08/24/2026
This post is ostensibly about Ryan’s cocktail Desiderium, but what I really want to talk about is Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, the writer of Clint Eastwood’s 1978 smash hit Every Which Way But Loose. Born Graeme Joseph Kronsberg in Brooklyn in 1937, he drifted through a variety of blue-collar jobs (teamster, milkman, probation officer) and actively pursued professional body building before writing the unexpected truck driver/orangutan movie starring Clint Eastwood. If you haven’t seen it, Every Which Way But Loose is a totally weird movie. Clint drives a truck with his buddy, a hard-drinking, hard-loving, fist-fighting orangutan named Clyde. The movie was critically panned but a massive commercial success, grossing over $105 million on release. On the success of that, he was hired to write the sequel and then given a chance to write and direct his own movie, 1981’s Going Ape, which, not surprisingly, also featured orangutans. Then he seems to have just retired. He and his wife bought a small mobile home in Malibu where they lived until it burned down in the fires in 2018. He did a lot of body building and mushroom foraging and occasionally taught creative writing classes. And if that isn’t the American dream then I don’t know what is. Also, this is Ryan’s drink. It’s a peanut and banana Old Fashioned, inspired by his love of peanut butter and banana sandwiches with hot honey. On the menu now.
