Nat Blathers About Gran Torino

They told me I could write whatever I want today so if you have any problems with the content of the Monday post, you can blame "they."

Yesterday, my lovely girlfriend and I went to the Motion Pictures Cinema and took in a viewing of the new Clint Eastwood movie entitled Gran Torino. Since then, I have not been able to get the movie out of my head.

I also have not been able to get "I Hate This Part" by the Pussycat Dolls out of my head either, which is weird because I've only heard the song twice and I hated it both times I've heard it. As you can imagine, the confluence of old, salty, wrinkly Clint Eastwood and Pussycat Dolls music has made for some interesting times in the ol' Nat noggin. Swear to God, could not get to sleep last night. Not even Nyquil could put that foolishness out of my head.

But I digress.

If you have the chance you should go see this movie, if only for the chance to see Clint Eastwood completely become the crotchety old bastard everyone knew Dirty Harry would one day become.

I would have loved to get a look at the script. It probably looks something like:

CLINT (OF WHATEVER CHARACTER NAME - TOM, THINK):
Those <"expletive"><"racial slurs"> better leave my <"expletive"><"another expletive"> Gran Torino alone or I swear to <"blaspheme"><"another expletive"> I'll <"horrendous act of physical violence"> their <"oh god! expletive"><"buttocks"> into seventy <"unintelligible">!!! <"Clint growl!!">

There was a lot of Clint growling. I imagine every page probably had a "Clint growls" stage direction of some type.

And the whole time, we audience members are all giddy because he's Clint Eastwood being Clint Eastwood, doing everything that you love to see Clint Eastwood do (threaten people with firearms, swear like a sailor, beat the living hell out of children). And of course, as we're all leaving, everyone's repeating "Get off my lawn!!!!" in their best Clint growl. It's like the new "I drink your milkshake."

In short, awesome.

If you are from Michigan, and more specifically from the Metro-Detroit area as I am, then you will get an extra kick out of the little details. They filmed the movie in Detroit because no city can quite capture that air of urban burned out hopelessness quite like Detroit and also because of some State incentives to promote filming in Michigan made the filming process cheap. There's a map of Lake St Claire in Clint's basement and one of the street signs clearly says Livernois.

In the very first scene, a funeral for Clint Eastwood's wife, one of his grandsons enters the church wearing a Hawaii blue number 11 jersey and I immediately leaned over to my girlfriend and whispered 'Roy Williams.'

"What?" she whispered back.

"That's a Roy Williams jersey."

"Shut up, I'm watching the movie."