Dear Clint Eastwood,

May I call you “Clint”? Or do you prefer “Mr. Eastwood”? You make the call, Clint! (Mr. Eastwood.)

Let’s go with “Clint” for now. Clint, if you’re reading this, it means a couple of things. First, that we’re both readers! Boy, I sure remember learning how to read. Don’t you? Gripping that big, fat pencil, trying to stay between those lines… How do we get back to the simpler times, Clint?

But the other thing it means, if you’re reading this, is that you have the fire in you to be reading it in the first place. I’ve always suspected that about you. That you didn’t read anything you didn’t darn well want to read. You can tell from the way you stared at people in “High Plains Drifter.” You certainly weren’t in a reading mood then!

So if you’re reading this, then not only do we have something in common, but you have the fire in you to be reading it, and that’s two-thirds of the way to granting my request for ten million dollars.

Let me back up a bit. I’m writing at the suggestion of a mutual acquaintance, Smitty. (He used to trim your hedges before you caught him napping.) He says you’d be the perfect investor for my newest screenplay, “Clint Eastwood Is Aces.” It’s about a man who models his life after Clint Eastwood movies.

As it opens, our hero is turned down for a job interview because he showed up dressed like you in “High Plains Drifter.” His moral dilemma is, “How shall I take my revenge?”
I have a lot of interested backers. Smitty gave me five dollars. Ma and Pa sent seven. I only need about ten million more. That’s where you come in.

I should mention that the Festival Burger over in Suckbug is interested in a product placement deal, so that could mean some dough as well. They want the big finale to take place in a Festival Burger, though, with a lot of gunfire and explosions. It would require a few alterations to the script (currently it ends with the birth of puppies). But I begin to see the wisdom of flexibility.

Here’s what I’m thinking: The villain hides out in Suckbug, but then our hero (“Clint”) finds him and chases him into the Festival Burger. Yep, you guessed it: they lob grenades at each other. But then, in the middle of this modern American fast-food joint, the two men face each other like old-time gunslingers. Their fingers dance lightly on the guns in their holsters. And Clint, who practices his draw every single day, wins!

Before dying, the villain asks for a final meal: a Festival Burger. He takes a bite, and his last words are, “What a delicious taste treat!”

So our hero’s Clint Eastwood influence was fortunate for him and everyone in the end. It’s a movie about movies, really, and God, and America, and love, and motherhood, and puppies, and the Festival Burger.

Here’s how it ends: The cops have to arrest our hero because, hey, he did blow up a restaurant and kill a guy. But one of the cops is against it, because he knows Clint did the right thing.

Can you see where this is going? Clint gets free and runs as far and as fast as the sequels will take him. Maybe he becomes a sort of Dirty Harry, although he’s not actually a cop. I see an orangutan in there somewhere, too.

How would I budget the money, you ask? Well, several million would go toward a house in Pebble Beach for me, and another hundred thousand toward a Hummer. (Sad to say, image is everything in this business.) Smitty, who wants to be a key grip because he has taken locksmithing, would need a million or so as well. I’ve run out of number five brads, so $2.99 would go for brads.

The screenplay is finished, if you’d like to see it. It’s bound with number five brads (my last two). The covers are of 105-pound stock. As you can see, you aren’t dealing with an amateur here.

Remember, I am nothing if not flexible. We could even change the title to something like “Clint Eastwood Gave Me Ten Million Dollars.” What do you think?

Sincerely,
D.W. Chaplin (“Mr. Flexibility”)