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Sudden Impact press materials
The Making of Sudden Impact
Sudden Impact is a Warner Bros. film starring Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry Callahan, San Francisco's notorious streetwise homicide detective on the trail of a brutally ritualistic murderer. The film is true to the three previous Dirty Harry features, and is the first directed by Clint Eastwood, following Dirty Harry, directed by Don Siegel, Magnum Force, directed by Ted Post, and The Enforcer, directed by James Fargo.
With Eastwood at the helm (he also produced the project), Sudden Impact promises to be the kind of action-drama that initially made Dirty Harry a screen legend. In order to fulfill that commitment, Eastwood put together his crew as carefully as he did his cast, turning to executive producer Fritz Manes (who is also an active stuntman) and second unit director and stunt coordinator Buddy Van Horn (who also directed Any Which Way You Can) to help with the key scenes.
"I assemble a crew as carefully as anything else I do," Eastwood explains, "because I don't want to have to look over my shoulder everytime something has to be done or a deadline has to be met. I want to be able to trust whomever might be assigned to a specific job, and, for this picture, I knew that the action sequences would be very important, so Fritz and I decided that Buddy Van Horn was really the only choice."
Buddy Van Horn has worked with Eastwood on various projects, most recently directing Any Which Way You Can. He is especially skilled at what he terms his areas of responsibility on Sudden Impact: fights, fires, falls, chases, and shootouts.
"We've worked with Buddy before," executive producer Manes elaborates, "and we were always completely at ease with his approach and his style. He is very thorough, and, like Clint, he takes a low-key stance. He's a professional and he gets the job done quickly and efficiently."
There's a series of fights and chases in Sudden Impact which Van Horn had to orchestrate. Eastwood as Dirty Harry has one pivotal scene where he is fighting with three thugs on the Santa Cruz pier, is struck from behind, and is pitched off the pier into the water, presumed dead.
"We shot that scene on a cold, rainy night," Van Horn explains, "and it literally took all night. The fight, like most screen fights, had to be done in stages, with the sequences eventually cut together for the complete coverage. However, when one part of the sequence evolves into another, like a fall from a pier, it can get complicated because of the different angles that you need to shoot. With any other director, this could have been a two or a three day ordeal, but Clint has the experience and understanding to make it happen smoothly and quickly. He knows what you're talking about; he listens, contributes, and the stunt is covered. That leaves you with set-up time and camera angles as your only other options, but Clint has those already in mind. He's the best."
There are at least three other fights and two other serious falls in the film, almost all of which involve Eastwood directly. In addition, there is a car chase where Harry is pursued by three street punks who toss a molotov cocktail into his car.
"That was exciting," Van Horn says with a deadpan stare, "because our executive producer was one of the guys in the car chasing Clint. Let's just say that the car was traveling over the national speed limit, spends some time in the air, and is unretrieveable for spare parts. I don't know if I like the idea of stuntmen executives sometimes, especially when they sign my checks, but Fritz is a pro, and everything came off without a hitch. Thank God."
Another lively touch to Sudden Impact is a chase involving a bus full of senior citizens commandeered by Dirty Harry in San Paulo to help thwart an armed robbery attempt.
"We had more headaches than usual with that one," Van Horn explains, "because we were afraid that the bus would be too big for the narrow downtown streets of Santa Cruz. We had a special bus mad for us by GMC and we ran the chase against the grain of normal traffic flow. It gave us a little more room after we yanked out some of the parked cars. This way we could have the bus full of oldsters veering from side to side and bullets flying, without risking hopping a curb and ploughing it into a department store."
No Dirty Harry film would be complete without a series of shootouts with the famous Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum. Sudden Impact is no exception.
"We have a scene in a coffee shop which ought to get the audience's attention right away," Van Horn says, "what with all the flying glass and people bouncing off the walls. It took us all day to shoot that one too. Then we have some assassins after Harry at the San Francisco Ferry Building, where we blew up a couple of dumpsters, garbage cans, etc., with these guys shooting at anything throwing a shadow. Not to be outdone by that, we have a very serious and involved shootout on the Santa Cruz boardwalk, where three heavies come at Harry late at night with the whole sequence backlighted by the amusement park lights."
For all the action in the script, the thing that makes it work is timing, choreography, and teamwork. "Clint is a quiet communicator," Van Horn concludes, "and he doesn't waste his words. He knows how to work with actors. He knows how to make people feel comfortable. He knows how to combine ideas and input. He makes a difficult problem an interesting challenge; a skill that makes my job a pleasure."
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