Bashing of an icon -- My On the Way Out series, Vol. 2, Part 1

Before I start down this road again, I know all movie fans do not feel this way...and I'm talking about the select few who are bashing Clint Eastwood right now.

There is more to Eastwood's latest movie, Cry Macho, than maybe a young person who has yet to turn fifty can get a handle on. There's more to the film than witnessing an icon in his 90s wander across a room. Yes, a stunt double is breaking the horses in the film.

A young movie buff just starting out, will soon...in time, follow the progression in living color on film of the aging process. Eastwood brings that all to light in Cry Macho.

Many of Eastwood's awards are probably stacked up in a warehouse somewhere in Hollywood, his trophies and memorabilia filled to the rafters -- a cinema-life well lived.

The characters in Cry Macho portray human beings -- people like us -- who are just as much part of this world of ours as the famous ones we see front and center everyday -- their lives, their battles through life filled with pain and heartache and at the same time filled with laughter and a long list of accomplishments of their own.  They will never show up in the headlines of newspapers...on the television screens and certainly not on the big screen for all the world to see.

There's a place in this world for the young and the old. Why do I focus on the older generation? The answer is probably a simple one. I'm on my way out, hence: My On the Way Out series explains all that. But, there again, you will not find my ramblings and my thoughts on the wide screen. The only wide screen I'm dealing with is in my head. It may be in black and white or in living color. I'll know which way I'm leaning when I wake up in the morning -- that's if I'm lucky enough to see the next sunrise.

I fully expect to see many more sunrises.

Just maybe I'll be around when Eastwood releases his final film at the age of 110. He will portray God in heaven, sitting at the gate with his six shooters on...waiting for his few bashers on earth to reach the Pearly Gates.

Photo: Eastwood...in the beginning.