Original subtitles

- Okay, action.

- [Man] Clint Eastwood is a true filmmaker, that's all he wants to do and he does it well,

and he doesn't make publicity, he doesn't make deals, he makes movies.

- [Man] Clint Eastwood is a workaholic.

After every picture he talks about going skiing, and he talks about going back and resting

in Carmel, and that lasts for about 15 nanoseconds, and then we're talking about the next project.

- [Man] He really had faith in his objective, faith in himself, despite the odds, and the

odds were tremendous.

He did it, he did it, he got to the top, and he deservedly belongs there.

- I have this sort of feeling, and I guess it was my father who stated it, he says you

either progress or decay, he used to say.

Well, I always took that to heart.

Heard the script for A Fistful of Dollars, and I read that it was a translation of Yojimbo,

one of my favorite Kurosawa films.

So I thought, what a wild opportunity, here's fate kinda taking me towards this project.

It's gonna be done for a nickel and a dime in Europe.

It'll probably never play anywhere, but it's a chance to go to Europe.

So I said yeah, I'll do it, I'll do that job.

And I had this opportunity to create this character with Sergio Leone that was a very

mythical type character, a very mysterious kind of character.

It was done with a lot of style, and the picture I guess cost around $200,000, maybe a little

more, in 1964, which I guess even in those days would be considered a low budget.

- The movie was a traditional western, and I think it established Clint as the quiet,

methodic type of actor, where a lot of action and very little dialogue.

In fact, there was more dialogue written, and between Leone and Clint, they decided

that he doesn't have to say that, it'll imply itself.

- The language barrier was a little bit difficult at time, Sergio knew one word in English,

he knew goodbye, and I knew arrivederci, so we were kinda started off even.

I don't think it's nice, you laughing.

You see my mule don't like people laughing.

Gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him.

So if you'll apologize like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really

didn't mean it.

It was such an unusual idea, to play somebody who wasn't heroic at all.

To do a lot of things that were completely unacceptable by those standards in American

history.

There was the Hayes office rules back in the, dating back into the '30s where you couldn't

have certain things, you couldn't have a person shot in the same scene, because you couldn't

tie up a person with a gun and a person being hit, and the Italians didn't know anything

about that.

Sergio didn't know anything about that, and I didn't tell him, because I figured here

was a chance to break all those rules and forge out with a whole new look.

- When he went to Europe, he played a ruthless mercenary.

He was very quiet, very cold, very steel-like, and he did it with a kind of confidence and

courage that generally the two qualities, virility and vulnerability, which I think

catapulted him to stardom.

- When he did the spaghetti westerns, David Picker was the head of United Artists, and

United Artists distributed the pictures in the United States, and he came into the office

and he at that time said "this Clint Eastwood, major star, "you're gonna be getting $750,000

a picture for him."

And at that time, that was an unheard of number.

That was the perception by the industry.

He was instantly recognized off of the Italian westerns as being a movie star.

- I remember my father when I called him and told him I wanted to be...

I was gonna try to be an actor, and study it, he just kept saying "don't do that, don't

do that, "the stuff that dreams are made out of, "and you'll never have any chance," something

like that.

I was born in San Francisco during the Depression, 1930.

It was a bad time for a young couple to start out, but they did anyway, and so we traveled

to quite a few cities in the San Fernando and Sacramento Valleys.

Middle class family, one sister, it was nice because I had terrific parents, I was very

very lucky.

And everybody was struggling in the country at that particular time.

I did go to live my grandmother at one time because both of my parents worked during the

war.

It was pretty low existence out there, and I did get a great appreciation of rural life.

I had a cousin who had some horses, so I rode quite a bit, and wasn't too bad at that.

And I guess I had the same fantasies everyone else had.

Because I was alone a good portion of the time, I remember, and you kinda live within

your imagination an awful lot.

I never went to college 'til after the military, so I didn't go to Korea, I was one of the

fortune ones.

While I was going to college I got an opportunity to test for a motion picture contract, and

I got the job, it was a deal where you study acting and maybe you'll be something, maybe

you won't.

They didn't invest a lot of money, ut the studio invested some money.

In my case, I had about a $75 a week deal.

But it seemed like a lot of money at that time.

It seemed like a lot of money, and I had been going to school and working several jobs at

the same time, several jobs as I was putting myself through college on the GI bill, and

I was married at the time and struggling, it was a very very tough, tough time.

So this was a steady job I could try.

Universal was going through an odd period in that time in history where they made mostly

B movies, but they were films nonetheless, and it was a nice period.

I used to go down to sets all the time and watch people shoot if I wasn't acting in the

picture.

And the studio systems were slowly coming to an end at that particular time, and television

was just starting to come on real strong.

And so they dropped my option, like they did most of the other people there, eventually.

They dropped it when my option came up, and I was left out in the cold.

I had an agent and I kind of bounced around from one interview to another.

It was a very bleak period, I did get a couple small parts, and then in between I'd have

to work, I worked digging a swimming pools.

Because it didn't feel right just trying to collect unemployment or what have you.

And plus I couldn't live on that.

♪ Rolling, rolling, rolling ♪ ♪ Rolling, rolling, rolling ♪ Finally there was a rumor

CBS was doing an hour western series.

They wanted a lead about 37 years old, and I thought that's another one I'll miss.

But then it turned out there were two leads for the series.

I tested the next day, and I got one of them.

And then I was legitimately employed, like most people are.

I had a job that would go week in, week out throughout the year, and that job did go for

over seven years.

Might as well all relax, looks like we're here to stay.

It was a great period, because I was learning a lot, it was an hour show, a fairly high

budget show and we could afford names, and I worked with a lot of people I'd grown up

watching on the screen, so it was a great learning ground, I worked for a lot of directors

too.

Teddy Post, who I had watched teach cinema classes.

- He hung around the camera a lot, and I being a teacher loved to kind of illustrate what

it is I'm attempting to do with a scene.

- Mr. Yates?

- [Teddy] And he would listen very carefully.

- Look, I've had just about all I can handle before lunch.

- Aww, that's a shame.

And here I was gonna offer you a drink.

- Of what, poison?

- 10 year old straight whiskey.

Anyway, I'm truly sorry, Mr. Yates.

And I apologize with all my heart.

- Well, that's all right.

- Well come on then.

- Well, I should be getting back to the herd.

10 year old whiskey, you say?

The character of Rowdy was fun to play, but I was always frustrated about not being able

to play some more charactery parts, more adult theme or instead of playing just the dumb

sidekick.

After The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly came out and started doing business, American companies

were starting to come around and think that well, maybe Eastwood wasn't just gonna be

an overnight Italian flash or what have you.

I was offered a film called Hang 'Em High.

Delved into pros and cons of capital punishment, and had a little bit more substance to it

than some of the characters I'd been playing.

And it was an opportunity to come back to the states and play in some films here in

America.

It seemed the timely thing to do.

- I worked with Clint maybe 16 to 20 Rawhides, and he wanted me to work with him on this

first American project.

There was a lot of resistance from the United Artists, because they felt that they wanted

to get somebody who had done westerns on a large scale screen, and they could trust.

He very considerately told them all that this is the guy he was gonna go with, and he went

with me.

And it was a smash hit.

- But he gives that appearance of, you know, being a very easygoing fellow.

Well, he is easygoing, but at the same time, he is a filmmaker.

I knew from the very beginning, and that's why he formed his company very early, that

this was a man who was unlimited in terms of being an actor, a producer, and a director.

In Carmel, where Clint lives, there's a creek called the Malpaso Creek, and it's that simple,

he took the name of that creek for the name of his company.

- Put your pants on, Chief.

The thing that attracted me to that particular project was that it was a fish out of water

kind of guy, he was a guy who works as a sheriff in a rural community in Arizona, going to

New York and being displaced, and it reminded me kinda of the old pictures that you used

to see in the '30s and '40s a lot, maybe not the same category as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,

but people who were definitely out of their element placed in another environment and

how they operated.

- That's $2.95, including the luggage.

- Tell me, how many stores are there named Bloomingdale's in this town?

- One, why?

- We passed it twice.

- It's still $2.95, including the luggage.

- Yeah.

Well, here's $3, including the tip.

- You'll need your horse, cowboy.

- Working with Don Siegel turned out to be terrific.

I got to watch a guy who really could do a lot with his time, and manage what he had

to work with very well.

Two Mules for Sister Sara was a nice script, it was recently written by Budd Boetticher

some years ago, and it was written for a Mexican nun traveling in Mexico, and Universal had

made a film called Sweet Charity with Shirley MacLaine, so they wanted to do it with Shirley

MacLaine.

So we had to make the nun an Irish woman who was sympathetic to causes, who was adrift

in Mexico, and you have this gringo played by me who's adrift in Mexico, and we had changed

things quite a bit.

- Is this small package of dynamite powerful enough?

- Not if you put it down here at the base.

You put it up high on those bracers, pow.

- Oh no.

If I climb that trestle, I'll fall.

- A fine psalm-singing hypocrite you are.

The French are gonna slaughter a whole outfit of your Juaristas, and you're the only one

who can help them.

And you won't climb one lousy stinkin' trestle.

- I've been with Clint about 22 years now.

The first film was Two Mules for Sister Sara, I was hired as a stunt coordinator to make

sure the action turned out all right and to kinda keep Clint on tow and not let him do

too much, because he's a physical guy and likes to do his own thing.

- I think, you know, you enjoy doing the things that you're good at, and he is good at it,

and it also gives a sense of realism.

The trouble we have sometimes is kinda keeping him down to where he doesn't do too much.

- A real blue belly.

There's only one way to tell if he's a yank.

- How's that?

- Take off his pants.

Yanks have tails.

- Doris, stop that nonsense.

- In The Beguiled, Don Siegel and I could work on the aspect of not having things in

black and white, and showing the grays in between, because The Beguiled was simply a

fact of what the illness of war did to all the people on the periphery.

Where's he?

- He's presumed dead.

- There's no men around here at all then, huh?

Wow.

- I'll try not to dictate your personal behavior, Corporal.

- No.

- [Clint] In Beguiled, the hero dies.

- You lying son of a bitch!

- To have him go off happily ever after, minus his leg, minus his, you know, with several

of the...

The little girl and a love interest Hollywood bowtie ending just seemed a little bit much

for me at that particular project.

French reviewers are throwing great accolades, and even some American reviewers are starting

to think, well, this guy Eastwood is at least not afraid to try something different.

- KRML, Dave Garver speaking.

- [Woman] Hello.

- Hi, what'll it be?

- [Woman] Play Misty for me.

- I liked the story very much.

So now I had to go to the head of Universal, Lou Wassima, and convince him that I should

do this picture, and that I would also like to direct the picture, which is kind of an

interesting situation, because at that time, this particular time in 1970, a lot of actors

weren't directing.

I was very surprised when Mr. Wassima said "yeah, go ahead.

"We're not gonna pay you for it, "you just do it for free."

But I wanted to direct so desperately, I thought yeah, that's a great idea.

- The first day of filming was the scene in the bar where Evelyn meets Dave.

The bartender is played by Don Siegel, who had directed Clint in many films, and you

could just see this wonderful feeling Don had, sort of like a mother hen letting his

chick loose, and Clint was very certain about what he wanted.

He'd made it very clear in the pre-production work that, he told me, he said "you know,

I don't want any makeup."

I of course died inside, but I didn't say anything.

He said "I don't want that universal "shot out of a cannon look."

- I always hate that look that you get on television, you know, when you see television

shows, where everybody has the exact same complexion, everybody looks like they're...

Kind of masked over, without any natural characteristics of their faces.

- I said to myself, a nice green salad with roford and tomatoes, baked potato and...

Stop.

- What's going on here?

- I'm sorry.

Why don't you keep the stuff, I think I've lost my appetite.

- Hey, hang on a minute.

I'm just trying to tell you something, that's all.

- I don't understand, should I go, should I stay, what do you want?

- I'm trying to tell you that there's a telephone, and I pick it up and I dial it, and you answer

and I say "hey, what are you doing?"

- And I say "I'll be right over."

- Fine, next time why don't we do it that way?

- Okay.

He created an atmosphere on the set, and he does this on all his films, I've heard from

other actors who worked with him.

He makes you feel secure.

It's a very safe environment.

You feel that you can risk things, and you can really not be afraid to try things, as

an actor.

- What's going on?

- Don't tell me he was asleep!

- What else at this hour of the morning?

- Oh, I'm surprised his conscience was that clear!

- What do you want, Evelyn?

- What do you want, Evelyn, what do you want?

Do I have to want something?

Can't I just come over?

Or is it inconvenient?

- Now wait just--

- Could it be I've made a boo boo.

Could it be that someone has been sleeping in Papa's bed?!

- Wait a minute, dammit.

- Come out, come out, wherever you are!

I thought...

- I just don't know what to say to you.

- I'm sorry I mistrusted you, I should've known you'd never do anything to spoil it.

- To spoil what?!

I made the film in five and a half weeks, and for probably a direct cost, I think it

was round $720 or 40,000, somewhere in that region.

Which was very reasonable, even by those days' standards.

And so they weren't in too deep and the picture went out, and it played decently, and it had

a certain longevity, it seemed to keep recurring and coming back and being re-released, and

so it was kind of a new phase of my life.

Halt!

Dirty Harry was a detective who had had a lot of problems who has been very unorthodox.

Who didn't like some of the bureaucratic nightmare that most cities are faced with nowadays.

I know what you're thinking.

Did he fire six shots or only five?

Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself.

But being this is a 44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your

head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, do I feel lucky?

Well do ya, punk?

Men could say yeah, I mean I like that, that sort of justice of somebody who's very individualistic,

and women would fantasize that that's the kind of guy they'd like to have, or men would

fantasize that's the kind of guy I'd like to be, I'd like to be able to handle problems

like that, there's a great romance in being able to have the right saying at the right

time.

- I don't want any more trouble like you had last year in the Philmore District.

Understand?

That's my policy.

- Yeah, well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot

the bastard, that's my policy.

- Intent?

How did you establish that?

- Well when a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and

a hard on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross.

- He had that special charisma that made him a motion picture star, and Dirty Harry changed

everything and he went from stardom to superstardom.

- [Clint] The High Plains Drifter, it was the first western I'd ever directed.

I liked the allegorical aspect of it.

- He wanted the look of a new town, a town being built, so that's why most of the lumber

was raw, and he wanted to avoid the look of the back plot western streets that we used

so often, and with a good background, and I think Clint wants them to look very real.

- [Clint] Here's a town where they allowed the sheriff to be whipped to death.

Now somebody is coming back to remind them of their guilt.

- I played the part of the sheriff.

I asked Clint later, I said, "am I your brother, or is this like a reincarnation?"

He said "well," he said "just kinda let the audience "make up their own mind."

- An ambivalent statement, sometimes it allows the audience to think along with you, it allows

the audience to participate in the process.

There's something nice about the participation, not just having a story dumped in their lap.

- Who are you?!

- The stranger drifts off, and the people never

know whether the stranger is really a relative of the sheriff, which is the way it was originally

written, or whether he is some angel of death that is sent down to torment them all.

- Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace and good will towards men.

- Amen.

- I sat down and wrote an original screenplay, and gave it to him on a Friday.

And on Monday, Clint said he would do it.

So I said it was not for sale unless I could direct it.

Which was rather...

You know, rather audacious of me at the time, considering that I had no background in film

whatever.

And I think it kinda sparked something in Clint.

Clint admires risk takers.

- I thought you were the heat.

- Do I look like heat?

- You look like one crazy son of a bitch for a preacher, I'll tell you that.

Who's that guy back there in the wheat?

- Old friend.

- With friends like that, you don't need enemies.

- Knowing Clint's reputation for liking to move quickly, I had to be absolutely buttoned

up on every shot, and I knew that this was the make or break moment because of the...

When Clint came up to the set, it was his first visit to the set, if the crew stopped

working for one second and started saying hello to Clint and shaking hands and buzzing

around him and so forth, I was finished.

If the crew kept working, then I knew we were off to a good start.

And when he finally came up, nobody even looked up.

They just kept working away, almost ignoring Clint, and we got the shot and Clint was all

smiles ear to ear, because he knew what had happened too.

I recall when we were preparing the movie, I said to Jeff, I said "Jeff, you've got one

job to do "on this picture," and he said "what's that?"

I said "you've got to make Clint laugh."

I said "nobody has seen Clint laugh in a movie."

- Smell that?

- I don't smell anything.

- It smells like shit.

Oh.

Raccoon shit.

- Raccoon shit.

Hang your hand out the window and let the rain get at it.

- Like a little on your shirt?

- No, get outta here.

Just remember not to pick your teeth.

- Oh god.

- The story was really written so that Clint's character would predominate, but Clint so

much enjoyed Jeff's performance and really let Jeff steal a lot of the scenes, but very

happily so.

- [Clint] Howdy.

- Howdy.

- Name's Josey Wales.

The thing I liked about The Outlaw Josey Wales as a story is that it was one of the first

stories I'd ever read, personally, that had been submitted in script form, where Indians

were treated with really quite a good sense of humor.

- Howdy.

- Howdy.

- There something wrong?

- Nope.

- I guess you were right.

I ain't that old after all.

- I loved the plotline of the story, not only the man searching for a life after devastating

experiences during the war, but also a person who believed at that time that human beings

could exist together, there wasn't the necessity of eradicating each other for the sake of

pleasure or envy.

- What'll you have!

- I'm looking for Josey Wales.

- That'd be me.

- You're wanted, Wales.

- I reckon I'm right popular.

You a bounty hunter?

- Man's got to do something for a living these days.

- Dying ain't much of a living, boy.

And the Outlaw Josey Wales has got a whole community that starts building around him,

even as fast as he tries to get away from it, it just keeps expanding.

I don't know why I'm always attracted to characters that are in search of family, or in search

of some sort of unity.

I guess it's because I appreciate and have a great sympathy for people, families that

are close together.

- Ladies and gentlemen!

Boys and girls!

We welcome you this evening to the greatest, the most authentic wild west show in America!

So hang on to your hats and boots, or your loved one's hand.

Now let's take you back to a time when the cowboys and Indians roamed our great land.

- Bronco Billy becomes another aspect in my life that I've always attracted to.

Something about a dreamer, especially in this cynical age that we live in.

He dreamed of being a hero in the way that Roy or Hoppy or Gene was in the old days,

but those heroes are not there anymore, it's different now.

And that's what made him good, is he's totally out of sync with time.

But he manages to make it work anyway, because he dreams that hard.

- You people are crazy.

You could all go to jail for the rest of your lives for robbing a train.

- Appreciate your concern, Miss Lily.

And you may be right about us being crazy.

But we're at the end of our rope.

- You're living in a dream world.

There are no more cowboys and Indians, that's in the past.

- Miss Lily, I was raised in a one-room tenement in New Jersey.

As a kid I never even saw a cowboy, much less the wide open spaces.

Except when I could scrounge up a quarter for a picture show.

I was a shoe salesman 'til I was 31 years old.

Deep down in my heart, I always wanted to be a cowboy.

One day I laid down my shoehorn and swore I'd never live in the city again.

You only live once.

Gotta give it your best shot.

- It's Uncle Red.

Bubba?

Bubba?

- Is he dead?

- Yeah.

Dead drunk.

- Oh Bubba, what in the world?

- Honkeytonk Man was a picture that I enjoyed doing not only because it was a picture that

took place during the Great Depression, and it hit on a lot of things that I had seen

when I grew up, but it was also the first of several times where I've visited the subject

matter of losers or people who didn't want to become winners, and it was an opportunity

to work with my son, who happened to be the right age at that time.

- Don't you think you might need some help with your drinking?

- No, I do quite well all by myself.

- Aren't there doctors that--

- Look, Hoss.

If you want to be my sidekick and chauffer, that's fine, but if I want a nursemaid and

a wife to bitch at me, I'll go out and get myself one.

Understand?

I think it was one of my better efforts as a film.

It wasn't a terribly successful film.

It's again another film where the hero dies, and that's not always the most appealing thing

for an audience.

♪ Throw your arms around this honkeytonk man ♪ ♪ Throw your arms around this honkeytonk

man ♪ ♪ And we'll get through this night the best way we can ♪ A lot of people start

looking at me, from the Bronco Billy, Honkeytonk Man days, started looking at me differently

as a director.

They saw me as somebody who would do other subjects other than subjects that I was commonly

known for, genre films that I had started out with in the '60s.

What I like about Tightrope is it was taking a detective story, a genre I've played in,

but a detective who had seen so much seedy elements in his job that he all of a sudden

started losing himself.

He started losing his perspective.

Did she ever mention anything about anybody using handcuffs on her?

- I think so.

She liked to get pretty kinky.

- Remember who it might've been?

- I think it was a cop.

Who knows?

Maybe it was you.

- He has some really truthful moments in his eyes, and his stillness is beautiful and painful

to watch.

It was courageous, I think, for him to do a part like that.

Clint Eastwood invited me to join that production because the woman has qualities that I probably

have.

She is strong, she's also vulnerable, she seems a bit of a loner.

So I didn't think that my character and his character ought to make love in the film.

He was totally receptive to that, and they didn't.

- I was wondering what you'd be like.

- Why the sudden interest?

- Well I was wondering if you came alone.

- What else were you wondering?

- You really want to know?

- Yeah.

- What it would be like to lick the sweat off your body.

- Do you...

Do you always say exactly what's on your mind?

- You don't like it?

- Could be a little more subtle.

- What I said?

- More the way you said it.

- How would you like me to say it?

- As if you're not saying it to somebody every night.

- That's a good enough shot.

- I've known Clint, I don't know, 20 years probably, and I did live up in Carmel for

a while, Pebble Beach, and I know the kind of interaction he has with the community there.

He was the mayor recently of Carmel, which is this kind of cute town on the ocean there,

it's inundated with tourists, and he was very concerned that the town stayed the way it

was, that it didn't fall into the grasp of people who wanted to develop things that most

of the citizens didn't want.

- Well Dirty Harry's always been arguing with the mayor, he's always been fighting bureaucracy,

and I guess in real life, I'm fighting bureaucracy too.

- That kind of concern for community comes off in his filmmaking, because he is a man

who is really honestly concerned with what's going on.

- Pale Rider is definitely almost a biblical figure that comes in.

The answer to a prayer of a community that needed some relief, that was being tread upon

by villainous beings.

- Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.

But I am afraid.

Thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

But we need a miracle.

- I'm not terribly objective about why I'm drawn to anything.

I guess I like fantasy, or I like the what ifs, or what have you, and stories that approach

things from a different way.

- I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, come and see.

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death.

And hell followed with him.

- We didn't know whether he was a human being or a ghost of a human being, but somehow,

he was calling upon the conscience of the community.

- You.

You!

- He did organize the community, and he had assistance within the mortal beings of the

community to stand up for themselves and fight for their own rights.

- Preacher?

Preacher?

We all love you, preacher.

Thank you.

- I've been drawn a lot of times towards community and my work, I work a lot of times with the

same people, or people not always over and over, but a lot of times I revert back to

people I've worked with before.

And that's because there's a certain family feeling, there's a certain comfort zone like

a family when you walk on the set with those people.

You know those people know you, they know your work standards, and they know what you

want and what you don't want without having to explain it, without having to start from

scratch.

- Clint has taken all the B.S. out of making films, and I like his approach to films, and

he works fast, he makes decisions fast.

- There's new people involved in the show, he knows their name, and he addresses them

by their name, and there's never a "hey you" or anything like that.

- There's a great loyalty that he has to people who do a good job.

There's a faithfulness in wanting to get them back on his next show.

- He's comfortable with people, and because of that, it's kinda loose on the set.

But everybody knows that when we're shooting, there isn't time to sit around, because on

his sets, he's moving.

The shot comes up and that shot's down and he's into the next setup, and you gotta be

there, and you gotta be available, and you gotta have your stuff ready.

- The first time that I showed up to work, there were all these people running back and

forth, and the thing that struck me about it was what happens a lot of times to people

who are stars is they have to generate a certain kind of aura around them.

And so consequently there's a great deal of sort of placating every whim or gesture that

somebody has, and you just, your eye would naturally go to that person because they need

to always be noticed.

And the thing that struck me about Clint was, here was this person who had no insecurity

or need to be the center of attention, and at the same time very quietly issuing directives

to everybody, letting people do their job.

- You even remembered the brand.

- Bad whiskey, bad sex, and bad men I never forget.

- You didn't talk dirty like that when we were married.

- Always, only you were never there to hear it.

Look Tom, I'm working.

The thing that's remarkable about Clint is that his technique, whatever you might call

it, his gift, is totally seamless.

You have no idea.

I mean, he is just that character.

- Swede, say something charming to the man.

- I'm gonna rip your head off and shit down your neck.

- So you see, Grungy Highway, we ain't got no use for you no more.

- Hit the road, Jack.

- And don't you come back ♪ No more, no more, no more, no more, no more ♪

- Pick your chin up.

Higher.

Now get your ass out on that street, ladies, right this second.

- Clint has the capability of being as tough and as difficult, and as irascible, as all

the characters that he's played, and at the same time, be able to have a kind of gentle,

boyish, soft, tender quality that makes him totally lovable.

So, it's very easy to, you know, fall madly in love with him.

As I'm sure a lot of women do.

- Tell me something.

What did you want out of our marriage?

- Well, you talked once about an avocado ranch, about buying a house with a barbecue in the

back.

But then you volunteered for every goddamn war that came down the pipe.

Oh.

Goddammit.

- What's the matter?

- How could I be so stupid?

- The hell you talking about?

- You bastard, you son of a bitch, you changed tactics on me, didn't you?

- What the fuck are you talking about?

- Gave up the old frontal assault and tried to out-goddamn-flank me, well I am onto you,

Highway, and I want you out of here right now.

You'll hear people say certain things about how he directs or what kind of a director

he is, or so forth and so on.

And I found that he seems to suit himself to whatever the particular project is.

- When we did the movie Bird, he called me and he really wanted to make it very authentic.

We got an actor, Forrest Whitaker, that looked like Bird, and I taught Forrest how to play

these Bird solos.

- I had a pretty good knowledge of jazz.

But what I learned working on the part with Charlie Parker was light years away from where

I was in the beginning.

When Clint was talking about the music, in the first actual meeting I had with him, it

was so evident, his love for the music, the time, what he contributed, I mean it was exciting,

because he was very excited about it.

- Charlie Parker was a brilliant person with musically, and he was partly responsible for

a whole new style of playing that is still in effect today.

And but yet who refused to ration life out over a normal period of time, he just decided

he had to self-destruct.

- I was 15, and I woke up feeling more pain than I've ever felt.

I didn't know why 'til somebody told me that I was strung out.

Somebody had to tell me that.

You know, I always thought that if I hadn't asked, then I wouldn't be.

He allows you a great deal of freedom to rest in that environment that he creates, because

the people that work with him have worked with him for a while, they understand him

too, and so there's no niches.

It was the smoothest and not emotionally easy because of the character himself, but just

mechanically easy as far as working on a set I've ever experienced.

And he allows you to live in the way you approach and carry a part, and he watches very closely

because he does understand that, but he tries to guide you in a direction that you understand.

- Clint is a jazz fan, and in jazz there's a great deal of improvisation, where you just

take a melody and a chorus and you improvise.

And he is like that with filming.

You know, having an actor have a script and not tell him "do it this way, do it that way,"

see what the actor can come up with on his own.

- You want to play like bird, you gotta shoot shit like bird?

Is that what you thought?

Is that what they told you?

- I remember.

- No.

No!

It don't help, man.

It don't help.

- Clint has a very rare relationship in Hollywood today.

There's an interesting statistic in William Goldman's book, and I think that book was

written in 1982, it lists the top 10 box office people of each year, and if you look back

over a 15 year period, Clint Eastwood appeared each year for 12 of the 15 years.

I would think it would be a pretty safe bet to think that pictures like Honkeytonk Man

and Bronco Billy and Bird and White Hunter Black Heart would not have been made if they

did not have the clout of Clint Eastwood behind them.

- You're willing to forget about all of us and let this whole goddamn thing go down the

drain.

- You're wrong, kid.

It's not a crime to kill an elephant.

It's bigger than all that.

It's a sin to kill an elephant.

Do you understand?

It's a sin.

It's the only sin that you can buy a license and go out and commit.

That's why I want to do it before I do anything else in this world.

Do you understand me?

Of course you don't.

How could you?

I don't understand myself.

- The idea John Huston kinda depicted to me, though I never knew the man, kinda depicted

to be the ultimate in film directors, he was one of the few film directors who had managed

to span a lot of generations, even right up to the last film he did.

- No.

You were right, Pete.

The ending's all wrong.

- The first time I saw the character of John Wilson sit in his director's chair and crumble,

I went my god, Mount Rushmore has just fallen, and I thought this is an interesting place

for Clint Eastwood to be at this time, not only in his career but in his own personal

life.

- He's managed to make a career for himself out of being a certain type of actor.

Kind of a macho character.

And we expect that from him.

- I always thought that it was a little dangerous to be the kind of...

To try to be the kind of person that some of his characters have been.

That's why to me it's so exciting that Clint is now destroying that very image that he

created in the '70s and '80s, because it is an image that is not real.

- Go ahead.

Make my day.

I guess all of us who have been in an action genre film have shot nameless people to the

point where you start to wonder about it after a while, and you wonder what value that has

to society, if any.

- How long's it been since you fired a gun at a man, Will?

Nine, 10 years?

- 11.

I liked the morality of this particular script.

It seemed to sum up the morality of a long chain of western films and adventure genre

films that I had been in, where you start having a film that had a little bit of...

That tried to not demythologicalize, if there is such a word, of the West, but also the

killing is not really beautiful and it's not really romantic.

- Unlike his other characters, older characters like the Dirty Harrys and all that, he never

showed the insides as much as he does it with William Munny.

- She knew me back then.

She knew what a no good son of a bitch I was.

She just ain't allowing that I've changed.

She don't realize I ain't like that no more.

- Well, you know, Will--

- I'm saying that Claudia, she straightened me up.

Cleared me of drinking whiskey and all.

And just 'cause we're going on this kill and that don't mean I'm gonna go back to being

the way I was.

I just need the money.

- With Clint we didn't rehearse prior to the film.

We...

What I would say blocked the scene in terms of know where you were going, what you were

gonna, the props you were gonna handle, and most of that is for the camera operator so

that he's not surprised.

And then pretty much, you're kinda left to your own devices.

Which is kind of real fun filmmaking, because you're not really sure what's gonna happen,

nor are the other actors.

And many times out of that comes this sense of it happening right in front of your eyes.

Let me tell ya, come the spring, Skinny don't have those ponies, I'm gonna come looking

for you.

- You ain't even gonna whip 'em?

- Well I fined them instead, Alice.

- For what they've done?

Skinny gets some ponies and that's it?

That ain't fair, Little Bill.

That ain't fair!

- Ain't we seen enough blood for one night, huh?

- He's watching.

He'll create the environment for the actors to do their work, and only if the soup needs

a stir does he step in and stir the pot a couple of times, not too much, and he stands

back and allows the broth to thicken.

- Both the last two, huh?

- [Man] Yeah.

- He loves this business, otherwise he wouldn't be in it.

He likes the challenge, he likes working on new projects, he likes working with actors,

I mean he's an actor, and he knows what their problems are.

- In the silence of the man comes the courage to create silences in his movies, places were

there's a lot of openness for interpretation, depending on whose eyes are looking at it.

- You'd be William Munny out of Missouri.

Killer of women and children.

- That's right.

I've killed women and children.

Killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another.

And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill.

That may not be the last western I ever do, or the last film I ever do that has some sort

of a violent act in it, but it was an important one for me to tell at this time, and if it

was the last western for me, it would be the perfect last western for me, because it...

Because I felt very strongly about the morality of this particular play.

- You better bury Ned right.

You better not cut up, nor otherwise harm no whores.

Or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches.

I know I feel certain comforts about the things that I've done, and probably some discomforts.

I probably feel there's certain things I haven't done yet, but most people feel that way, and

the main thing is is to keep trying at it, keeping shooting at it.

It's not like trying to do all you can or trying to rush to the end, but just having

an inner goal to kind of live up to.