Like virtually every actor in history who has turned to directing,Clint Eastwoodwas given the chance to make hisfeature directorial debutprimarily because of his popularity as a star. To reduce the commercial risk for his first directorial outing, the always cost-conscious filmmaker agreed to direct and star in the film for a bare minimum salary. However, instead of choosing the commercial safety of the action genre for his feature directorial debut, Eastwood selected the psychological thrillerPlay Misty for Me, which was written by a woman, his longtime friend Jo Heims.
InPlay Misty for Me, Eastwood plays Dave Garver, a womanizing late-night radio disc journey whose undemanding life is upended after Dave enters into a casual sexual relationship with a female fan, who exhibits increasingly psychotic behavior after Dave tries to end the relationship. In a stark departure from Eastwood’s trademark heroic screen archetype, Dave responds to this threat with a genuine sense of confusion and fear that turns into a quest for survival. As Dave’s mounting crisis envelopes seemingly every aspect of his once carefree bachelor life,Play Misty for Mebecomes a chilling study of the horrifying extent to which one human being can terrorize another.
Play Misty for Me Is the Original Fatal Attraction
Play Misty for Metakes place in and around the beautiful coastal California city of Carmel, where the film’s director and star, Clint Eastwood, was elected Mayor in 1986. The film’s title refers to the Jazz standard “Misty,” which Eastwood’s jazz radio station disc jockey character, Dave Garver, plays at the request of a recurring female caller, Evelyn Draper, who follows Dave to his favorite bar, where she introduces herself. Later that night, Dave drives Evelyn to her house, where they sleep with each other.
By having a sexual relationship with Evelyn, Dave, like Michael Douglas’s Dan Gallagher character in the1987 psychological thrillerfilmFatal Attraction, has a degree of culpability for the reign of terror that Evelyn unleashes following Dave’s rejection of her. Indeed, after their first casual encounter, Dave sleeps with Evelyn at least two times while recognizing the symptoms of her obsessive behavior, in which Evelyn believes that she must have Dave or die.
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One of the most frightening aspects ofPlay Misty for Meis that Evelyn, as brilliantly played by Jessica Walter, is a mystery woman who seemingly has no family, no history, and no job. While the film’s original screenplay reveals that Evelyn spenttime in a psych ward, Eastwood excised this information for the purpose of making the character’s development more surprising. By presenting Evelyn as a stalker without a past, the character takes the form of a malevolent presence, which falls into Dave’s life like a bomb.
Clint Eastwood Knows How to Scare Audiences
The economical approach that Clint Eastwood employed with his direction of thePlay Misty for Meis emblematic of the efficient, straightforward approach that became the director’s imprimatur throughout the rest of his distinguished directorial career. Indeed, the overall format ofPlay Misty for Me, which the filmmakermade on a cheap budgetof less than $1 million, is similar to that of a standard 1970s made-for-television thriller film. However, in its particulars,Play Misty for Merepresents a frightening viewing experience.
WithPlay Misty for Me, Eastwood demonstrates an exquisite sense of timing and a thorough understanding of the art of creating suspense. The director, in a precursor to the technique that John Carpenter applied toHalloween, fills the seemingly ordinary daytime scenes inPlay Misty for Mewith a palpable sense of menace.
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This is most evident in a sequence in which Eastwood’s Dave Garver and Dave’s girlfriend take a daytime walk along a beach and then through an adjacent forest. While the sequence looks and seems superficially innocent and pretty, there is an undercurrent of tension. Through the location’s remoteness and the onset of shadows, he projects the unsettling sense that terror could lurk anywhere.
LikeHalloween, Eastwood also generates suspense inPlay Misty for Methrough misdirection and surprise. After Dave’s stalker, Evelyn, has been granted parole after being committed to a psychiatric hospital for nearly fatally stabbing Dave’s housekeeper, Evelyn calls Dave from a payphone, ostensibly from outside an airport in San Francisco, to tell Dave that she intends to move to Hawaii to begin a new life. However, that night, Dave awakens in his bed to discover that Evelyn has broken into his house and is poised to stab him with a very long knife.
Play Misty for Me Deserves Comparison With Psycho
While Clint Eastwood’sPlay Misty for Mecertainly isn’t the artistic equal ofAlfred Hitchcock’s immortal 1960 horror filmPsycho, Eastwood, like Hitchcock, clearly takes enjoyment in, to quote Hitchcock, playing the audience like a piano. Moreover,Play Misty for Me, likePsycho, generates considerable suspense and terror by featuring a villain who, like Norman Bates inPsycho, is completely insane and, therefore, capable of anything.
Play Misty for Mepays homage toPsycho, specifically in terms of the scene inPsychoin which private detective Milton Arbogast enters the Bates house and ascends the stairs to find Norman’s mother, only to be stabbed to death. InPlay Misty for Me,a police detective, after driving out to the home of Dave’s girlfriend for a welfare check, is similarly lunged at and then stabbed to death with a pair of scissors.
This scene, like the staircase scene inPsycho, generates tension due to the audience’s expectation that something bad will happen. By stringing out the audience in terms of the exact moment when the killer strikes, the scene takes the form of a ticking time bomb. Like Hitchcock, Eastwood has the audience eating out of the palm of his director’s hand.Play Misty for Meis streaming on Netflix.
