Clint Eastwood has had a remarkable career. Younger audiences might know him best as the old guy who unsuccessfully tried to do sketch comedy with an empty chair at the Republican Convention.

Or maybe you've seen some of his recent movies where you can barely see the action on the screen between all the waving flags.

But Clint Eastwood was for decades a blow the bad guys away after delivering a badass line of dialogue all capital letters movie star.

I mean, he was not a versatile actor, he squinted and talked through his teeth and very

rarely the squint would turn into a smirk, but that's the kind of acting that leaves a lot to the viewer.

And we lovingly filled him with all kinds of depth and motivation because we are lonely and

didn't know our fathers and want someone capable to occasionally throw their Serrafe over their shoulder, hug us, and then shoot ten

guys.

I didn't like him as a kid back when I was supposed to have bonded with him because my parents

were liberal snobs who scoffed at spaghetti westerns and because Time magazine had all these hand-wringing articles about how dirty Harry was glamorizing violence and vigilantism, and I was only 11 years old.

No one had even explained to me that Time Magazine was also problematic and that you can't believe in anything and everyone is racist and her emails though

I went to see every which way but loose where Clint played a truck driver whose best friend was an orangutan named Clyde and even at that tender age I recognized it as the Diet

Right Cola of Smoky in the Bandit clones and I wanted no part of it. In college I watched all of his 60s

Westerns and yeah you could drink beer to those but I never bonded with

it. Younger audiences will have even less of an idea how to interpret this next

fact which is that Tele-Savales was a sex symbol during this period. I've always

thought that it was one of those things like when women

by shoes and purses that only other women care about, where the men who controlled Hollywood

were like, bald guys are sexy, am I right? This bald guy with a face like a catchers meant should be a sex

similar, right? His television catchphrase from the period immediately after this movie was,

Who Loves You Baby, while he sucked on a lollipop. It just feels like it was answering a question no one asked. Even weirder to me is the idea that Donald

Sutherland, especially in this kind of role, could be considered attractive at all. It's like he's playing

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