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''Every Which Way but Loose'' is a 1978 American
action comedy film Action comedy is a genre that combines aspects of action and comedy. The genre is most prevalent in film with action comedy films, though several TV series fit this genre. Film The action comedy film is a film genre that combines aspects of acti ...
released by
Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
, produced by Robert Daley and directed by
James Fargo James Fargo (born August 14, 1938) is an American film director. He directed numerous films from 1976 to 1998. After serving as assistant director to Steven Spielberg on Duel and on many films starring Clint Eastwood, he was then given the chanc ...
. It stars
Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "''Dolla ...
in an uncharacteristic and offbeat comedy role as Philo Beddoe, a trucker and bare-knuckle brawler roaming the
American West The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...
in search of a lost love while accompanied by his brother/manager, Orville, and his pet
orangutan Orangutans are Hominidae, great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in ...
, Clyde. In the process, Philo manages to cross a motley assortment of characters, including a pair of police officers and an entire motorcycle gang (the Black Widows of Pacoima), who end up pursuing him for revenge. Eastwood's appearance in the film, after his string of Spaghetti Western and '' Dirty Harry'' roles, somewhat startled the film industry and he was reportedly advised against making it. Although it was poorly reviewed by critics, the film went on to become an enormous success and became, along with its 1980 sequel ''
Any Which Way You Can ''Any Which Way You Can'' is a 1980 American action comedy film directed by Buddy Van Horn and starring Clint Eastwood, with Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, William Smith, and Ruth Gordon in supporting roles. The film is the sequel to the 1978 hit ...
'', two of the highest grossing Eastwood films. When adjusted for inflation, it ranks as one of the top 250 highest-grossing films of all time.


Plot

Philo Beddoe is a truck driver living in the San Fernando Valley. He lives in a small house, with an
orangutan Orangutans are Hominidae, great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in ...
named Clyde, behind that of his brother, Orville Boggs, and his mother. Philo makes money on the side as a bare-knuckle fighter; he is often compared to a legendary fighter named Tank Murdock. One night Philo becomes smitten with Lynn Halsey-Taylor, an aspiring country music singer he meets at the Palomino Club, a local
honky-tonk A honky-tonk (also called honkatonk, honkey-tonk, or tonk) is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano ( tack piano ...
. His relationship with her seems to be going well until one day she and her camper disappear from the trailer park. Believing that he is falling for her, Philo decides to set off for Lynn's home in Denver, Colorado. Along the way, he has a run-in with a motorcycle gang called the Black Widows, who incur Philo's wrath after two gang members insult him and Clyde at a traffic light. Philo chases them down and takes their bikes (which he repaints, repairs, and resells), and every attempt they make to get even results in disaster. Philo also incurs the wrath of an LAPD cop named Putnam, with whom he gets into a fight at the Palomino. Both the officer and the Widows learn of Philo's trip to Colorado and head off to find him. Orville and Clyde accompany Philo to Denver, and on the way, they meet a woman named Echo who becomes Orville's girlfriend. They earn money along the way by booking fights for Philo. After a fight in a slaughterhouse, the man holding the money tries to stiff Philo. Echo fires two shots from a .38, dead center into a side of beef. She lets the crowd know she knows how to shoot, saying, "The second shot was to let you know the first was no accident." The man hands over the money. Knowing that Philo has come to look for her, Lynn helps the Black Widows lure him into a trap. Philo sees Lynn and attempts to talk to her, but finds himself surrounded by the Black Widows. He manages to fight most of them until Orville intervenes. Using a garbage truck with a dumpster hoist, he dumps all the motorcycles into the back of the truck. The Widows charge the garbage truck, but Orville gets away. Philo, Echo, and Orville then escape. Philo finally finds Lynn and she reveals her true nature to him. Hurt by her callousness, Philo says that he is the only one dumb enough to want to take her further than her bed. Lynn erupts in a fit of rage, striking him repeatedly until she collapses in tears. Orville learns that Tank Murdock, based in the area, is ready to retire after one more fight. Orville makes the arrangements, and Philo faces his elderly nemesis. During the fight, the crowd, initially pro-Murdock, begins to insult him, with some murmurs that Philo is going to be the next Murdock. Philo lets his guard down, intentionally giving Murdock a clear shot, knocking Philo down for the count. Murdock, having regained the crowd's esteem, is allowed to retire undefeated, although he knows Philo let him win. Clyde, Orville and Echo head home the next day.


Cast

*
Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "''Dolla ...
as Philo Beddoe * Sondra Locke as Lynn Halsey-Taylor * Geoffrey Lewis as Orville *
Beverly D'Angelo Beverly Heather D'Angelo (born November 15, 1951) is an American actress who starred as Ellen Griswold in the ''National Lampoon's Vacation'' films (1983–2015). She has appeared in over 60 films and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for h ...
as Echo * Ruth Gordon as Ma * Walter Barnes as Tank Murdock * George Chandler as D.M.V. Clerk *
Sam Gilman Sam Gilman (February 5, 1915 – December 3, 1985) was an American film and television actor. He was perhaps best known for playing Harvey Johnson in the 1961 film ''One-Eyed Jacks''. Life and career Gilman was born in Salem, Massachusetts. H ...
as Fat Man's Friend * Roy Jenson as Woody, Secretary Biker *
James McEachin James McEachin (born May 20, 1930) is an American author and retired actor. Military career McEachin served in the United States Army before, and then during, the Korean War. Serving in King Company, 9th Infantry Regiment (United States), 2nd ...
as Herb *
Bill McKinney William Denison McKinney (September 12, 1931 – December 1, 2011) was an American character actor. He played the sadistic mountain man in John Boorman's 1972 film ''Deliverance'' and appeared in seven Clint Eastwood films, most notably as Cap ...
as Dallas, Treasurer Biker * William O'Connell as Elmo, Sergeant-at-Arms Biker *
John Quade John William Saunders III (April 1, 1938 – August 9, 2009), better known by the stage name John Quade, was an American character actor who starred in film and in television. He was best known for his role as Cholla, the leader of the moto ...
as Cholla, the Biker Leader *
Dan Vadis Dan Vadis (born Constantine Daniel Vafiadis, 3 January 1938 – 11 June 1987) was an American actor famous for his lead roles in many Italian films made in the 1960s. Biography Vadis was of Greek descent, with lineage tracing back to the isl ...
as Frank, Assistant Head Biker *
Gregory Walcott Gregory Walcott (born Bernard Wasdon Mattox, January 13, 1928 – March 20, 2015) was an American television and film actor. Although he had roles in many Hollywood films and television series, he is perhaps best known for having appeared in th ...
as Putnam *
Hank Worden Hank Worden (born Norton Earl Worden; July 23, 1901 – December 6, 1992) was an American cowboy-turned-character actor who appeared in many Westerns, including many John Ford films such as ''The Searchers'' and the TV series ''The Lone R ...
as Trailer Court Manager Screenwriter Jeremy Kronsberg has a small role as Bruno the biker, while martial artist Gene LeBell also features as another Biker. Orangutan
Manis ''Manis'' is a genus of South Asian and East Asian pangolins, the Asiatic pangolins, from subfamily Maninae, within family Manidae. Etymology Carl Linnaeus (1758) invented the Neo-Latin generic name ''Manis'' apparently as a feminine singul ...
co-stars as the ape, Clyde. Making uncredited appearances are
Harry Guardino Harry Guardino (December 23, 1925 – July 17, 1995) was an American actor whose career spanned from the early 1950s to the early 1990s. Biography Guardino was born to an Italian family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and raised in Bro ...
as James Beekman,
Mel Tillis Lonnie Melvin Tillis (August 8, 1932 – November 19, 2017) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s as part of the outlaw country movement, ...
as emcee/performer at the Palomino honky tonk club, and Phil Everly as singer at the Palomino honky tonk club.


Production

The script, written by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, had been turned down by many other big production companies in Hollywood. Eastwood unexpectedly took a liking to the project himself, seeing it as a way to broaden his appeal to the public. Most of Eastwood's production team and his agents reportedly thought it was ill-advised. Bob Hoyt, whom Eastwood had contacts with (through his Malpaso secretary Judy Hoyt and Eastwood's long-term friend Fritz Manes), thought it showed promise and eventually convinced Warner Brothers to buy it. An orangutan named
Manis ''Manis'' is a genus of South Asian and East Asian pangolins, the Asiatic pangolins, from subfamily Maninae, within family Manidae. Etymology Carl Linnaeus (1758) invented the Neo-Latin generic name ''Manis'' apparently as a feminine singul ...
was brought in to play Clyde; also cast were Geoffrey Lewis as the dimwitted Orville,
Beverly D'Angelo Beverly Heather D'Angelo (born November 15, 1951) is an American actress who starred as Ellen Griswold in the ''National Lampoon's Vacation'' films (1983–2015). She has appeared in over 60 films and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for h ...
as his girlfriend, and Sondra Locke as Lynn Halsey-Taylor, the country and western barroom singer. Eastwood spoke about using the orangutan for the main role, "Clyde was one of the most natural actors I ever worked with! But you had to get him on the first take because his boredom level was very limited." The film has a contemporary
western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
theme, displaying the
blue collar A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involving manufacturing, warehousing, mining, excavation, electricity generation and powe ...
aspects of the western United States, with many scenes shot in rural locations, cheap
motel A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries ...
rooms, industrial facilities, and
honky-tonk A honky-tonk (also called honkatonk, honkey-tonk, or tonk) is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano ( tack piano ...
bars. The film was shot on location, including the California communities of
Bakersfield Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
,
North Hollywood North Hollywood is a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, located in the San Fernando Valley. The neighborhood contains the NoHo Arts District, the El Portal Theatre, several art galleries, and the Academy of TV Arts and Sciences. The North ...
, San Fernando, Sun Valley, Ukiah, and
Van Nuys Van Nuys () is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Home to Van Nuys Airport and the Van Nuys City Hall, Valley Municipal Building, it is the most populous neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. ...
. It was also filmed in
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
, including parts of Denver,
Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...
and historic Georgetown. A few scenes were also filmed in
Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...
, Santa Fe and
Taos Taos or TAOS may refer to: Places * Taos, Missouri, a city in Cole County, Missouri, United States * Taos County, New Mexico, United States ** Taos, New Mexico, a city, the county seat of Taos County, New Mexico *** Taos art colony, an art colo ...
, all in New Mexico. The 34-year-old Locke "reluctantly" got an abortion late in the shoot. This was three years into her cohabitation with Eastwood.


Title origin

The film's title refers to the Eddie Rabbitt song of the same name from the soundtrack, in which the singer complains that his girlfriend turns him "every which way but loose"; i.e., he cannot bring himself to leave her although he is more of a freewheeling character.


Reception


Box office performance

Upon its release, the film was a surprising success and became Eastwood's most commercially successful film at the time. The film opened in 1,275 theatres and grossed $10,272,294 in its first week, beating Eastwood's previous best opener, '' The Enforcer''. It grossed a total of $104.3 million in the United States and Canada, ranking high amongst those of Eastwood's career, and was the second-highest-grossing film of 1978.McGilligan (1999), p.302


Critical response

It received largely negative reviews, however. Janet Maslin of '' The New York Times'' called the film "the slackest and most harebrained of Mr. Eastwood's recent movies. It's overlong and virtually uneventful, even though there are half a dozen cute characters and woolly subplots competing for the viewer's attentions." '' Variety'' commented, "This film is so awful it's almost as if Eastwood is using it to find out how far he can go—how bad a film he can associate himself with."
Gene Siskel Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the ''Chicago Tribune''. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his d ...
of the '' Chicago Tribune'' awarded 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote that the comedy "breaks new ground" for Eastwood, but the film "has been sloppily made. Its villains are pathetic cartoon characters; its seemingly-sweet leading lady turns out to be a psychotic. These errors cripple what could have been an extremely entertaining story." Charles Champlin of the '' Los Angeles Times'' called it "a slapdash, slapstick comedy" that "pushes all the right buttons" for audiences but "lacks both the urgency and the emotional satisfactions of Eastwood's angrier films." Gary Arnold of '' The Washington Post'' wrote, "Eastwood must have thought of his blundering new vehicle, 'Every Which Way but Loose,' as a change of pace, designed to align his career in a direction similar to that of Burt Reynolds. Casual, knockabout farce seems to be the general idea, but perhaps Eastwood should have borrowed the director and writers who helped shape ' Smokey and the Bandit' and ' Hooper' for Reynolds. 'Every Which Way but Loose' certainly isn't loose. It's a sluggish shambles." David Ansen of '' Newsweek'' wrote, "One can forgive the orangutan's participation - he couldn't read the script - but what is Eastwood's excuse? That a star with his power in Hollywood would choose to litter the screen with this plotless junk heap of moronic gags, sour romance and fatuous fisticuffs can be taken either as an expression of contempt for his huge audience or as an act of masochism." As of October 2021, it holds a rating of 39% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "The inexplicable pairing of Clint Eastwood with an orangutan is the least of ''Every Which Way But Loose''s problems – a slack action-comedy with a haphazardly assembled story."


Soundtrack

The soundtrack album included many successful country music hits, two new songs of which reached No. 1 on the ''Billboard''
Hot Country Singles Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine in the United States. This 50-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly by collecting airplay data from Nielsen BDS along with digital sal ...
chart in 1979: the title track "
Every Which Way but Loose ''Every Which Way but Loose'' is a 1978 American action comedy film released by Warner Bros., produced by Robert Daley and directed by James Fargo. It stars Clint Eastwood in an uncharacteristic and offbeat comedy role as Philo Beddoe, a tr ...
" by Eddie Rabbitt and " Coca-Cola Cowboy" by
Mel Tillis Lonnie Melvin Tillis (August 8, 1932 – November 19, 2017) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s as part of the outlaw country movement, ...
; also included was " Behind Closed Doors" by
Charlie Rich Charles Allan Rich (December 14, 1932July 25, 1995) was an American country music singer, songwriter, and musician. His eclectic style of music was often difficult to classify, encompassing the rockabilly, jazz, blues, country, soul, and gospe ...
, which had reached the No. 1 spot on the Hot Country Singles chart in 1973. Both Rich and Tillis had other songs reach the top 5 of the country chart: Rich's "I'll Wake You Up When I Get Home" (No. 3) and Tillis' " Send Me Down to Tucson" (No. 2). Producer
Snuff Garrett Thomas Lesslie Garrett (July 5, 1938 – December 16, 2015) known as Snuff Garrett or Tommy Garrett, was an American record producer whose most famous work was during the 1960s and 1970s. Early years Garrett was born in Dallas, Texas, United ...
was hired to produce songs for the film, including three for Sondra Locke's character, something which proved problematic as Locke was not a professional singer.McGilligan (1999), p. 299 Locke, who appears as Eastwood's love interest, performs several musical numbers in the film as well. In addition to "Behind Closed Doors", a 1960 song by Hank Thompson, "A Six Pack to Go" was featured in the film and included on the soundtrack.


Charts


References


Bibliography

* * * *


External links

* * * * * {{James Fargo 1978 films 1970s action comedy films 1970s American films American action comedy films American boxing films 1970s English-language films Country music films Films about apes Underground fighting films Films directed by James Fargo Malpaso Productions films Films set in the San Fernando Valley Films shot in Wyoming Films shot in Colorado Films shot in New Mexico 1978 comedy films