In a 6.12 interview with Toronto Star critic Peter Howell, Clint Eastwood admits to being “amused that one of his more recent movies, Gran Torino, has spawned a catch praise that’s almost as popular as Dirty Harry’s ‘Go ahead, make my day!’ line from Sudden Impact. The line is ‘Get off my lawn!,’ barked by Eastwood’s grizzled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino. “Yeah, I can’t control all that,” Eastwood says. “If it has that kind of impression, then it’s a compliment — a left-handed one, at least.”
About ten years ago a prominent director-actor told me that Eastwood was the source of another famous line — “Show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a guy who’s tired of fucking her.” Maybe not the original source but he said he’d heard it from Eastwood (or perhaps had been told Eastwood had said it) back in the ’70s or ’80s. I naturally believed him but now I’m thinking that line has probably been attributed all over the place so who knows?