Clint Eastwood: Interviews, Revised and Updated

Eastwood Direction

20 Eastwood Direction Richard Thompson and Tim Hunter / 1976–77 Published as “Clint Eastwood, Auteur” in Film Comment 14, no. 1 (January/February 1978): 24–32. Reprinted by permission of the authors. (This interview was conducted in the summer of 1976 and in December 1977. Jack Shafer generously contributed key suggestions. Dick Guttman arranged the interviews. The authors are grateful to both.) Q: How did you start directing? A: I first got interested when I was doing Rawhide. We were shooting a stampede on location, three thousand head of cattle, and I was riding right in the middle of it, dust flying, really dramatic looking. I went to the director and said, “Look, give me a camera. There’s some great stuff in there that you’re not getting because you’re way out here on the periphery .” I got all kinds of static about union problems. As usual, everybody ’s afraid to try something new. Finally, they threw me a bone: I directed some trailers. I was so disappointed with the whole damn thing that I let it drop. Q: What made directing so important to you? A: It’s a natural progression, if you’re interested in films. The overall concept of a film was more important to me than just acting. I’d done second unit work for Don Siegel and enjoyed it—not so I’d want to do it in every picture, but whenever one came along that stuck in my mind when I read it. Q: You have a remarkable sense of your own material, more objective than most stars have. A: You mean: which ones to act in? richard thompson and tim hunter / 1976–77 21 Q: To act in, and which ones of those to direct yourself in. A: Just instinct. If I thought about it too long, I’d probably change my mind and do something wrong. I try to think about it in terms of the end, not in terms of the character I play. Hopefully, the story takes over and brings you into it, as you want it to do for the audience. If I have a virtue, it’s decisiveness: I make decisions very fast, right or wrong. Q: Do you get your shots with few takes? A: I’m always trying to get it on the first take—a Don Siegel technique. After directing awhile, you get an instinct about it, but you have to be able to trust your own feelings. Invariably, two-thirds of the way through a film, you say, “Jeezus, is this a pile of crap! What did I ever see in it in the first place?” You have to shut off your brain and forge ahead, because by that time you’re getting so brainwashed. Once I commit myself to a film I commit myself to that ending, whatever the motivations and conclusions are. Q: Do you have a main flaw as a director? A: Tons of ’em, probably. Sometimes I slough myself too much when I’m acting a scene. It’s difficult to make the changeover from directing the scene to stepping into it as an actor. Q: You’re at the center of the challenge to the hero in this decade: what do you think about heroes? A: I was one of the people who took the hero further away from the white hat. In A Fistful of Dollars, you didn’t know who was the hero till a quarter of the way through the film, and then you weren’t sure; you figured he was the protagonist, but only because everybody else was crappier than he was. I like the way heroes are now. I like them with strengths, weaknesses, lack of virtue . . . Q: And humor? A: Yeah. And a touch of cynicism at times. In the old days, with Hays Office rules, you never drew until drawn upon. But if some guy is trying to kill the character I’m playing, I shoot ’em in the back. Q: Pauline Kael has tossed you some antimacho barbs. A: Well, she’s out of line there. Some of the points she made I agree with, about the changes of movies over the years, and Vietnam. She goes on and on about the need for showing the weaknesses of men, and that’s 22 clint eastwood: inter views all right—there’s a place for that. But why...