 Sean Penn told a story when he recently took the stage at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival to present his friend Clint Eastwood with the Modern Master Award. “When Clint was born, all eleven pounds of him, a terrified obstetrician declared, ‘It’s a man!’” he enthusiastically explained, and the Arlington Theater located at the center of the wine-country city burst into laughter because his point was: it’s impossible to imagine Eastwood, the toughest man in Hollywood, an icon of masculinity, was ever anything else besides a full-grown and terrifying man. To emphasize this point, Penn went on to play what he said was a hospital recording of Eastwood’s first sound. The theater grew silent…a cue was given…and the speakers let loose a throaty breath that sounded a lot like a snarl. In other words, Eastwood was born a man all too ready to make your day if you screwed with him.
It was only two hours earlier that Eastwood arrived at the Arlington heralded by the cheers of a mob of fans. He didn’t step from a limo onto a red carpet to wave passively at the peons pressing madly against the metal barriers for a glimpse of the actor, but instead appeared, as if Moses parting the Red Sea, at the center of a path being made for him by these very peons. He literally walked through the crowd, smiling and shaking hands thrust at him, then, when he reached the barrier, climbed over it. At 78 years old, it wasn’t hard to imagine this giant of man who just starred in Gran Torino as a pissed-off gent who was still capable of delivering unto me a fearsome beating.
Once inside, he sat down across from moderator film critic/historian Leonard Maltin for a Q&A. Because I’m still wowed by the fact that I stood one foot away from Clint Eastwood and then got to listen to the Man with No Name discuss his long, amazing career as an actor, producer, and director, I thought I’d share with you a few of the highlights with a lifelong film lover’s perspective tossed in.
On the decision to make the leap from actor to director with Play Misty for Me in 1971…
Orson Welles“There was a lot of precedence for it. Orson Welles certainly did it successful, [at least early on]. Laurence Olivier. A lot of people took shots at it, but it wasn’t for them. I’m a fairly organized person nature, so it was easier for me. If it’s painful for you, it’s not right for you.” Quick note: Eastwood says there was a lot of precedence for it, but there really wasn’t. On rare occasions it happened, and it wasn’t until actors started to really get active in the late 70s and 80s that the actor-director moniker became fairly commonplace. Eastwood, in many ways, was a pioneer in this regard.
Had he always wanted to direct?
“I think I’ve always wanted to be, even when I was a contract player at Universal International. When I wasn’t working, I’d wander the lot and watch other directors work.” But the urge left him until he shot A Fistful of Dollars in Europe, the movie that would give birth to the Spaghetti Western. “When I started working with Sergio Leone, watching other nationalities working [so creatively] in our genre, I started getting intrigued again.” Years later, Eastwood’s sophomore directorial effort High Plains Drifter would employ many of the same tricks he learned while working with Leone, so much so that many shots look stolen from Leone’s own repertoire.
On his infamously short shooting schedules…
In case you’re not aware of it, Eastwood often shoots his movies in half the time, and even a third of the time other directors take to make their opuses – and generally with greater effect artistically and critically. “People are frustrated or not frustrated by certain things,” he said. “I don’t like to waste time. That’s probably my dad’s Depression-era mentality still rubbing off on me. I’m there to work.”
After years of making movies without video assist onset to gauge performances and the efficacy of shots, does he find the tool useful today?
“I use a little handheld video camera that gives me a sense of visual composition, and then just talk to the cameraman.” He likes to watch actors in person, he explained, “not go back and watch it on a video screen. I can do that when it’s on DVD.” Turns out, for Eastwood, the old way of doing things is still the best way of doing things. Speaking of actors, Penn would later offer up an observation about what makes Eastwood such a great helmer for those in front of the camera: “He’s the director actors dream about. He’s self-assured, and he knows the story he wants to tell.” Believe it or not, that’s very rare in Hollywood.
Clint Eastwood in Gran TorinoOn why he returned to acting after a four-year break to play Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino, in which he now famously warns some young punks, “Get off my lawn!”
“Some parts you can’t turn down. It just seemed to touch on America today, the decay of the auto industry. And also touching on that you’re never too old to change.”
Dirty Harry“Get off my lawn!” sounds an awful lot like the crotchety version of “Go ahead, make my day!” On playing a now-iconic character like Dirty Harry…
“Like most Americans at the time, 1970, ’71, I was frustrated with bureaucracy, particularly in the police department. This guy took the law into his own hands, and that was great. It’s always been fun to play roles I’m nothing like, even though it disappoints people I’m not like him.” Penn would go on to recall his first memory of seeing Dirty Harry: “I wanted to jump into the screen and shout, ‘You are so not lucky, punk!’” Pretty much how I felt, too. I remember watching it with my dad, who thought – and still thinks – more Dirty Harry Callahans are needed in America. Needless to say, I don’t agree with his views on gun control or capital punishment.
On what he’s doing next…
“We’re going to do a picture in South Africa on Nelson Mandela about when Mandela was let out of prison after 26 years and was then elected president. He unified the country with rugby, by bringing everyone together in this stadium, black and white.” Predictably, Morgan Freeman will play Mandela. Eastwood’s worked with him several times over the years, most recently on Million Dollar Baby. Let’s just hope Freeman isn’t asked to narrate again; his voice as a framing device has become something of a cliché.
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