Clint Eastwood: Interviews, Revised and Updated

A Conversation with Clint Eastwood about Mystic River

178 A Conversation with Clint Eastwood about Mystic River Charlie Rose / 2003 From The Charlie Rose Show, October 8, 2003. Reprinted by permission. Charlie Rose: If the mark of a great director is getting amazing performances from his actors, Clint Eastwood has reached that point. He himself has said, “This is as good as I can do.” Mystic River opened the forty-first New York Film Festival on October 3. I’m pleased to have Clint Eastwood on this program for his first solo interview. Welcome. Clint Eastwood: Thank you. Rose: When you read this book, did you immediately say, “I’ve got to have this? I’ve got to make this? This is the movie I’ve been waiting for?” Eastwood: Yes. Yeah, I read it as a synopsis in a newspaper, in a column, and I—I knew of Dennis Lehane, and I was curious about it so I read the synopsis, and I said I’ve got to have this, I think I can make an interesting movie out of this. It was a little bird in the back of the brain, and when I read the novel, then I was more convinced that I could be—it could be an interesting movie. Rose: What was it about it? The story? The characters? Eastwood: It was a complex story. And I’ve done a few complex stories before. But it was—the fact that it was an unraveling of a mystery that goes back several generations, and when you start out, you start out with young guys as eleven-year-old kids on the street playing street hockey, and then this incident happens, this abduction happens to one of them, and then years later they are reunited through a tragic event, and so in the reuniting they see all the various things. You see what their lives charlie rose / 2003 179 have been like, and what that abduction that happened thirty years ago, what effect it still has on everyone. Rose: Child abuse though, and the victimization of children, has always been something that has interested you, because you know the consequences for them? Eastwood: I think that was one of the intriguing parts, the stealing of someone’s life—the stealing of innocence. I think it’s the most deplorable crime that I can think of. I think it’s a capital crime. If there is a capital crime that would certainly be the epitome. Rose: The innocence of the— Eastwood: Yeah, just to take someone’s life away from them, take their youth away from them. I think that that character played by Tim Robbins —I think Tim captured that beautifully in the film, that you can see all over him and—in every scene, how he has been robbed of his youth and his innocence: the chance to grow up and to learn things in its normal stride. Very interesting subject matter, and to have this picture unravel, this story unravel along with it and one of the three fellows is now a police officer, played by Kevin Bacon. And he and his associate, Lawrence Fishburne, have to unravel this while Sean Penn’s character, Jimmy, is in a bereaved situation. You have a family grieving on one side, and you have this trying to solve this mystery on the other, working simultaneously together. Rose: There are those who want to say Clint is in a sense, because of his exploration of violence in a whole series of films, is almost commenting on his earlier work and that this is an evolution. Do you buy that? Is that part of your own— Eastwood: I guess that’s an interpretation that somebody could have, somebody may have had, but I don’t think so. I think my earlier work was a different person. I was a younger person. Young guy with a brass ring, things were going rather well for me in the motion picture business as an actor. I did what came along. Some of it was a lot of fun at the time. Would it be fun today if I was doing it? No, probably not. Because I have matured, I have different thoughts about things. Different philosophies, as I think everybody should. Rose: If you are not growing and evolving—if you are not moving forward you are standing still. 180 clint eastwood: inter views Eastwood: If you’re not...