delanceyplace.com 12/19/05 - clint eastwood

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In today's excerpt - a glimpse of Clint Eastwood:

"Anyway, there is Clint Eastwood on the Baltimore sidewalk, lunch hour, people streaming past him. ... Now this thing starts to happen. A real-life double take. Numberless Baltimoreans move past this lone mid-sixties guy. No reaction. Another step. They look at one another start to say something like, 'That guy remind you of ... ?'

Naww.

Another step. Now they are staring at one another, turning quickly back. Then they stop.

Dead on the sidewalk.

Holy s**t.

Then they spin.

It's him. He's here. Dirty Harry walks among us.

Back they all scurry and he is gracious, always that, soft-spoken, that too, and he nods to them and smiles back at them, and if they give him something to sign, why, of course he signs it—

"—but he never stops walking. They would have had him then.

He reaches the cafeteria, nods courteously a final time, then goes inside, gets in line for his tray—

"—let me say that again for those of you new to the entertainment business—he gets in line for his tray—waits in line for his food, then goes to his table and has his meal just like anybody else.

"I believe what has kept Eastwood (and Newman) on top all these years is somehow they have clung to the truth: that in spite of their fame, in spite of our millions of spins toward them, they are just like anybody else."