"Make My Day"/"Do You Feel Lucky?" writer dies

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   From Monday's NEW YORK TIMES, 2 September 2002:
  
  
Dean Riesner, 83, Who Knew How Tough Guys Talk, Dies

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

ean Riesner, who began his movie career as a toddler acting with Charlie 
Chaplin and went on to become a seasoned scriptwriter who dreamed up some of 
Clint Eastwood's tough-guy lines, died Aug. 18 at his home in Los Angeles. He 
was 83.

Mr. Riesner worked mostly on feature films and in television and was known as 
a script doctor, the term for a writer who specializes in repairing 
troublesome screenplays, often without screen credit. Yet it was a film 
short, "Bill and Coo," that brought him the industry's highest honor — an 
Academy Award in 1948 for special achievement. Written and directed by Mr. 
Riesner, the film was named for the avian lead actors in a town called 
Chirpendale who seek to ward off an evil crow.

Mr. Riesner often contributed to Eastwood films, but the Hollywood penchant 
for putting a script through multiple rewrites sometimes made it difficult to 
prove who wrote what. Mr. Riesner contended that he had thought up Mr. 
Eastwood's famous line, "Go ahead, make my day," for the 1976 movie "The 
Enforcer," in which it was not used. Mr. Eastwood uttered it onscreen seven 
years later in "Sudden Impact," a movie on which Mr. Riesner did not work.

Another famous line came in "Dirty Harry," a 1971 film for which Mr. Riesner 
rewrote the script. Later, another writer, John Milius, came in to again 
rework the script. Both men have publicly claimed credit for the line.

It occurs when "Dirty" Harry Callahan, the character played by Mr. Eastwood, 
appears at the scene of a foiled bank robbery. Casually eating a hot dog, he 
takes out his gun and picks off the scattering felons until one remains.

Grunting out his words, Callahan says: "Uh-huh. I know what you're thinking. 
Did he fire six shots or five? Well, to tell you the truth, I forgot myself 
in all this excitement.

"But being as this is the .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, 
and could blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one question: 
`Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?"
(...)