An Old Film

I saw an old movie called ‘Breezy’ not long ago. Clint Eastwood directed it, with William Holden and Kay Lenz in the starring roles. The plot involves a man in his fifties who gets involved with a young woman in her late teens he picks up hitchhiking. She seduces him, and although he reluctantly lets her, he feels appropriately odd about it. I remember seeing the 1973 movie a couple years after it came out. When seeing it in my twenties, the thought of this fifties something guy with a woman barely above the age of consent didn’t give me much of a yuck factor. Now I’ve made it into late fifties-something realm, the movie gave me a Twilight Zone type reaction. In this age of rainbow virility pills, such relationships could be common place for all I know.

Realizing the breadth and depth of the chasm between twenty-something people and fifty-something people, the movie gave me the creeps. What does this have to do with anything? For one, it was written by a woman screen writer, named Jo Heims. She also wrote the screenplay for another Clint Eastwood directed film, called ‘Play Misty For Me’. It was said her script for ‘Breezy’ made the relationship believable. Seeing it now at my age, it just seems creepy. :)