You Can Leave Your Shirt On

These theories, while plausible, are nonetheless wrong. It was Clint Eastwood who inaugurated our modern era of middle-aged shirtlessness when he shed the chemise in his surprisingly touching 1995 adaptation of Robert James Waller's god-awful novel The Bridges of Madison County. Quite early in this moving tale of the doomed love affair between a charismatic, globe-trotting photographer and a culturally marooned Iowa-Italian plowgirl, Meryl Streep invites Eastwood to stay for dinner while her family is away at the state fair in some even more forlorn region of the Great Plains. Accepting the invitation, Eastwood steps outside to wash up at the old pump. Why outside? Are we supposed to believe that there were no bathrooms in rural Iowa back in the early '60s? Of course not; we see Streep in a bathtub later in the film. No, the reason Eastwood goes outside is because it gives him an excuse to peel off his shirt and show off his bulging biceps, his preponderant pecs, his taut tummy. He's well aware that he already has the fish on the hook; now he merely needs to reel her in. Taking off his shirt is the way he closes the deal. The shirtless-wonder gambit works like a charm. Gazing longingly from the second-story window, Streep not only takes it all in, but actually goes back for a second look.

Clint Eastwood was already a mature 65 when Bridges was released, yet he still felt confident enough to primp the pecs without fear of being ridiculed. More important, by showing off his physical gifts at such an advanced age, Eastwood established a disturbing precedent that has encouraged every other middle-aged actor to follow in his shirtsteps. I think any levelheaded reader can see where this is leading. Nobody minds if Bruce Willis takes off his shirt now and then. Nobody's going to get upset if Harrison Ford or Kevin Costner puts on an occasional "Crocodile" Dundee impersonation. But Donald Sutherland? Anthony Hopkins? James Garner? It's like watching grandpa Rollerblade. And who's next? Joe Pesci? James Caan? Rod Steiger? Or, God forbid, Woody Allen?

Clearly, a case can be made that because I am a paunchy, middle-aged man with no upper-body strength to speak of, this article is merely sour grapes, the demented ramblings of a disintegrating sourpuss who is pissed off that his chest can't compare in size, shape or overall muscle tone to those of Costner, Willis and Ford. Yet let me say in my defense that I most assuredly am not jealous of the pecs James Garner and Donald Sutherland display in Space Cowboys, and would not trade my chest for Richard Gere's puny scaffolding. The face is a different story.

No story about middle-aged male upper-body vanity would be complete without mentioning Sylvester Stallone. Tellingly, the customarily vain Stallone does not take off his shirt in last year's Driven, generously forgoing a golden opportunity to upstage his costar Kip Pardue. However, Stallone does briefly appear in a sweaty athletic shirt in Get Carter, a woeful remake of Mike Hodges's 1970 film noir classic. Having scrutinized 35 movies in which Sly's contemporaries part with their shirts, I found it a great relief to see a movie in which a guy showing off his shoulders finally had some shoulders worth showing off. Rippling, taut, enormous, those granite-like Rambo-era pecs and biceps still say it all. Built like the proverbial brick shithouse, Stallone doesn't need to primp and preen in front of a mirror to get his message across. All he has to do is stand there and let the camera do its work. As a famous man once said, when you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before.

In a future issue, we will get to Arnold.

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Joe Queenan wrote about movie accents that don't ring a bell in the December/January issue of Movieline.

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