Year of Eastwood #2

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Starring: Eastwood
Directed by Don Siegel

Clint moves into some kind of low-rent housing and right away he knows that something is not right - well let’s just say that this is not the kind of place you want to live. His apartment is very small and could really use a good interior decorator, the building seems to be falling apart, and there’s a bit of a rodent problem. So, he goes to talk to his landlord - a Mr. Warden - and he tells Clint that there is no way he is letting him out of his lease. No one in the history of history has anyone broken their lease at his apartment, and no one ever will. So Clint steals his nail clippers.

After a while, Clint makes some friends … a wise, old man named Doc who likes to paint, the guy who played Kramer on the sitcom Jerry makes during Seinfeld (he stole George’s raisins), and a really friendly guy in the shower. Clint eventually gets a job at some wood crafting shop. Working conditions don’t seem to be very good at this place - they must not get very good benefits - so Doc cuts some of his fingers off with an ax.

Eventually, Clint decides he can’t take it living there any more, so he digs his way out of his apartment. He digs the hole with the clippers that he stole from Mr. Warden, who by the way really hates flowers so don’t bother sending him any on his birthday. Before he left Clint grabbed the pet mouse that belonged to one of his neighbors that had a heart attack. Behind the wall, there’s a whole maze of pipes and bars and I have no idea how Clint knew where he was going but somehow he ended up on the roof. Even though he didn’t have much of a view from his apartment, apparently his building was located on ocean front property, because he had to jump on a raft to finally get away from his crappy apartment. I don’t know exactly what the mouse in Clint’s pocket thought about the long swim to San Francisco, but I’m sure he was fine.

The next morning, when Mr. Warden came around to collect the rent, he found that Clint had taken off and left a mannequin head in his bed to fool him. Mr. Warden wasn’t very happy about this and I’m sure he wrote a nasty letter to Clint’s credit agency, and then he beat up some flowers.