Tag: Dirty Harry

‘Magnum Force’ is the Best Movie to Understand in 2024: No, you aren’t crazy, it was the world that went in that direction

It wasn’t always how it is now; there used to be good movies, and they were far from woke.  And it surprised me when Steve Bannon brought up one of my favorite movies on his podcast, the Warroom, at the end of the year in 2023 because I don’t hear many people who even know what it is.  But it reminded me of several things, one of which is the answer to all the woke options out there.  Going into 2024, the best movie ever made that deals specifically with the 2024 election is Magnum Force, with Clint Eastwood from the five-movie Dirty Harry series.  It is a unique plot that deals with police corruption, crime and punishment, and doing the right thing while society is trying to drag you into doing all the bad stuff.  It also reminded me of how I raised my children; every year on New Year’s Eve to bring in the new year, we would watch the Dirty Harry marathon, where we watched three of the movies on New Year’s Eve, then two more on New Year’s Day.  But among them all, my favorite of the five, was Magnum Force, and still is.  So it certainly got my attention when Steve Bannon recommended the movie on the Warroom.  Magnum Force is about that fine line between right and wrong and features a group of cops who go rogue to eradicate the bad guys, which has evolved into real life dramatically in the current FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies as discussed through the Trump administration’s exposure of their various antics.  It’s much worse in real life than in 1974 San Francisco when the movie occurred.  But the problems are the same and people can watch those movies and see how things have gone wrong today because those movies were warnings all those years ago of what was coming. 

When people ask me, which happens every week, why I’m not in the movie business, the answer is that I wanted to make movies like Magnum Force, and Hollywood isn’t built to accommodate those movies anymore.  I think it’s great that there was a period when movies like Dirty Harry movies were made, and they certainly provide a quick check that we are not all crazy compared to how things are now.  I used to show the film to my kids and their boyfriends, then spouses, every year, not just for entertainment but to show them how values have evolved and that America was once a place that made movies like Magnum Force to express ideas through entertainment that were valuable to the audience.  When we look at what San Francisco has become, the warning signs were always right there, and they were apparent to me when the world was still good and made sense.  I was showing my kids these movies to close out a year and usher in the new one to teach them values, which looks to have worked.  They are emotionally solid people even now, even the tag-alongs who emerged from those relationships.  They might have thought of me as old fashioned at the time, a dad showing them old Clint Eastwood movies that were much slower than the quick-cut movies of today filled with woke messaging.  But they watched them to appease me and to spend time with me.  And even now that they are in their 30s, it’s become a running joke in our family that they still remember and value. 

What’s so special about Magnum Force, directed by Ted Post and written by excellent writers, is that it deals with corruption and how it happens, either by the side of the criminals or the cops who are supposed to enforce the law to keep society together.  Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character finds himself locked in a vice between those two forces, representing the very fine line that often presents itself in these cases that is more than realistic.  When I was growing up, I wanted nothing more than to make my movies using Magnum Force as an example.  But I was so frustrated with the business because it had changed so much that I moved to other things.  My brother lived in California for a while and has some producer credits, so we know what we are talking about when we say it; they don’t make movies like Magnum Force anymore for many reasons.  One big one is that movie writers are too busy getting lattes on the Santa Monica Pier rather than living life and letting that experience show in their art.  Most of these young people don’t even know how to shoot a gun because they have grown up in such a woke period.  They don’t have the experience to write a gritty crime drama like Magnum Force because they don’t understand the complexities of life, so how can they write about it?  But compared to what’s being made today, Hollywood is way off the mark.  But it wasn’t always that way.  If you want to see great movies, they used to make them.  You don’t have to put up with the crap they make now.  You can always watch the old films about real problems unfolding way ahead of their time. 

I did run into someone who knew about these old movies, even though it’s a mild influence.  But someone noticed that one of my carry guns is a Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum, the most powerful production handgun in the world.  It used to be the .44 Magnum by S&W back in the days of the Dirty Harry films, and I always found his reasoning for using such a large weapon for police work compelling.  I carry an S&W .500 Magnum with the extra long barrel, over 8 inches, because so many of the bad guys these days are wearing Call of Duty body armor they can get off Amazon, and they can get armor for their cars, so it makes sense.  You don’t want bullets bouncing off windows and off of people, even in populated areas where people could be hurt subsequently.  You have to hit what you aim at, which is a theme of the Dirty Harry movies in general, which are about so much more than movies made now are.  But for a sanity check, most of America used to think in the way that the Dirty Harry movies are represented, and I would argue that they still do.  Watching them now, they are much better than the garbage produced in Hollywood.  And I would say that you have options if you are looking for entertainment and a way to understand the themes and actions coming at us in 2024.  Watching Magnum Force will be far more valuable than the nightly news.  And you may learn something.  It had warnings that people scratched their heads at in the past, including John Wayne, who thought Clint Eastwood’s character was too cynical and not “pro-American” enough.  But as we have learned over the next 50 years, what the Dirty Harry movies were all about is what we see now.  And it can be scary unless you know how to walk that fine line, which is the point of the movies entirely.   

Rich Hoffman

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Would Nancy Pelosi Fake an Attack on Her Home Ahead of the Midterms: She’s done it before, so YES!

I live in a neighborhood where a former Speaker of the House lives. Based on that and knowing many of the law enforcement in the area, do I believe they would cover up bad behavior to protect a reputation or advance a political narrative? Absolutely yes. So, it’s not a big surprise that after a green party nudist was found in the House of Paul Pelosi in his underwear and hit the husband of the current Speaker of the House over the head with a hammer, the report done by the Justice Department evolved a lot from the initial reports to the dispatcher. By the time Paul Pelosi called the police from his bathroom and said he didn’t know the attacker, then called him David, and a friend, by the time the corrupt Justice Department told the story, it was just a random attacker motivated by the MAGA movement to attack Nancy Pelosi. And since she wasn’t home, poor old Paul suffered at his hands. It will be interesting to see if the attacker, David DePape, ever gives a public statement of this case in a courtroom. Hearing from DePape himself would be the only way to clear up the story, because we know we certainly can’t trust anything the Pelosi household says. We absolutely can’t trust the Biden Justice Department or the FBI that reports to that criminal crime boss put in the White House by the Desecrators of Davos attempt to take over the entire world, especially the American government. And obviously, we can’t trust the local San Francisco police, who are obviously interested in protecting the Pelosi family’s name, just as they did when Paul Pelosi was recently involved in a DUI and had a car wreck. The police and prosecutor covered it up as much as they could, and a deep investigation as to who was with Paul Pelosi that night was not conducted. They just wanted to sweep the story under the rug, as many police tend to do with people they consider to be powerfully influential. 

When the story broke, I first thought of the old Dirty Harry film where Scorpio hired someone to beat him up so that the criminal could blame the beating on Clint Eastwood’s character. Movies used to be so much smarter than they are today. When talking to people about it on Truth Social and Gettr, I used clips of that Dirty Harry movie to show how a person looking for a political distraction two weeks before a midterm election where Nancy Pelosi is poised to lose her power might pay for a distraction to change the media narrative. Do I think the Pelosi family is that dirty? Yes! We just saw Jussie Smollett do just such a thing in Chicago, hire people to beat him up, then blame it on Trump voters as if to change support for the MAGA movement. Would Nancy be so low as to fake an attack on her home, to beat up her husband, and would Paul go along with it for a chance to win public sympathy and maybe hold power in the Midterms by preventing a 30-seat slide to a Republican majority? Yes! These are terrible, evil people; they are not normal human beings. Nancy and her husband, Paul’s racket, is one where she provides stock tips that Paul then acts on as the third most powerful person in the world. As a family, they make investments based on that knowledge and have gained 300 million dollars in wealth, being essentially a public servant. Would they do anything, including orchestrating a fake attack on their home to hold power? Yes, I believe they absolutely would, and I don’t trust a thing that any of these people say about anything. I don’t trust Joe Biden. I certainly don’t trust Nancy Pelosi. I don’t trust the FBI, the DOJ, or the San Francisco police. Likely the best story was what was reported by the dispatchers initially, where Paul Pelosi said that the guy with the hammer was a friend while in his underwear, and there were zip ties by the nudist who is reported to be a male prostitute in the area. After that, the professional liars got a hold of the story and tried to make it beneficial to Nancy’s struggles to hold the House through the Midterms by scaring away MAGA voters from voting how polls indicate they are poised to do. 

Nancy has done this before, she could have listened to President Trump regarding January 6th, but she chose to allow the fire to burn because she wanted a distraction from all the liberal problems. This blatant election fraud put Joe Biden in the White House, her own scandalous abuse of power with two impeachments of Trump, and her using the Russian dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton to create a coup against a sitting president. She wanted an angry mob to storm the capital, and the police let people in to do their damage. What happened at Nancy’s House with her husband and the green activist nudist high on drugs all the time is normal for liberals. It’s the kind of behavior that many of us have grown tired of, and it’s precisely why these people find themselves losing power as we speak. 

Whatever the story ends up being, Americans deserve better than to have losers like the Pelosi family and their supporters running the House of Representatives. They are embarrassments; their goofy progressive lifestyle does not represent the majority of American voters, which will be evident in this next election. And to hide that from the world, yes, Nancy and the gang would harm her husband, Paul Pelosi. He might even agree to it to hold on to the kind of power that made them rich in the first place. And the police would help them do it because it gives them power, too, as a tag along to serving the Speaker of the House. That power certainly goes to their heads; they will say anything to hold that power, even lie or change the events as they witness them. But essentially, people are tired of this kind of behavior in their politics, and they are choosing better people represented by the MAGA movement. And the only defense that Nancy Pelosi has in preventing it is to create doubt or guilt to stop the power about to overwhelm her. I don’t believe that David DePape went to Paul Pelosi at 2 AM on his own accord. I think the true answer is closer to the old Dirty Harry movie or what Jussie Smollett did than to it being a random act by some near homeless drug addict that suddenly became a Trump supporter a few days ago. And as the media grabbed hold of the story so quickly without vetting any of it, it says all we need to know about the motivations just a few weeks out from one of the biggest elections in our lifetimes. To see the truth, you must accept what bad people are willing to do to hold onto power, even if it puts them in the hospital to undergo brain surgery. Nothing is too low for these crooks and diabolical liars. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Meaning of Cliffhanger: Boons beyond the edge of safety

It has come up more than once over the last several weeks, most noticeably after the recent release of the latest installment of the Cliffhanger stories, The Curse of Santa Maurta as to what’s behind the name. The name of Cliffhanger for me is a personal one for two reasons, first I grew up loving the Jules Verne inspired films, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Island at the top of the World. Those films were done with a style and approach to adventure consistent with the best cliffhanger serials of their day and I fell in love with the optimism of how they combined science and adventure—much which was refined so well in the 1980s by the Indian Jones films, and Back to the Future specifically in the character of Doc Brown. I think I always wanted to grow up into something of a mix between Doc Brown, Indiana Jones, and Dirty Harry—and all of those stories were very top-heavy in the swashbuckling cliffhanger style of story telling typical in early cinema. For me personally the start of a love for cliffhangers was in the Disney classic, Island at the Top of the World. I always loved the fearless desire to solve problems in that movie while pushing to see what was around the next corner always presented in the style of a cliffhanger.

Also, for as long as I can remember, up until just yesterday, I have had a nearly obsessive quest to live life on the edge. I love danger and taking very large chances. When I was a kid I was always the first to jump from one cliff face to another while in a high adventure explorer post. And now I am involved in politics and transactions with other human beings that could have perilous consequences with even a slight misstep. But, in spite of giving peace a chance—I just can’t do it. If there isn’t a certain amount of danger in my daily life—I’m just not happy. I have always believed that some of the freshest and most innovative ideas come to a mind on the edge of reality—pushing the limits—and somewhere in that science is the key to invention.

 

My first jobs before I was 19 years of age consisted of a body-guard, a repo man, a fashion model and other colorful, short-lived enterprises consisting of living a very fast life as quickly as possible. It was on the way to a live stage performance as a model that I decided to marry my wife and chose a way of life that didn’t involve taking so many chances—thinking at the time that at some point my luck might run out. It turned out to be the very best thing for me as my first endeavors emerging straight out of a stable relationship were a gunsmith, an inventor, and an entrepreneur by starting a little company called Cliffhanger Research and Development. I desired greatly to invent new tools and concepts traveling to trade shows and filing patents on my ideas—and I did this for several years—until I was in my mid-twenties and realized what was stacked against me–politically. The world seemed poised to destroy the type of adventurous spirit I fell in love with in movies like Island at the Top of the World, and wanted to stuff my spirit into a box to be controlled. During this period of my life I met mayors, the extreme wealthy and learned to read the tides of politics. I learned a lot from one particular woman who lived in Indian Hill and had a very successful husband who spent most of the year traveling around the world avoiding his wife. I wondered often why a man like him would leave the fruits of so much labor behind to avoid his responsibilities in marriage, as his wife at the time had a lot of influence in the media around Cincinnati. After many offers from this woman and her immediate friends around Indian Hill to become a gigolo to them—it was an obvious conclusion that their husbands were driven by the same condition that pushed me along—a need for danger and adventure in their lives. However, I didn’t want in my wake such chaos and destruction. There had to be a better way, which displayed clearly to me that a new philosophy was needed in our culture that was clearly missing.

 

Instead of becoming wealthy from all my adventures I ended up being sued, owing a lot of money in taxes to the government, and putting a lot of strain on my own marriage just from some of the sheer risks that I always wanted to take. All of my endeavors where legitimate and well in the spirit of Doc Brown, but the world was deliberately standing in my way for some reason, and that condition became the next danger to overcome. It was the reason why I named my company Cliffhanger Research and Development. Much of my life was coming from the edge where literally every day could have been the end of my life as I knew it, and I was most comfortable in that position. I needed, and still do, to know that life is unpredictable from moment to moment and that anything can happen.

Over the years I’ve learned to waltz with this tendency of mine without leaving so much destruction in my wake. The desire to live life as a cliffhanger has become quite an asset instead of a liability—I never have a shortage of fresh ideas to solve complicated problems—because as I’ve always felt, most good ideas come from the edge of acceptable reality—the parameters of safe travel, intellectually. So I can take massive chances to my heart’s content—the luck never runs out not because its given out by some strange unmet gods, but because it’s internally generated through natural optimism, and I live a pretty good life without any regrets. I would still like to make my living as an inventor, but in the barriers to entry to that marketplace I found a much more lucrative target—the failed philosophy of Eastern and Western civilization.

The best way to tackle many of our modern problems and all the inventions that are being held back from human civilization because of a failed way to embrace a proper philosophy is the reason I created the character of Cliffhanger to fight crime and a world hell-bent on internal personal destruction. The characters in my Cliffhanger stories come directly from my past which is vibrant and full of color in a way that is unique. Really the lessons I learned living life so recklessly on the edge in my late teens and twenties has given me an insight into things that I haven’t been able to find in any books or stories that I have ever read. For me it goes back to that woman in Indian Hill who had it all—a wonderful home in an exclusive community, all her bills paid into the future for a hundred lifetimes of excess lifestyle, a beautiful pool in the back with a pool house larger and better furnished than most wealthy people’s homes, and a husband who liked her enough to marry and at least keep her from having to work for an employer. She had the adoration of the Cincinnati media and could call up some of the wealthiest people in the country any time she wanted. But she wasn’t happy—and her husband wasn’t either. They had lost their edge to life—the very thing that made them fall in love with life, and made them rich in the first place. They lost as they tried to secure their holdings with political maneuvers that took their fortune and placed it on the safe bets—thus destroying them as people.

For many years thereafter a friend of mine and I worked as part of his tree trimming business. We would climb trees and remove them from dangerous precipices on the property of many wealthy people. The men were always the same no matter where we went, and the women all had that hunger in their eyes for some needed adventure. During their climb for wealth they had lost something—that edge some sports teams have when they have a lead late in the game, then start playing it safe to protect it. More often than not they shockingly lose the game in the final seconds. The reason for that behavior became an obsession of mine.

I could now in my life become one of those people—but I avoid it like the plague. At a stop light just this week the temperature was 32 degrees outside and it was pouring rain at 6 AM. I was on my motorcycle as usual, my tires were bald from a hard winter of everyday driving, and the bike nearly slid to every stop I made. A guy pulls up to me at a stop light and yells, “F**kin’ ride hard man! You rock! Livin’ the dream!” He was of course referring to a middle-aged man riding a motorcycle on bald tires in near freezing conditions in a pouring rainstorm during early morning rush hour traffic. He desired himself to be out in the danger of life with me, but likely he was taught at some time in his past not to do things like that for fear of his own safety. Instead he takes other chances against life itself, like drinking too much, having relationships with other people who are dangerous and unhealthy and approaching safety in his life with a passive-aggressive rebellion they think nobody notices—like getting a tattoo where they think nobody can see.

Like the heroes from the movie Island at the Top of the World I have discovered in people something they don’t know much about themselves—perhaps not to the degree that I feel it—but most people do. There is a deep child-like yearning for adventure—for cliffhangers in their life where each day is a new one, and they never know what might happen. I am most happy in those conditions. I love the fire and I seek to stand right in the middle of it wherever it’s at. Because within it there is a boon to society that lives out on the edge, over the cliff—and often you have to hang over and extend yourself to reach it. So I invented Cliffhanger as a character to explore those boons. It is my hope that people who find their lives too safe and un-tempered in the fires of life will get what they need through my Cliffhanger stories. The safest way to bring people the needed danger their lives demand is through a character that is as fearless as anything ever put to print. But for those stories to have validity, they have to come from something tangible, and in the case of Cliffhanger—it does—a life lived hard and without a single day of reflection into something safer.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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