Any Which Way You Can

Okay.

And you've got Clint Eastwood's buddy from Any Which Way You Can and Every Which Way You But Loose-

[laughs]

... running around town as a vampire.

Was it strange to you or did you think you were going to get maybe pigeonholed to just be in movies with mechanical bulls and prison rodeos?

No, because at the same time I did Any Which Way You Can with Clint Eastwood, you know, so I did.

And I was also playing the sheriff in Dallas at the same time.

So.

On the big screen, you remember him as Uncle Bob in Urban Cowboy, and he was General Jack Beringer in WarGames, and of course, he played Ellis in No Country for Old Men.

He's co-starred in dozens of other great movies, including Any Which Way You Can, Stir Crazy, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Six Pack, The Hot Spot, In the Valley of Elah, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

On television, he was unforgettable as the pompous former astronaut and town patriarch Maurice Minnifield on Northern Exposure, for which he received two Emmy Award nominations.

He also played Whitney Durham, the tough-talking, old-fashioned high school basketball coach with a heart of gold, on One Tree Hill.

It was all, all him.

It was a wonderful movie.

You also worked with Clint Eastwood in Any Which Way You Can, and then again in Honkytonk Man.

What was he like to work with?

So well done on getting that budget down there.

It was still the 18th highest grossing movie of that year, beaten easily by The Empire Strikes Back, but also by 9 to 5, by The Shining, by Stir Crazy, Blues Brothers, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Coal Miner's Daughter, Clint Eastwood's boxing ape picture Any Which Way You Can, the Oscars Best Picture of the Year, Ordinary People, and of course, who could forget Cheech and Chong's Next Movie? Flash Gordon has subsequently become a cult favorite, re-watched over and over on video and beloved by Gen Xers everywhere.

Sam J. Jones eventually pulled himself back from the edge, and I really do mean the edge on this one, folks.

It gets dark in that documentary, and that thing is filled with his tearful loved ones talking to camera about how glad they are that he's still around.

I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood, grew up with Clint Eastwood, don't particularly like his politics, but like a lot of his movies.

And I was kind of wrestling with two of his most popular movies, Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can.

And these movies were absolutely huge in the day.

I mean, somebody pointed out that any which way you can, if it was released today, that would have been a half a billion dollar box office.

And yet these films are almost buried and forgotten about now.

And it is specifically because we now know that the animal rights lobby have made us aware that.

I was thinking, I'm sure I heard a song about the good guys and the bad guys at the movies.

And then I realised it was the good guys and the bad guys from John, was it John Durrell from Any Which Way You Can? Because they have a

song.

And of course there's a film, Western, called The Good Guys and the Bad Guys with George Kennedy.

Oh, yeah.

Any Which Way You Can.

Yeah.

Any Which Way But Loose.