Clint Eastwood: Straight Shooter

Unforgiven (Directed by Clint Eastwood)

Clint Eastwood has directed over 35 feature films, frequently starring in them and composing original music for nearly a dozen, amassing in the process several Oscar nominations, two Oscar wins and two DGA Awards for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. Revered as the last ‘classical’ director working in Hollywood – a tribute to the restraint of his storytelling and the effectiveness of his working method – Eastwood has never been afraid of taking risks, balancing accessible mainstream success with darker edgier projects. 

Eastwood as a figure of the brooding anti-establishment was first solidified by his portrayal as a protagonist in A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964), For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) and The Good the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966). He was in the early 1970s looking for more challenging roles which he found in films like The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1971), which allowed him to go beyond the roles he had become associated with.

Eastwood began directing with Play Misty For Me in which a radio presenter is stalked by an obsessive fan. His presence as an actor in most of these early ventures tended to overshadow his film's successes, most notably in the remarkable The Outlaw Josey Wales. Yet he was recognised as a capable filmmaker with a consistent and distinct style by the mid-1970s. He also began to show an increasing inclination for less marketable ventures like Bird (1988) and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990). His standing as one of America's most distinguished filmmakers was reinforced by his award of the Oscar for Unforgiven (1992), which was widely praised and is now recognised as his masterpiece.

The following extract is from an interview with Scott Foundas in which Eastwood discusses his approach to directing, his attitude to commercialism and the significance of the script:

Q: You have a reputation for working fast on the set, and [Don] Siegel had a similar reputation. Was that something you picked up from him?

A: Speed is just up to the individual. Some people think things over more; others work more instinctively. I’ve worked with some other fast directors – Bill Wellman wasn’t slow. He knew what he wanted, shot it and moved on. I came up through television, and in television you had to move fast. The important thing, of course, is what comes out on the screen. I like to move fast only because I think it works well for the actors and the crew to feel like we’re progressing forward. But I think the reputation that I have for speed is not necessarily a good one – you don’t want to do Plan 9 from Outer Space, where the gravestones fall over and you say, ‘I can’t do another take. We’re too busy. Move on.’ You’re still making a film that you want to be right. But I find, as an actor, that I worked better when the directors were working fast. That’s why I guess Don and I got along so well. You sustain the character for shorter periods. You’re not having to ask yourself, ‘Now where was I three days ago? What the hell is this scene all about? What are we doing here?’

Q: Is the filmmaking process significantly different for you when you’re acting in and directing a picture as opposed to just directing?

A: It is. You definitely split your concentration. Most actors who’ve turned to directing – William S. Hart, Stan Laurel, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier – have had to be in the picture in order to get the directing job, and that’s what happened with me. Once in a while an actor comes along and gets a project going that he’s not also starring in – Redford with Ordinary People, for example – and that’s certainly the more ideal thing, to do one job and concentrate on that one job. I always expected to withdraw from acting at some point and just stay behind the camera, and in recent years, I’ve done that. Even when I think back on Unforgiven – I had a major role in it, but there’s also a lot of the picture that I’m not in. Being out of Mystic River was great. But then Million Dollar Baby comes along and there’s a great role in there for an older guy. Well, I’m an older guy. So, there you go. Never say never.

Q: Did directing your own pictures then make it harder to go back and act for other directors?

A: I don’t think so. I actually think every actor should direct at some point to learn the hurdles and the obstacles the director faces and the concentration it takes – a concentration equal to that of the actor, just in a different way. I felt that directing made me much more sympathetic to what directors have to do. I think I was easier to work with as an actor after I’d directed a few times. When the director wanted another take for reasons other than performance, I didn’t bog down and say, ‘Come on, what do you need that for?’

Q: When you start a film do you always have a sense of what you want, what it’s going to look like?

A: I always wanted to try something different. A lot goes into a film. But first you have to have a great story, a foundation; then you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to frame that story, how’s it going to look, how’s it going to sound. It’s hard to express it, because I don’t sit around and intellectualize it. A lot of times when I go to work, I have a picture in my mind of how things should be, but I don’t know why I have that picture. I just know that I want to get there and I’ve got to explain to people how we’re going to get there, or have people explain that to me.

Q: Unforgiven is frequently cited as the film that caused American critics and audiences to finally accept you as a serious artist, whereas that recognition had come considerably earlier from some foreign circles, notably France.

A: I’ve never thought about what other people think. I’ve always just thought – and I still think this way – that you make a film, you present it to the public and then it’s out there and it’s up to them to judge it. I just kept grinding them out, like a machinist, and I guess some people might go back and, in hindsight, say, ‘Well, this wasn’t so bad.’ The Outlaw Josey Wales, for example – I would say that, judging from the man on the street, that’s the most popular Western I’ve ever done. But Unforgiven did break through in a way.

Q: You’ve been directing films for thirty-five years, does it feel like you’re doing anything different now than when you started out?

A: A lot of people say, ‘Well, how come you’re doing better now than when you were 45 or 50?’ The answer is I don’t know. Maybe I’m not. Maybe 45 or 50 just wasn’t looked at in the same way. Or maybe I know more and I’m thinking more, doing better things, being more selective. Probably because I’m older now, I don’t feel compelled to do a lot of work. I’ll do a lot of work if it’s there, like in the last two years I’ve done two pictures back-to-back – Million Dollar Baby and Flags of Our Fathers. But these things just all came about. If they hadn’t come about, I’d probably be a much better golfer. Whereas back in the 1970s and ’80s, I was doing more stuff. Some things you read and you say, ‘I love this script!’ Others you read and you go, ‘I like the script and I’ll do it.’ Now, I’m inclined to wait until I love the script.

Q: So many filmmakers complain about the time it takes to raise money and set projects up. But you’ve been fortunate in having a major studio–first Universal and then Warner Bros. – that was more or less willing to support whatever you wanted to do over the years.

A: Sure. A project like Bird (1988) was going nowhere when I grabbed it. It had been hanging around for a long time. It was owned by another studio and I talked Warner Bros. into trading something for it. Now, Warners might not have done that for someone else. So I’ve gotten a few films made that probably wouldn’t have been made otherwise. That goes for the last two, especially. They ended up successful despite the apprehension of the studio – so sometimes that studio thing works for you and sometimes against you. Warner Bros. wasn’t excited about doing Mystic River – they thought it was too dark. And they weren’t excited about doing Million Dollar Baby, because it was a woman’s boxing movie. But I didn’t see it like that; I saw it as a great love story. So it’s all about the way you look at it. But we got it made; that’s the main thing.

Q: Is the difficulty you had making those two films representative of any larger changes you’ve observed in the industry over the last four decades?

A: We live right now in an era where the fad is to remake a television show or a movie that’s already been remade five other times. It’s tough for a lot of studios to say, ‘Let’s start from scratch.’ In the 1940s, they had writers on tap all the time who would pitch ideas to the studio personnel. But can you imagine pitching Sunset Boulevard or some of these classic films now? A picture like that would have to be done as an independent, just as Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby had to be done semi-independently. The good thing is that it’s come full circle in a way, with the studios forming independent divisions to finance smaller films, to take on projects that wouldn’t get made otherwise. George Clooney’s film, Good Night, and Good Luck, is another example of a film that probably wouldn’t be high on a studio’s list of things to do. I’ve always tried to influence the studio to not be afraid to do things that might not make a lot of money, but which they’ll be proud of thirty or forty years from now. That’s what I told [former Warner Bros. chairman and CEO] Bob Daly when I was doing Bird. I said, ‘I don’t know if this thing will make any money – it’s about jazz, it’s not very commercial, it’s a tragic story. But I can guarantee you that I’ll try to make a film you’ll be proud to have your logo on.’ That’s about all I can offer. That’s about all I can offer on any of these films.

Q: The writer of Unforgiven, David Webb Peoples, has said that you filmed what was basically the first draft of his script, which is certainly a departure from the Hollywood norm of ‘developing’ and rewriting things ad infinitum and calling in four or five writers. You seem to have enormous respect for the written word.

A: Some scripts come in and they’re just great to start with; I’ll use Unforgiven as the example. It was a good script. I got it in the early 1980s and waited until ’92 to make it. I called up the writer, David Peoples, and said, ‘I’m going to make your movie, but I want to change a few things. Can I run these ideas by you as I get them?’ He said, ‘Go ahead.’ But the more I fiddled with it, the more I realized I was screwing it up. It goes back to something Don Siegel used to say: So many times you get a great project and people want to kill it with improvements. And that’s exactly what I was doing with Unforgiven. So finally, I called David back and said, ‘Forget what I said about making those changes. I’m not doing anything except changing the title.’ It was originally called The William Munny Killings. Of course, once you get into a project, there are always some things that live up to or exceed your expectations, and certain other things that will be disappointing. So you have to be able to re-write on your feet as you’re working. But once in a while projects come along where everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle – as it went together in your mind, it comes together on film.

- Interview extract from ‘Scott Foundas: The Straight Shooter’. DGA Quarterly, Spring 2006.

Richard Linklater: Young Mr. Welles

In 1990, the movie, Slacker, was released by Richard Linklater in Austin, Texas, coinciding with a newly developed cultural zeitgeist led by the publication of the major novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland. Suddenly and unwittingly Linklater became one of the foremost voices for a generation, and was rocketed into prominence. However, Linklater quickly played down his role as a cultural observer. 

His later films, though, typically continued to chronicle Slacker's youthful subjects, notably Dazed and Confused, a perennially popular 70s-set coming-of-age comedy about the exploits of several groups of students on the last day of school, as well as the lesser-known SubUrbia (1996), about one night in the life of a group of disaffected teenagers. The latter ranks among Linklater’s best work.

Richard Linklater's films, influenced by literature and philosophy, have a strong predilection for the spoken word, and the filmmaker has confessed to purposefully disregarding the renowned screenwriting precept of "show, don't tell", emphasising delicate characterization rather than traditional narration. 

Me and Orson Welles was set in late-1930s New York, and is a nuanced, entertaining look at Orson Welles’s early career as founder of the Mercury Theater and a charming coming-of-age comedy about a stagestruck teen (played by Zac Efron) who ends up cast in Welles’s groundbreaking production of Julius Caesar. 

Michael Koresky posed some questions to Linklater regarding this somewhat unexpected new film, about his take on the genius at its center and the amazing acting discovery who inhabited him.

What led you to make a film about Orson Welles, and specifically about his early years with the Mercury Theater?

It’s become a fairly obscure moment in his career, given the ephemeral nature of the theater and the more notorious work in radio and film that was just around the corner for him. In that way, I always referred to this as a sort of Young Mr. Welles: everyone knows what’s coming in his future, but it’s interesting to see the seeds of all the greatness, as well as the traits that might cause him some trouble in the future—it’s all there to be reflected on. He’s only twenty-two years old here, and you can feel he is pushing his own boundaries, and maybe discovering he really doesn’t have any, both artistically and personally. More than anything else, though, I saw it as a wonderful story about youthful ambition and creating art in a collaborative environment. I don’t know if I’ll ever do a film about making a film, but making a film about a theatrical production is pretty close to home.

You have a very different filmmaking style from Welles. Your films often have a casual, almost real-time feel, whereas Welles is known for grandness, even ostentation. Yet I feel there are certain shots—during the staging of ‘Caesar’ and the last shot—that go for a certain Wellesian flourish. Were you consciously trying to achieve this?

First off, you’d have to say that almost every filmmaker before or since has a very different style from Welles, not just me. Just watch Othello or Touch of Evil again, and you’ll always be reminded. One of the greatest joys and biggest challenges on this was the reimagining of the production itself. It was a lot of fun to attempt to re-create his very dramatic stage lighting. As I tend to bend toward the realistic, I doubt it will ever be appropriate for me to have such dramatic lighting in a movie of mine, but we were just taking our cues from what Welles had done in this production. There was the upward lighting from a series of holes in the stage, where he was trying to capture the feeling of a fascist rally, like something you might see in Triumph of the Will, or the way he flooded the audience with light from behind the conspirators as they each stabbed Caesar—very cinematic. We had some pictures and descriptions to go off of, but a big rule was to avoid any specific references to shots in any of his films—that was in his future, and wouldn’t have been appropriate. If you think about it, this movie is closer to a screwball comedy in its pacing and banter than a film Welles himself would have made or even appeared in as an actor. I don’t think he saw himself as comedic, but the largeness of his personality and the energy whirlwind around him actually lend themselves quite naturally to a more upbeat tone and tempo. On a historical side note, the story goes that Greg Toland saw this particular Mercury production of Caesar, and when he heard Welles was off to Hollywood to make a movie, he set up a meeting with him. He was so impressed with what Welles had done with his lighting that he said he wanted to work with him, so the greatest director-DP collaboration in film history really starts here.

The actors employed as Welles’s Mercury crew are each note perfect, but Christian McKay as Welles indeed towers over them. His embodiment of Welles is uncanny, even effortless. How did you find him?

It’s ironic that Christian was the actor with the least amount of film experience, and here he is lording over everyone else with such authority. Christian’s performance, when you think of what’s required and the degree of difficulty, is an utter wonder. You mention effortless, which in my book is the ultimate compliment to a performance, but Christian was pulling off a hell of a transformation. First off, if you saw him walking down the street just now, I assure you you wouldn’t say, “There goes Orson Welles.” When you’re looking for it, you see a resemblance, but every cast and crew member can tell you about the first time they witnessed this incredible transformation. Here’s this upbeat British gentleman at one moment; then the voice deepens and changes accent, the eyebrows narrow just a bit, the head turns at a slight angle to make a point, there’s a subtle, all-knowing, self-satisfied smirk. He really becomes this other person, and it goes so much further than mere technical imitation—it’s a full embodiment, which on paper seems nearly impossible when it’s Welles you’re trying to be. I mean, who the hell can believably be like that?

I think the key to Christian’s performance is that he brings himself to it, which any actor would try to do naturally, but what Christian possesses that so few have is the absolute self-confidence and elevated air of someone who has lived their entire life with an extraordinary gift. In Welles’s case, he was famously identified as a genius at a very young age and could never think of himself as anything else. Christian’s gift is musical—he’s a world-class pianist, traveling the globe, playing with various orchestras . . . He’s that good and always has been. He came to acting a little later professionally, and has been primarily a stage actor up until now. He’s an incredible talent, truly one of the most remarkable people you’ll ever meet, and I hope he gets his due for this performance...

Is there a particular film in the Welles catalog you feel the strongest affinity for—and why?

No one particular film, though if I could watch one right this minute, it would have to be Chimes at Midnight. It’s a CRIME that it’s not more readily available. Welles’s daughter Chris talks about how his performance as Falstaff brings tears to her eyes. In Me and Orson Welles, he’s Prince Hal—one wonders if he knew he would age into Falstaff. Anyway, there should be a cinematic mandate that this film be fully restored and available to all.

– Young Mr. Welles: An Interview with Richard Linklater

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