The Outlaw Josey Wales

And this really bothers me, which is what I've said.

You know, Josie Wales, the gauntlet.

And now Sudden Impact would keep returning to this thing where she keeps, you know, having sexual violence or attempting to rape against their characters.

And, you know, I mean, obviously the gauntlet is attempted because he turns up and saves the day.

were gentler.

Yeah, I think there are ways I understand Jordan that I would not understand somebody like Josie Wales in Reef History.

Okay.

Because something is as simple as being a queer person where every time you step in a room, you make a threat assessment.

He's been, he's prolific how many films he's directed.

Not just films that he's starred in himself, but a lot of my favorite Clint Eastwood films are Cl- are Clint Eastwood films directed by Clint Eastwood, such as The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven, Gran Torino.

Yeah, yeah.

You know? I think he directs as his, as his personality dictates, which is unflashy-

I'm going to, this probably isn't going to make sense to anybody.

I'm about to throw out a Josie Wales quote in the middle of a talk on forgiveness.

But have you ever seen The Outlaw Josie Wales with Clint Eastwood? There's a point in the movie where they're stuck in a little cabin or something and the desperados are coming to get him.

And he's got like this old woman and this other lady he picked up on the prairie and everything in there.

And he says something to the extent of, I can't get the quote exactly right, but he says something to the extent of there's, you know, when your back's to the wall kind of thing.

We have to get kind of defiant.

And that's kind of what I got to.

And that's what I, you know, that's where the inner kind of Josie Wales came out in me.

The Clint Eastwood line is like, dying ain't much of a living, son.

Josie Wells.

Josie Wells, right? That actually, now I'm picturing this cinematically.

Like, dude, Maynard putting together his dirty dozen.

Like, going up to the Scottish Highlands, finding, like, the most William Wallace-looking motherfucker.

Now, this is one of the first films I've covered of the Clint Eastwood, Sandra Locke era, which consisted of six films from the mid-1970s through 1983.

Now, those were The Outlaw of Josie Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, the sequel Any Which Way You Can, and Sudden Impact, which was the fourth Dirty Harry film.

Eastwood and Locke were in a relationship, they were unmarried, from 1975 through 1989.

And it didn't end well for the couple, and you can do your own research if you want all the dirty details.

Right.

Uh, all I knew was Asa Carter had written this, and he was a writer? So that was in 1990, I think it was, and it wasn't more than about six months later that my son and I were watching a film called, uh, The Outlaw Josey Wales-

Mm-hmm

... by Clint Eastwood, sort of his breakthrough film, and I don't know why, as I was come, came to the end of it, it said, "Based on the book by Forrest Carter." And I thought, Forrest Carter? This...

Didn't think about it.

And the next morning I woke up, and I said, "Forrest Carter.

Josie Wales.

The moment for me when Eastwood pops into kind of his own brand and his own complete idea of what a Western could be is The Outlaw Josey Wales.

I kinda think with Josey Wales that Clint had escaped the shadow of Leone in some ways.

I don't know, it just feels like a Clint movie to me.

Well, you can pull those pistols and whistle dixie.

[gunshots]

The Outlaw Josey Wales begins as if it's gonna be a traditional revenge Western.

His wife and son were massacred by the Redlegs.