The Smoking Gun by Doug Richardson

Author:Doug Richardson [Richardson, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2014-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

It’s Not Who You Know, Punk

This is one of my favorite tales. I’ve told it many times. At social occasions, I’m often asked by those who’ve already heard the story to repeat it with luster. Of course, there’s an eventual life lesson to be found near the end. Until that moment, enjoy this rather foolish example of pure, youthful moxie.

It was my twenty-first birthday. I’d taken a few days off from attending film school at usc to join my family in Carmel for the celebration of my parents’ silver anniversary. Yes. It was my not-so-good fortune to have been born on my parents’ anniversary. There are worse days to be born. July 4th. Any day during the Christmas season. I suppose if my pop hadn’t loved my mom so much or had been the type to forget anniversaries, my birthdays might have had a bit more shine to them. But that’s way behind me.

For you readers unfamiliar with Carmel by the Sea, it’s located in a romantic corner of Northern California, just south of the Monterey Peninsula. We’d just finished the celebratory dinner and bid my parents a fond goodnight, when my brother-in-law suggested we wander over to a joint called the Hog’s Breath Inn so I could order my first legal beer. The restaurant-slash-bar was pretty famous. Less for its food and drink and more for its co-owner, Clint Eastwood.

“Why the hell not?” I replied.

The Hog’s Breath is a bit difficult to find without an address. Its entrance is through a tight little alleyway and down three steps into a vine-covered courtyard. Restaurant to the left, saloon to the right. We’d barely found a place to hang before my brother-in-law pointed out that

Clint was seated in the bar, enjoying some conversation and a bottle of Coors.

At the time, Clint Eastwood was, without equal, the biggest movie star on the planet. His movies performed worldwide. His familiar features were chiseled into the American psyche like the faces on Rushmore. Were his fans to hold hands, they might’ve been able to circle the earth more than once.

Somewhere around my second beer, I received my first official nudge. I don’t recall who began it. My brother-in-law or one of my two older sisters. But they knew how much I revered the movie icon. And they began suggesting that I approach him.

I balked. I’ve never been comfortable approaching celebrities. Not that I’m by any means shy. I’m merely respectful, figuring that they have as much a right as anybody else to occupy a public space; their mere presence doesn’t give me or anybody else the right to accost them.

But then again I was only two beers in.

Somewhere around Bud number four, my better judgment somewhat impaired, I began to consider some kind of approach. With the constant egging by my siblings I was eventually able to rationalize plausible and important reasons for me to wedge myself between the movie star and his companion. I was in college. A hardscrabble film student, no less. I could ask Clint Eastwood for career advice.

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