Clint Eastwood\u2019s 1971 directorial debut Play Misty for Me<\/em> was already being dismissed as an artifact back when I first watched it on TV in the \u201880s. It isn\u2019t difficult to see why, given that the film\u2019s groovy Monterey milieu couldn\u2019t be more alien or out of step with the slick, Reagan era over which Eastwood\u2019s screen persona loomed as a snarling, reactionary avenger. (No matter that his films were almost always more nuanced<\/a> than they first appeared, when you\u2019re being quoted by the Gipper you can\u2019t escape guilt by association.) Slipped into theaters with little fanfare two months before Dirty Harry<\/em> blew up the box office, Misty<\/em> was basically a favor from Universal Pictures. The studio wanted to be in the business of Clint Eastwood Westerns and figured there was no harm in indulging their rising star with his oddball little thriller, so long as he could bring it in cheap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Written by Eastwood\u2019s pal Jo Heims, best known at the time for scripting the Elvis Presley caper comedy Double Trouble<\/em> (itself now better known as the first film produced by Irwin Winkler of Rocky<\/em>, Raging Bull<\/em> and The Irishman<\/em> fame), the screenplay for Misty<\/em> had been kicking around the studio for years but nobody knew quite what to make of it. Universal boss Lew Wasserman famously wondered why anyone would want to go see Eastwood play a disc jockey, and maybe more importantly, why would a star of Clint\u2019s stature want to make a movie where his female co-star gets the meatier role? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, the part of KRML D.J. Dave Garver is hardly a flattering one for Eastwood. A celebrity in the idyllic little community of Carmel-by-the-Sea, he\u2019s a whispery FM voice in the night, playing jazz records, reading poetry and drinking for free at bars he mentions on the air. It\u2019s the longest Eastwood has ever worn his magnificent mane, chasing girls with his reefer-smoking Black sidekick from the station and running games (sometimes literally) on single women with his wry, wingman bartender (played irresistibly by Clint\u2019s mentor and five-time director, Don Siegel.) Dave\u2019s got dreams of making it big in San Francisco, but we get the distinct vibe that Carmel is about as good as things are going to get for him. He\u2019s hanging around town like the star high school quarterback a few years after graduation, accepting adulation wherever he can still find it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those places is from his most devoted fan, Evelyn Draper. She calls into his show every night, asking him to play Errol Garner\u2019s \u201cMisty\u201d for her. Then one night they finally meet at Siegel\u2019s bar. Played by a wide-eyed Jessica Walter in an expertly frightening turn, Evelyn\u2019s totally cool with being a one-night-stand, until the next day when she shows up at Dave\u2019s house unannounced, to cook him dinner. The scenario is a heady combo of sex guilt and paranoia. I doubt there are many folks out there who haven\u2019t at one time or another been in a romantic situation where one person\u2019s intentions weren\u2019t made as clear as they should have been. Yet most jilted lovers don\u2019t have Evelyn\u2019s affinity for kitchen knives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heims\u2019 original script (which she revised alongside her Dirty Harry<\/em> co-writer Dean Riesner) was set in Los Angeles. Eastwood shifted it to his adopted hometown for what he claimed were pragmatic reasons \u2013 he knew all the locations already and could shoot in his friends\u2019 houses without having to build any expensive sets \u2013 but it also lends the picture a wonderful smallness and specificity that well-worn L.A. sights and soundstages could never provide. Clint clearly loves this place, and the way his camera dawdles and lingers on the surroundings drove some critics crazy. (Variety called the film \u201can overdone travelogue for the Monterey Peninsula.\u201d) Play Misty for Me<\/em> has the laid back, ambling Eastwood pace that would eventually become a trademark, but took some getting used to at first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film\u2019s two most notorious sequences are (1) when the entire narrative stops and becomes a documentary about the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival, featuring a marvelous performance from Cannonball Adderley, and (2) a soft-focus, sexy-time montage for Eastwood and Mills, set to Roberta Flack\u2019s \u201cThe First Time Ever I Saw Your Face\u201d that my friend, writer Nick Braccia<\/a>, calls \u201c84 shots that look like 1970s Trojan ad photography.\u201d Eastwood is said to have paid $2,000 for Flack\u2019s song and damned if he wasn\u2019t going to use every note, despite Universal executives begging him to trim the sequence. (Look, if you\u2019re an up-and-coming actor directing a film for the first and possibly last time, why wouldn\u2019t you devote 4.2% of the total running time to Donna Mills having sex with you under a waterfall?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n However superfluous and \u201cdated\u201d these digressions may be, they make the film feel idiosyncratic and alive in ways assembly-line thrillers never muster. Heims and Resiner\u2019s script has a sturdy potboiler engine, while surrounding it are so many things that seem to be there simply because the director enjoys them: soft jazz songs, gorgeous Northern California vistas, and gratuitous sex scenes. Released seven months after Clint was metaphorically castrated by horny schoolgirls in Siegel\u2019s The Beguiled<\/em>, it\u2019s got a lot of the anxieties and iffy gender politics that will come to the fore in later Eastwood pictures, and this won\u2019t be the last time he casts himself as kind of a dumb, weak guy we\u2019re not sure how we\u2019re supposed to feel about. Play Misty for Me<\/em> is a movie very obviously made by a person, not a corporation or an algorithm. That kind of expression ages well, even when the fashions and hairdos don\u2019t. \u201cPlay Misty for Me\u201d is streaming on Netflix.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/play-misty-1024x576.jpg\")
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If this sounds like Fatal Attraction<\/em>, that\u2019s because 1987\u2019s zeitgeist-defining smash was basically an uncredited remake \u2013 albeit one that shrewdly re-centered the threat to a sanctified suburban family and their cute little bunny rabbit instead of a dirtbag disc jockey tripping over his dick. But just as Adrian Lyne\u2019s (not very good) blockbuster became a release valve for the era\u2019s unspoken AIDS paranoia, Misty<\/em> is just as representative of its own cultural moment, evoking the eerie hangover that followed the Free Love era, shot the summer after the Manson family ended all that California dreamin\u2019 on Cielo Drive. There\u2019s a hint of panic behind Dave\u2019s cool demeanor, a desperation to settle down with his wandering artist, sometime-girlfriend (Donna Mills) once and for all. He\u2019s starting to seem exhausted by her revolving roommates and his freewheeling lifestyle that isn\u2019t built to last. The party is winding down, even before Evelyn ends it at the tip of a knife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
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