm-hmm. So [00:24:13] Matthew: we get these great helicopter shots of him setting things up on rooftops and we get his POV of his, the victims that he's selecting. But then we also get shots from and of police helicopters. I. Looking for rooftops, and we'd see this whole top down the city is this, the city looks like a map and a maze at the same time, and you've realized, yes, how many places there are to hide and what a complicated place this is to police, kind of establishing the hard job the police have in the first place. But then we also get these back alleys and these dark corners and all these little places that exist within this complicated maze or map. [00:24:54] Ian: One of those early shots when we do see the fact that, you know, Harry Callahan is a smart detective when he wants to investigate instead of fire and guns is him immediately recognizing where the shot that killed the first victim would've come from. And we see him go to the building, we pan up the entire thing, and we see him at the top and we get this slow, continuous shot. panning around the entire building as he walks the catwalk around the edge. And it is so, so effective because it does, it's showing you the city from there. And he walks actually almost 360 degrees 'cause he has to walk all the way around. So we wind up, [00:25:43] Ian: following him the entire way. But it gives us this nice pan before it lines up with where the scene we know happened is. And since we'd seen the distinctive look of where Scorpio had taken his shot from . We are hunting with our eyes for the exact space just as much as Harry is. It shows that he's skilled enough to be able to do so and it gives you that starting environment. [00:26:11] Matthew: Yeah, that's an interesting point. We, because we saw the crime happen at the beginning of the movie, we are kind of. Following him as he discovers what we already know in terms of where the sniper perch was and all of this. Exactly. And, and we do see him, he know he's got a good tactical mind. He knows police work, he knows investigative procedure and forensics in the way he's checking out the crime scene, the way he's checking out possible locations away from the crime scene where the shooter might have been the way in the, his first meeting with the, uh, with the higher ups. He starts to talk about details and ballistic evidence until he's interrupted by somebody who's talking more about what we're doing on the ground right now. He has that, I, I've got a note early on. Okay. It starts out as very much as a police procedural, and I've got a note later saying it's in, it's a police anti procedural. Eventually you have the police, but not the procedure. [00:27:06] Ian: That's very true. He has got the skill. He just doesn't have the attitude. Right. And the town is. The town starts out as an ally. Mm-hmm. In that sense, yeah. We're seeing San Francisco. The alleys are places. He knows the view from above. He is acting kind of as defender in that sense. He starts more on the positive side and as he lets this case eat him, and as himself fall to his le his worst demons in his attempt here and reject the things that he's supposed to, to serve the city becomes more hostile. [00:27:42] Matthew: Yeah. [00:27:43] Ian: The environments become rougher. And that's ironic saying because early on he does get beaten up in an alley. Mm-hmm. But even then, the city was the thing that was fine. The people were not great with him, and he was not good with the people, but the city itself becomes more difficult. You see him not walk into a room, not wait in a room, but barge, barge through doors. [00:28:05] Music: Yeah. Uh, [00:28:06] Ian: the, wood paneled offices of bureaucracy become. Darker and less bright in terms of its set design as he devolves until the very end when he leaves the city. Very interesting. For a Clin Eastwood film, the final fight of this is a bus going out of town. Yes. A school bus that's been hijacked and it leaves and we watch as the green and gray of the city moves into gray and brown of the roads leading out until he's running through brown dust and rusty metal. [00:28:46] Matthew: Right. He's end up not on the streets where people live, but in a gravel quarry. He runs [00:28:54] Ian: cinema palette wise away from the city. He started just defending and back to the wild west colors that justified his previous, his methodology. Mm-hmm. He runs into a different, a different language of cinema. [00:29:10] Matthew: Yeah. Wait a minute. I know what kind of movie this should be. I like that exactly. [00:29:15] Ian: He, the, the cinematography is excellent in that sense. Yeah. It follows his mind set alongside everything else. You don't see those, those grand above shots. As the movie goes, you get more and more close on the ground. Even, even Scorpio's. Choices of location for his later attacks are increasingly tight and cramped. It's not this big wide open skyscraper top. It's tucked next to radiators and access buildings on the tops of roofs. The, the cramped and tighter nature as the city closes in affects them both. [00:30:02] Matthew: Yeah. Like each rooftop is a maze within the maze. Exactly, [00:30:06] Ian: and so he's, it, it, it squeezes in on them both. [00:30:12] Matthew: And your point about the, the way the city changes. I, I like that because the city eventually itself becomes an obstacle. Yeah. There's this long sequence in which after the kidnapping has occurred and Scorpio wants the ransom money he's demanded, , Clint Eastwood is the Bagman. He's got the money and Scorpio is calling him on payphones and requiring him to literally run all over the city to get to the next payphone, to get the next instruction, literally playing with him. And so the city becomes having to move around. The city becomes the big obstacle. Yes. And that's, that's an interesting, uh, an interesting sequence, an interesting, uh, uh, point. And even the people of the city become the obstacle because he needs to get to, to that next payphone and follow Scorpio's instructions. Mm-hmm. And I, it would not take a whole lot of change to make this a better or at least more interesting movie. Yeah. Because it, it wants to depict or it depicts Dirty Harry as wanting to be a solitary force for justice as he sees it. And yet we do see a lot of the rest of the police department. We do see a lot of other officers. We see uniformed officers, we see his partner and other detectives. We see the guys in helicopters all working together and often running into bad luck in terms of where they are and how the bad guy can get away. We don't see a whole lot of. Every, the, all the police are incompetent except for Harry. The police department is depicted as a fairly well organized department facing a bizarre and un unnavigable problem. It would be interesting in some ways, you get hints of this. It would be interesting to see this or have this story told as this is a very, very smart detective who's very, very good at his job and at solving crimes and following the procedure, getting evidence that he can use to get a conviction with the DA's office. And this case changes him. Yeah. He's run into a case where that doesn't seem to work, and what does he do in response to that, that seeing those choices made by a character would at least be a, a more interesting story, but when you set it up as a, well, this is how this character behaves and this is even why he's got his nickname. We've already had all of that happen. Why don't you get a, let us see that story, which could be more interesting. [00:32:46] Ian: Dirty Harry is a character for whom the backstory is on his character sheet, not in the game, on the tabletop. Yeah. And he's, he's being played for combat, not for storytelling. Mm-hmm. I have played tabletop games with people who play their character like that. It's a very different experience. [00:33:06] Matthew: Yeah. [00:33:06] Ian: And it's, it's, it's a fine board game, but it's not a narrative in the same way. [00:33:11] Matthew: Yeah. And that makes sense for a game. And you're talking about video games earlier as well. The stories in video games, they focus on other things than character choices and character changes. Not that those are absent and that's fine. There are different media in which to best tell different stories for a movie, I wanna see some choices and changes in that character. Yeah. I, [00:33:37] Ian: I almost feel like we're heading towards final comments there, but overall there's just, Dirty Harry as a, a movie is excellent. Mm-hmm. Dirty Harry as a character is distressing, Dirty Harry as a concept is workable. [00:33:57] Matthew: Yeah. [00:33:59] Ian: But those are three distinct things [00:34:01] Matthew: I do kind of, I, I see this as a, a set of vignettes and scenes and so many of those are so well done and so watchable and so interesting and are little movies in their own right as he's investigating something or he is following a lead, or he is help dealing with that, uh, suicide attempt and so on. Those are well played and they're very well shot. I thought this movie was well directed in terms of its cinema, uh, the way it's, its cinematography is set up way, it's pacing. Um, it's, it's very much a snapshot of filmmaking from that time, and it is, uh, mm-hmm. It's visually compelling in that way. Uh, as well, [00:34:43] Ian: the fact that neither of us liked Dirty Harry as a character, both, we both had that same uncomfortable, unhappy reaction to him. [00:34:54] Music: Mm-hmm. [00:34:55] Ian: And yet we watched the whole film, I think is a sign, not just of the fact that we do a cinema podcast. Hi listeners, but the fact that it is well made. Yeah. It, it takes good cinematography to have you sit through, have you as the audience, sit through an unpleasant character because there is a balking point. There is a point where any audience member is completely okay. With leaving. [00:35:25] Music: Mm-hmm. [00:35:25] Ian: And they are justified in doing that. Yeah. A film is supposed to be a conversation in that sense, I think. Or very, at least a li something to, to bring to mind ideas. It's a thing to be thought about and if it's the thoughts it's saying and the points it's making are not healthy. Mm-hmm. Don't listen. Oh yeah. But this is a story that is saying these thoughts are not healthy. I never felt that the movie Dirty Harry was, cinematography wise, attempting to justify the ending. I think it was saying, this guy's unhinged and not playing things right. And this worked, but he's not good. I think that that is something that is lost over time. Yeah. But I think the original movie was not defending its protagonist in that sense. I think it had potential there too. To say this has gone wrong. [00:36:26] Matthew: Yeah. This is [00:36:26] Ian: a tragedy. [00:36:27] Matthew: I think that's important to think about how this movie is presented versus how people might be coming to it now. Yeah, and that is, I think too many people come to it now, and I, I'm judging this on like comments on trailers on YouTube and such, which are, are settling people look at this and say, oh yeah, this is the character we need. He's a hero, he's a good guy. We, we need more of this. The, the movie was, was definitely not portraying this as Harry is a hero. It was not. Portraying at Harry is a happy person who is doing good things. Yeah. It was, it was flirting with the idea of maybe we need something this wrong and dangerous at times. Yeah. [00:37:13] Ian: And that's, that's, yeah. I have seen films that are, that do worse about. Pointing out how awful their main characters are. Yeah. Within Dirty Harry is, I have seen the weird tangent for any of our Patreon people, police Python 3, 5, 7. [00:37:32] Matthew: Yeah. [00:37:32] Ian: Does worse. [00:37:34] Matthew: That is, uh, of all the movies we've watched, those are the two most similar. Dirty Harry and Police Python 3 57. [00:37:41] Ian: And weirdly enough, it's like Dirty Harry. Yeah. He's a jerk and awful. And he could be better. You see the potential, and it's a tragedy. He's not. And this was terrible. Um, the other movie, Police Python, everyone's awful. And no one's redeemable. What the heck? [00:37:59] Matthew: And at at least Harry gets the Save the Jumper scene. I think that's kind of. A save the cat sort of thing where we have to get to see him doing something that is unequivocally good for somebody. He, this, this emotionally distraught person is about to take his own life and Harry saves him. He saves him. Yeah. With this weirdly confrontational conversation that eventually it goads the guy into jumping for Harry's neck, which allows Harry to pull him onto the fire department, lift and punch him unconscious. Yeah. But he did save the guy's life in a Dirty Harry kind of way. [00:38:36] Ian: Oh. Oh, you need a reason to live. Your reason to live is me. 20 minutes Denny's parking lot fist fight. That's the kind of attitude he's got. Right. Which is the wildest way to do it. [00:38:48] Matthew: But they, they did, I guess they had to show him doing something good for the people of San Francisco. So he saved a life. [00:38:55] Ian: Yeah, exactly. [00:38:56] Matthew: And you know, the guy in police Python, I don't think we quite, quite see him do even that. [00:39:00] Ian: No, we don't see him doing any of that. So it's like. The way the first movie is structured where it's like, yeah, they put in those save the cat moments. I honestly am wondering how much of Dirty Harry has shifted because of some of the later stuff. Not saying the first one's good. It's got horrible problems in terms of mentality because it's consequentialism, it is ends justifying means it is. Mm-hmm. This, the, the police officer is, is the power kind of attitude, which is not good and healthy. Yeah. And it is a, that is horrible and it is such a decline. This is a tragedy. This, [00:39:43] Matthew: yeah. [00:39:43] Ian: This is what this is. [00:39:45] Ian: , I don't know the later ones, but I I did realize that there's that line, that line. Go ahead. Make my day. Yeah. Which I take it is from the later ones. Right. But that tells you the evolution it goes through. [00:39:56] Matthew: Yeah. That makes even more explicit. The point of that, did you feel lucky speech? [00:40:01] Ian: Exactly. And that's, that's so disturbing. [00:40:05] Matthew: And thinking of this in terms of all these different scenes, watching it for this podcast is the first time I've ever seen this entire movie. Uncut. Unedited. [00:40:15] Ian: Yeah. How did you first watch this? [00:40:17] Matthew: I watched this when it was broadcast on network television in the mid 1970s. [00:40:24] Ian: What? [00:40:24] Matthew: So when I was like 11 or 12 years old. [00:40:28] Ian: Okay. So, uh, for those who listen to our podcast and play the drinking game, it's the slowest drinking game out there. But this is another instance, probably of the take a shot if Matthew was too young to watch this. [00:40:41] Matthew: Yes. No question. Yes. [00:40:43] Ian: And how do you make a TV edit of this? [00:40:47] Matthew: Well, you, how you have room for a lot of commercials. [00:40:51] Ian: I was gonna say, it's just like, like, like, did I shoot five shots or six? Let's all go to the lobby. Like, what in the world? How much do you cut? [00:41:01] Matthew: You know, the answer is it was the 1970s. You cut less than you think you might. Oh, that's a, that's a disturbing comment. They cut out the nudity. They may, yeah. May have cut out the one bits of the one scene where we've got the string of racial epithets. I'm not even sure that they cut that out. And not much else. There's so much of the violence that was still on television. [00:41:35] Ian: What in the world? [00:41:38] Matthew: So this was broadcast on like the local NBC or ABC affiliate with, with some editing for content, but not that much. So that's kind of my knowledge of the movie. I had seen it, then I saw it maybe on TV or parts of it on TV once later on. And then I saw it for this podcast. So most of my feeling and understanding about this movie is similar to yours in that it has had such a cultural impact. I know it from its references and from its commentary about it more than I knew about the movie itself until I re-watched it. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I think maybe we are coming down to our final questions. [00:42:20] Ian: Yeah. I, I really think we are. [00:42:21] Matthew: Alright, well stay tuned. We will have those final questions for you, uh, talking about whether we want more of this and, , whether we recommend it. But in the meantime, if you're enjoying the IMMP podcast, please go to imm project.com. That's where you will find all of our back episodes. That's where, where you'll find a link to our Patreon where you can support the podcast and also get bonus audio content. Another way you can support the podcast is to go to our shop, if you like, fun coffee mugs and t-shirts and notebooks and other fun things, not only with the show logo, but also special. Designs for fans of things like the Prisoner and Space 1999. [00:43:00] Ian: We care about Phobos. [00:43:03] Matthew: Yes, we do. But by far the best way to support the podcast is to let people know about it. Share it with people. Give us, nice ratings on , iTunes or your podcast, feed. And if, uh, if you find YouTube a better way to enjoy the podcast or a better way to share the podcast, you'll find, , many, many of our episodes on the, , IMM project YouTube channel. [00:43:26] Ian: Absolutely. We're adding more and more. [00:43:28] Matthew: And also we'd love to hear from you! At improject.com. There is a contact page. You can reach us on Discord, on Blue Sky, uh, by email and you can actually send us, honest to goodness physical mail by the United States Postal Service. [00:43:42] Ian: Oh my goodness. [00:43:43] Matthew: And Ian, where can people find you? [00:43:45] Ian: I can be, find many places online as item crafting. Be that item crafting.com or item crafting live on Twitch. Come join every Thursday for some chao garden, miniature painting and video games. And fun. [00:43:59] Matthew: Bring on the chao. [00:44:01] Ian: Yes. [00:44:01] Matthew: I love that. It's so chill. [00:44:03] Ian: Thank you. And how about you, dad? [00:44:05] Matthew: You can find me at bymatthewporter.com, and that's where you'll find links to whatever I'm doing online, including my YouTube channel where I review movies, movie theater experiences, and the occasional strange travel destination. All right, so final questions. Screen or no screen. [00:44:30] Ian: I'm saying no screen. I didn't enjoy, like I, I thought this was well documented. I think this was like a well cinematography made, it's a great film in terms of the filmmaking, but it's just unpleasant and I don't feel I can suggest, unless you're a film, a film buff that needs to, for cultural reference, like you're taking film classes. I don't feel the need to watch Dirty Harry. I can't feel right suggesting it because of just how unpleasant I felt watching it. [00:45:00] Matthew: Yeah, I, I would agree though. I've gone back and forth even while I was watching the movie last week and since then, thinking about it. On the one hand, there are ways in which it is a well done and well shot movie and is deserves to be seen. But as you say, just the experience of doing so can be so unpleasant. I won't necessarily recommend it. So yeah, it is culturally influential. It is referenced in decades of cinema that came after it. I don't know that you get more out of those by actually having seen the movie. So, you know, I, yeah, you can, it, it's available. Can be seen if you want it, but I'm not gonna recommend, I'm not gonna tell anybody. Yeah, you should see this movie. [00:45:44] Ian: I almost feel like I. Having seen the movie, I now see the fact that the film doesn't say Dirty Harry was great guy. Yeah. He's, he's a protagonist but not a hero. And it makes me more upset that cultural drift and later films have made him a heroic character to some. Yeah. And there's more like a loss of point and I'm like, I almost wish I didn't understand how far from the point this has slid. Yeah. [00:46:15] Matthew: And yet it's not that it's, it's all been in one direction. The film, we talked about some of the lack of nuance in the film, but the film has some degree of nuance as to how much Dirty Harry is a, uh, a protagonist we should be rooting for is a positive force, a negative force. There's some at least ambiguity about that in the movie and in as it, as we've gotten more distance culturally, I. We've had this divide of Yes, Dirty Harry is the kind of tough cop we need more of. And Dirty Harry is the caricature of what an idiot thinks a good cop should be. And we get the way it's used in things like big trouble in little China where exactly, where it's a, a term of mockery here. Yeah. Take the gun feel like Dirty Harry. That was not a positive thing Egg was saying. [00:47:03] Ian: That was no, that was not a positive thing. That was them calling him an idiot. That was not a good move. That was, you're not the smart man in the room. [00:47:11] Matthew: Yeah. So we've kind of lost some of that nuance as we've gotten that distance. Um, so yeah, there is some benefit of going back to the original to see that ambiguity we had. Absolutely. But I'm not gonna recommend anybody spend two hours of their lives doing this because it's not necessarily a pleasant experience. Yeah. [00:47:30] Ian: Well. For our next question, revive, reboot, or rest in peace. Mm-hmm. First thing we always do is acknowledge if there's more to it. Um, there are, there's four more Dirty Harry films. Yes. Magnum Force, the Enforcer, sudden Impact and the Dead Pool. Um, those are the ones where it keeps going. And from what I can tell, uh, starts drifting from that initial question of Dirty Harry and into more just Oh, dramatic danger. [00:48:09] Matthew: Yeah. And, and it's interesting that this keeps going because very dramatically at the end of Dirty Harry Callahan throws his badge away. Yeah. And, and I always found that an interesting gesture at the end because. His motivations. We've got hints about his motivations around that. He's talked about wanting to do this and save these kids and all this, and if you want my badge when it's all over, fine, you can have it. But I need to do this. Is this him making good on that promise? Is this because he, at the end of the movie, again, we've spoil these things. At the end of the movie, he shoots the Scorpio killer even after he, he's been brought down and could have been taken into custody because he brought him into custody once and he got away on a quote unquote technicality. And I get is he saying, you know, I, I don't deserve this badge anymore because I broke an important rule, but I had to break it. But the cost of that is I can no longer be a police officer, is it? I do not wanna be a police officer anymore because this is a system that would've prevented me from doing this. Had it been able to. Why did he choose to throw away that badge? I think that's such a fascinating thing to think about when that movie ends. But then we've got four more movies in which he's a, San Francisco police inspector. [00:49:32] Ian: Yeah. And apparently, the next one features, him fighting against corrupt, violent members of, the San Francisco Police Department. [00:49:43] Matthew: I kind of find that interesting. [00:49:45] Ian: Yeah. It's like, what if Dirty Harry versus a pile of Dirty Harry's we're getting into, like, it took Spider-Man longer than this to get into the clone saga. What's going on here? [00:50:00] Matthew: Oh, I, I'm imagining those videos that I see pop up on, uh, on YouTube and in YouTube shorts and such, where it's people doing AI simulations of like. 300 Spartans versus 2 million battle droids and they just have the war happen. Yeah. Like I'm picturing that for Dirty Harry and the corrupt SFPD. [00:50:22] Ian: It's kinda like that from what I'm understanding. And then the later, as I described before, comparing Dirty Harry to, James Bond, it continues. Later films are like him dealing with a terrorist group that's stealing rocket launchers. And, I can't even tell what the fourth movie is. I am, it's like he, I, I, I can't even make sense of this one. This one, there's a fight on a roller coaster. That's the best I can figure out. And then we wind up with, um, giant, I. Uh, underground gambling rings about celebrity death and it gets, gets more ridiculous. [00:51:09] Matthew: The only one of these that I saw in a theater when it originally came out is that last one. The Dead Pool. Yeah. And by that one it had become a commentary about Dirty Harry movies. Okay. And those kinds of movies in that you could see there were scenes that were constructed to be almost parodies of other situations that had been set up in Dirty Harry movies. That catchphrase of Go ahead, make My Day had become political. Ronald Reagan was quoting that in speeches. Oh God. Putting on the Tough Guy Act and there was a catchphrase that's repeated in the Dead Pool. Yeah. And it was specifically a catchphrase that politicians could not quote in their speeches and people would not be repeating on the news. We have Dirty Harry telling the bad guy you're shit outta luck. It's as if they said, okay, we're gonna prevent you from using Dirty Harry's catchphrase the way you did in the previous movie. [00:52:17] Ian: Oh, interesting. That's not the catchphrase. I have the Wikipedia list for that film. Oh, what is that? You're gonna have to bleep me as well. Yeah. Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. Uh, yes. I think they did. Two of them [00:52:33] Matthew: maybe. Although that's a phrase I've heard before too, before Dirty Harry did it. Yeah. [00:52:39] Ian: Yep. But still, yeah, they're setting this up. They're kind of, they, that's one of those things where it's like, I, you can tell the, the cultural shift had been happening and the nuance was dying, but the films were still happening and now the films were trying to respond to the, this is ridiculous. This isn't a good way to live, or a good, a good thing to take from this. Please listen to the underlying message. [00:53:07] Matthew: Another great part in the Dead Pool is a particular car chase, and that's not something we get in the first Dirty Harry movie. We get them in some of the later ones car chases. But in the Dead Pool there is a particular car chase. Involving a, a police car and a RC car. Oh, my kids. The RC car is rigged with a bomb, but the way it is shot, there's a classic movie called Bullet Steve McQueen with a, an iconic car chase through the, the, the winding and steep streets of San Francisco. And this car Chase in the Dead Pool is like a, an homage to that, but with an RC car as one of the vehicles involved. It is the weirdest, funniest thing. But again, it was clearly by that time they were commenting on the kind of movie the series had been. [00:54:01] Ian: Yeah. Why did we watch Dirty Harry? That movie was unpleasant, but well made. This one sounds ridiculous enough to be watchable. [00:54:10] Matthew: Maybe we should watch the Dead Pool as a bonus. You might enjoy that better. We better? We might need to. I [00:54:15] Ian: might en yeah, we might enjoy that better. I think what we're saying though is that it ca it had to adjust to being able to be a commentary back at its previous audience. Yeah, so we've got the question, revive, reboot, or rest in peace? [00:54:30] Matthew: I don't think revive makes sense. I don't think Clint Eastwood's gonna be playing Dirty Harry again. And I don't think we need another person to portray a, a police detective in the Dirty Harry cinematic universe. So I don't know about Revive Un unless I, I've I've got one option. Oh, please, please go ahead. [00:54:48] Ian: Which would be a, but the thing is, here's the problem. It's a revival that nobody who's a air quotes Dirty Harry fan in the way that you'd expect would want right now. [00:54:59] Matthew: Uhhuh, [00:55:01] Ian: which is a film set in the Dirty Harry world about a new officer coming in. And seeing the absolute mess of the SFPD in a post Dirty Harry environment. [00:55:18] Matthew: Oh, interesting. [00:55:19] Ian: And so what you wind up with someone who it, unfortunately, there's a tiny bit of what I'm describing that's going to sound a little bit like the plot of hot fuzz in certain ways. Mm-hmm. But it's not the point, the idea of, of a police procedural where a police officer is in a situation where procedure has so died. Oh, interesting. They, that their, their internal fight is with putting the procedure back in with, with repairing the damage, which I could see being an interesting film. But at that point it's more of a cultural commentary film. It doesn't have to be directly about Dirty Harry and the, the distinction becomes different. But that, that world that it sets up by implication. There is a counterpart character we could see. [00:56:05] Matthew: Yeah. And an another difference if you're gonna bring this into the modern world is what a different place San Francisco is. [00:56:13] Ian: Yes. [00:56:15] Matthew: Where, you know, since the 1970s, it has been taken over by money and tech companies and tech bros. And that whole shift in culture, which has changed San Francisco so much, it would be not only what kind of police ethos do we wanna bring in, but how does this interact with the police ethos that have changed because the city has changed so much. [00:56:40] Ian: Yeah. This is a story about, uh, you know, 50 years ago this department came increasingly Dirty. [00:56:47] Matthew: Mm-hmm. [00:56:48] Ian: Someone needs to clean it. Right. That's a different attitude. It's a fascinating story. It's a counterpoint character. I'd love to see, but it's. It's not just this one film at that point. Mm-hmm. And it's a whole different story, but there's potential, especially in this location and environment because of that connection. [00:57:07] Matthew: Another interesting movie you could could make, which would technically for our purposes be a revival, would be a prequel. Yeah. We, we talked about how we get glimpses of the fact that Harry has had trauma that maybe changed him before Dirty Harry begins. Maybe there's a story to be told about a young police officer, Harry Callahan, who is trying to learn how to be a man, learn how to be a police officer, learn how to operate in this city, in this department, and then trauma strikes and how does that affect his decisions. [00:57:39] Ian: Mm-hmm. [00:57:40] Matthew: That could be interesting. I don't know who I would cast in that. Who would I cast as a young Harry Callahan? That'd be interesting. Well, [00:57:52] Ian: how young are we looking? I. [00:57:54] Matthew: Well, I guess he'd be in his early twenties if he were in his mid twenties, maybe as he's starting out as a police detective mid to late twenties. I have to think about that. Yeah, [00:58:06] Ian: I'm, I really am not sure. Okay. Here's a weird, weird comment. Yeah. Finn Wolfhard, [00:58:16] Matthew: um, interesting. I need to see him in, in some more drama to, to make that call. But I could see that he's got that same kind of gaunt weird presence that would work [00:58:28] Ian: and he's able to play in scenes of encountering terror. Yeah. Between, between Stranger Things, Ghostbusters and such. He's done interesting stuff and he's got range. Yeah. I could see him doing it. [00:58:43] Matthew: Yeah. He's a little young right now, but I could see him growing into the ability to play that role in a few years. Interesting idea. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Uh, that, that, that could be a way to do a revival, of Dirty Harry. [00:58:55] Ian: It could be [00:58:55] Matthew: a reboot. I, yeah. Your first idea about portraying this in a, changing the department in different ways for the 21st century as the city exists now, that could be done as a reboot as well. It wouldn't have to be in the same universe as the other. [00:59:10] Ian: It, it could be, the problem for me is the fact that a revival is a response to Dirty Harry. A reboot is a retelling, and I don't feel like we need another Dirty Harry story. I think that the point is the problem. [00:59:23] Matthew: Yeah. [00:59:24] Ian: There, I don't want the, that for the sake of media discussion and attitude. [00:59:30] Matthew: And it's not as if we need another movie telling a story about the pursuit of a serial killer. We have plenty of those. [00:59:36] Ian: Oh yeah. We have. [00:59:39] Matthew: Including ones about the Zodiac killer. [00:59:41] Ian: Exactly. So honestly, I think that we're in a rest in peace, but there's places to go. Just don't do this one again. [00:59:50] Matthew: Yeah, I think so. I would say rest in peace, but yeah. If, if somebody disagrees and wants to make another one of those movies, let me know. Yeah. It's possible. Yep. Well, this was definitely a movie I thought you should see for context and everything else. Yeah. And yet I, I was not looking forward to watching it again, and I wasn't looking forward to, you know, making you watch it, uh, for this podcast. But it is interesting to see and to put into that context. [01:00:23] Ian: Yeah. It's just, yeah, it's might, does not make Right. Yeah. The badge does not make you better. This is that the story, this told. It was not a pleasant one, but it was an interesting one in that sense. And I just wish it had landed into the pop culture differently. I feel like only half the message was obtained sometimes. [01:00:46] Matthew: Yeah. And, and this is definitely a taza as a place in a, in a conversation that movies were having at the time as we, through the sixties moved away. Mm-hmm. And even back into the fifties, moved away from quite so much hero cops versus bad guys and into more of that, those morally gray areas that we get so much of in the seventies when we get into later grittier movies that, um, that makes it interesting as well. And 'cause to see this, this series and also other movies as commentaries on this, uh, later on in the seventies and eighties. Yeah. And speaking of that, we are gonna be back with another movie in a couple of weeks, and I think you'll enjoy that one more, but I think you'll get something out of it having get a little more out of it. Having seen Dirty Harry and having seen the other Clint Eastwood movies, [01:01:37] Ian: I look forward to Well, seeing that and seeing what I think. So, [01:01:41] Matthew: yeah. So, uh, we hope you'll join us again in a couple of weeks for another Tale of Some Media from the 20th Century. [01:01:49] Ian: In the meantime, go find something new to watch.