Year of Eastwood #46

Breezy (1973)

Starring: William Holden, Kay Lenz
Directed by Eastwood

I can’t quite figure out if Clint likes the hippies or would like to kick em in their bell-bottom wearing behinds. He certainly got lots of mileage out them in the 70’s. Usually busting a bunch of hippie-dippies for smoking dope and maybe smacking a few around before hauling them off to the slammer in the Dirty Harry pics. After all, the hippies represented everything that was going wrong with the great ol’ US of A in the 60’s. What with their psychedelic trips, anti-establishment tirades, and free-loving attitudes … well, I guess Clint kinda liked that last one.

That’s why he directed this May/December romance with the moon glow title character and her braless devil-may-care ways. But man, a lot of that hippy stuff is hard to swallow. Hey, the theme song lyrics … I always keep my pockets filled with pumpkin seeds and time … is just about enough to hit the Eject button in the first couple of minutes.

But there’s something infectious about this movie, namely Breezy herself. What middle-aged man wouldn’t want some free spirit gal showing up at his door, offering nothing more than a few tunes on her guitar and a smile? Not William Holden, that’s for sure. He tries to scoff away Breezy at first with his button-up, three piece suit ways. But Breezy hasn’t been hitchin’ half way across the country just to give up that easy. Nope, nothing would please her more than some old man to completely squash her lifestyle into some suburban homemaker. Dude’s so old that he wears a cardigan to play tennis … every hippies dream come true, eh?

Holden got his break into the big time by playing the other end of the cougar spectrum by hooking up with Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. That one ended up with him face-down in the pool, but Breezy’s not interested in anything that dramatic. She just wants a nice place to hang her poncho and maybe a nice apple every now and then. Later, Holden got mad as hell and wasn’t gonna take it anymore from those hippies in Network. But then he died … and they gave him an Oscar. Sound familiar?

Ok, back to the cougar thing. Aren’t we already sick of this whole phenomenon? Older, successful women hunting down young studs with no interest but a good workout. Clint’s been doing the reverse for years … but try to hook him up with a lady of a certain age, let’s say Geraldine Page, and he’d rather take a tumble down the stairs. So enough with the media frenzy, it’s nothing new … just look at Cher.

Breezy and Geezer take nice strolls on the beach. They go to see High Plains Drifter at the local Cineplex. Geezer starts lifting the medicine ball cuz he’s getting a bit saggy for such a young gal. That’s about the extent of the tension here … the old man can’t stand that the world just won’t accept his love for this flower child half his age. Damn you, world.

Lately, Clint’s directed a few movies in which he doesn’t appear, but early in his career it drove the movie companies bonkers that he wasn’t going to be in Breezy. They probably insisted that Clint at least put his picture on the poster. Clint was too young to play the lead, but he wanted to get that message out there … can’t we just be happy that these two star-crossed lovers found each other out there in this crazy world? Or at least until dementia sets in...