Daily Dialogue — May 12, 2018

“Go ahead. Make my day.”

— Sudden Impact (1983), screenplay by Joseph Stinson, story by Earl E. Smith & Charles B. Pierce, characters by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Action Hero Wisecracks.

Trivia: Of the five ‘Dirty Harry’ movies, it was this film that used the catchphrase “Go ahead, make my day” whereupon it became synonymous with the Harry Callahan character and became popularized into the vernacular of popular culture. Although Clint Eastwood made the phrase “Go ahead, make my day” famous, it was originally used a year earlier by actor Gary Swanson in the movie Vice Squad (1982). Swanson, who played a Hollywood vice cop, said the line, “Go ahead, scumbag, make my day,” to actor Wings Hauser, who played a pimp, during a bust. The quote is often erroneously attributed by most people to be from the first movie of this series, Dirty Harry (1971). The phrase was also voted in a 2005 poll by the American Film Institute as the No. #6 most memorable line in cinema history. The phrase was so well publicized and became so popular that many members of the public knew about it by the time the movie opened.

Dialogue On Dialogue: One of the most famous Action Hero Wisecracks in part because it sums up the essence of the Dirty Harry character.