When I was younger, I was fascinated by the private eye profession. In television shows about private detectives, they always seemed to have a colorful life. They would charge fees running up to several hundred dollars an hour – which seemed like a fortune to me as a youngster. TV private detectives also always seemed to keep meeting sexy women, and they always seemed to need to use their firearm on creeps who really deserved getting shot. But as I got older, I learned the hard truths about private detectives. For one thing, I remember when MAD Magazine revealed to me that private detectives in real life mainly worked on getting provocative pictures for their clients who were involved in messy divorces – not a very glamorous thing to be doing. When I recently spotted the private detective movie Hollywood Harry at my local used video store, my first thought was if it would show me a sanitized look at the private detective life or something closer to the real thing. It also interested me in that Robert Forster was the director as well as the star.