Year of Eastwood #6

Play Misty for Me (1971)

Starring: Eastwood, Jessica Walter
Directed by Eastwood

Clint is a happening dude. He’s a popular DJ at a jazz radio station, he drives a sporty little Jaguar, he’s got a swinging bachelor pad, and the ladies - well, Clint has no problem with the ladies. That is until he picks up a foxy chick at the bar one night and she turns out to be his biggest fan, calling his radio show every night with the same request … play Misty for me.

Clint gives her a ride home and she provides him with a proper thank you. The next morning, Clint says adios and off he goes to comb his hair or something. But Jessica shows up at his place with a bag full of groceries. What guy wouldn't enjoy a lady that drops by with a couple of steaks, so that is followed by another night of thanking. The next morning Clint tells her he’ll call her, but she tracks him down at the bar once again. Enough is enough and Clint is like "Whoah babe, you're really starting to cramp my style." Jessica doesn't give up easy so her plan to impress him is to stab his housekeeper a few dozen times and give his girlfriend a nice new haircut. Clint gives her one last thank you, right off a cliff.

I’m not sure that you could say Jessica Walter was always typecast as the crazy chick, but years later she went on to play the wacky matriarch of the Bluth family on the awesome TV sitcom, Arrested Development.

Play Misty is really a cautionary tale about the consequences of where you stick your jimmy. In the swinging 60s, sex was everywhere (or so I’ve heard). The Pill was readily available and gone was the one fear that was keeping everyone’s hormones in check. Play Misty brought a new stone cold drag to the scene - what do you really know about that groovy chick that you don’t even know that you’re about to bang. What if she turns out to be a psycho bitch who’s going to try to stab you? Years later, Fatal Attraction dealt with a similar topic, instead focusing on the consequences of infidelity - once again you gotta be careful of those chicks with a crazy look in her eyes.

Play Misty was the directorial debut for Clint. His technique is pretty much a straight forward approach - focusing on the story - which he has maintained for the many films he has directed since. The studio gave Clint the go ahead on the movie, but wanted Clint to use a song that was already their property, perhaps Strangers in the Night. Clint turned down their suggestion to call the movie Play Scooby Doo Be Doo for Me.

The film was an interesting choice for Clint’s first project behind the camera. Psychological thrillers in the mode of Hitchcock was quite a departure from the Westerns and Action films that audiences had come to expect, but Play Misty was a huge hit. Clint does an effective job of building the suspense but there are few scenes that seem out of place - an outdoor sequence at the Monterrey Jazz Festival, a soft-core montage to a Roberta Flack song, and a side story about Clint’s girlfriend and her revolving door situation with her roommates (oh wait, I think we all know where that one is headed…)