Year of Eastwood #52

Any Which Way You Can (1980)

Starring: Eastwood, et al
Directed by Buddy Van Horn

The first rule of Fight Club … long before Edward Norton made up that world of soap and underground fist fighting, Clint lived it. Making scratch by fighting thugs until one ends up a bloody heap on the asphalt, then drinking away all the winnings at the local honky-tonk. No existential meaning necessary.

Year of Eastwood kicked things off with Every Which Way But Loose. A film that at first looks pretty flimsy. But underneath the monkey jokes and crappy music, there’s a story of an average guy struggling just to put a little Devild Ham brand meat-substance on the table. He probably drinks too much to forget his woman troubles and although right now he’s successful at these - what I assume would be illegal - organized brawls, Clint knows that one of these days he’s going to run into someone bigger, faster, and stronger than he is.

Well fifty-one movies later, not much has changed for Clint in Any Which Way You Can. He’s still fighting and drinking and trying to get Clyde laid. Yep, after a long negotiation period, Clyde the orangutan agreed to appear in the sequel. There was a long list of demands. Clyde wanted his own screen time … an odd musical tribute to Clyde swinging around on a tire swing. He gets to crap in some cop cars and, like all A-list celebrities at the time, he gets to bust up a hotel room to impress what I can only assume is an orangutan prostitute.

The rest of the gang is back as well. Ruth Gordon as the foul mouthed old lady. She doesn’t really have much to do in the sequel. Just run around complaining about Clyde, that damn hairy-assed banana head (which I believe was in the original script for Planet of the Apes). Then she disappears about half-way into the film … not really sure why.

The biker gang is back as well as the lunk-head cops. The Nazis didn’t make the final cut in this one. Guess they had things to do. And, of course, due to overwhelming popular demand - Sondra Locke returns once again as the talent-less country singer who broke Clint’s heart in the first film. Within a few scenes of the sequel … and a couple of crappy Sondra songs … she’s back in Clint’s bed. No one can resist that Sondra charm.

Clint’s never been much of the romantic lead type. He’s an action hero and more of a love ‘em and leave ‘em type. In Every Which Way, he was just an average Joe Six-Pack who didn’t get the girl in the end (so long, Sarah Palin). To just push that aside just to put Clint’s girlfriend in another movie ruins the appeal of the first film that even Hollywood movies don’t always have the happy ending. I have no problem with Clint cashing in on a retread of a successful first film, but this fact just makes the second film feel totally unnecessary.

I hate to end this blog on such a negative note, so here’s some more stuff about Clyde… He gets to tear up a couple of cars in the movie. Little known fact, Clyde was the inspiration for the TV series, Alf, but he always maintained that he never ate no cats.

So Clyde’s career pretty much came to an end with Any Which Way, but he did get in on some of that Clint one-liner action. Right turn, Clyde. Which I still use to this day whenever I‘m bustin' up some wiseacre at the local pub.

I’m choosing to ignore the fact that in the sequel, Clyde was played by a different monkey.