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72 “Whether I Succeed or Fail, I Don’t Want to Owe It to Anyone but Myself”: From Play Misty for Me to Honkytonk Man Michael Henry Wilson / 1984 Published as “Entretien avec Clint Eastwood” by Michael Henry in Positif, no. 287 (January 1985): 48–57; in English in Michael Henry Wilson, Eastwood on Eastwood (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2010), 24–52. Reprinted by permission of the author; translated from the French by KC and MHW. Interview conducted on November 19, 1984. Q: What do you think you’ve learned from filmmakers you collaborated with before you became a director? A: I learned a lot, but wouldn’t be capable of distinguishing the contribution of each one. The films of Don Siegel, like those of Sergio Leone, were models of economy. They never went over their allotted budget. That was my school. I’ve made very few pictures where the money was spent without counting, and even when it was, the lesson was useful because I learned what not to do. Each of the filmmakers I worked with taught me something new, or at least helped me to define myself. Q: When others were directing you, were you conscious of the production work that was going on around you? A: I don’t think I was conscious of it, but I suppose my subconscious assimilated it all. I recall that since the time of Rawhide I have wanted to try my hand at directing. My contract with CBS even provided that I would direct several episodes of the series. But after they had some trouble on other series where some actor-directors went over their budgets, michael henry wilson / 1984 73 CBS changed policies from one day to the next. It didn’t do me any good to make a fuss—at the time I didn’t have a choice. They never honored their contract. I did trailers and a few little things here and there, and I fumed, but I convinced myself to wait for a better chance. Q: Let’s go back, if we may, to your first steps in film production. Under what circumstances did you form the Malpaso company at the end of the 1960s? A: I had come back from Italy, where I had just filmed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. My agent was urging me to do Mackenna’s Gold, a big, spectacular western, but this wasn’t the kind of thing I was looking for. I aspired to something more mature, more probing. That was when Hang ’Em High came along, a much more modest project. I liked the idea of weighing the pros and cons of capital punishment in the setting of a western. That gave me the idea of starting my own company to share in the production of this small film. Q: Were you already thinking of directing films? Wasn’t the formation of Malpaso a step towards directing yourself? A: Not really . . . or maybe subconsciously. After Hang ’Em High I acted in several pictures without being actively involved in their production. Then I found myself making my directorial debut directing the second unit on a picture of Don Siegel’s, Dirty Harry.1 Don had the flu and I replaced him in the sequence where Harry tries to convince the would-be suicide not to jump from the roof. That turned out OK, because, for the lack of space on the window ledge, the only place to perch me was on the crane. I shot this scene, then another one, and I began to think more seriously about directing. One of my friends, Jo Heims, had written a script I was fond of, Play Misty for Me. I’d even taken out an option on it. I had just been offered Where Eagles Dare when she called me to ask for my advice . Universal was offering to buy her script and she had scruples about dealing with them, although I wasn’t in the position to renew the option . Of course, I encouraged her to sell them her script. And it was only some years later, after I had a contract with Universal, for three movies, that I could tell them, “By the way, you have a project on your shelf that I would like to do. I also want to direct it.” Because it wasn’t a very costly production, I got the green light. Q: Why choose this project in particular for your first...

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