Eastwood Works the Workshop Crowd

"Shoot, don't talk!" might have whispered the naughty shadows of Dirty Harry and "Man with no Name" to Clint Eastwood as he sat at the workshop table of the Sala Perla facing a crowd eager to know more about the director and the man. But instead, "Fresh Clint", as you might dub him when he wears that gorgeous black and white ceremony suit and matching bow tie, chose to take his time to talk and answer with sincerity, modesty and wit all the questions asked about his 40 year-long career. Clint is that kind of man: disarmingly modest, almost shy despite his impressive, overbearing stature. More akin to the Madison County guy - his great romantic role alongside Meryl Streep - than the Magnum 44 bully that forged his early movie reputation. The workshop discussion, led by Luciano Barisone, Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan, Nicolas Saada and Serge Toubiana, lasted over an hour and ended in a delightful autograph signing session. Then, after cheerfully returning a lady's merry "Ciao, Clint!", the great actor/director disappeared in the midst of applause.

When you started working, Hitchcock was around, Capra, Wilder were around... Can you tell us about the relationship you had with those directors?

Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to work with them. I came in after the era of the directors who made great films in the 40s, John Ford, Howard Hawks... I came close to working with them a few times but they were all sort of retiring... or passing away! But I have always admired them because I grew up watching their films. So I guess their images are more in my head than some other ones. There are many ways of making films; when I started people were more into avant garde approaches - like Antonioni's Blow Up. Then people would drift back to classicals. Now everyone seems to be into that MTV approach where you just abbreviate. It's much like when you sit and read a novel. Would you just read an abbreviation or the whole thing? I'd rather read the book! (smiles)

One of your favourite films is Oxbow Incident by William Wellman. Why is that?

I don't know why, except that I liked some of Wellman's early films. Oxbow Incident was a film that analysed mob violence, the infectiousness of mob violence, executions without trial... It analysed many things in a story of innocent people who die. It's a very unrelenting film, because at the end all the sympathetic characters are hanged. I guess the fact that it was unrelenting was what I liked about it; because if somebody would come to the rescue, it might have been just some other message. The film was shot very quickly, partly on sound stages and a little bit on locations. It's a great example of economic work but fraught with emotion. Some of the performances are what you would probably call over the top by today's standards, but some performances - Harry Morgan's, Henry Fonda's - still hold up pretty good.

Is Hang'em High some sort of reference to Oxbow Incident?

It did have the same kind of quiet analysation, trying to show different points of view of capital punishment, and what it is like to be involved in that. It wasn't a film as classic as Oxbow Incident but it was an attempt at something.

You said about the "Man with no Name" from Sergio Leone's westerns that it was the right decision not to reveal too much about him, that the public should not be treated like a child to whom everything is catered. Do you still have the same opinion?

There was a lot more exposition in the screenplay of For a Fistful of Dollars than we presented on film. Sergio and I were both very young. I was a young idealistic actor and he was a young idealistic director. I think he had done only one film - Colossus of Rhodes. It was an interesting collaboration; he had certain ideas, but he respected my ideas and I respected his. He certainly was a very imaginative and one of the most visual directors I had ever worked with at that particular time. It was exciting for me for that reason, because I was working with somebody who didn't seem to be bogged down by any preconceived notion of how films should be done. So I enjoyed it very much, and I wanted the character in that picture to be very mysterious, we didn't have to know anything about the background. In the screenplay there was a background referred to but we kind of got away from that and then during the editing Sergio went even more so in this direction . It was an interesting time. The producers were looking at the dailies and they didn't know what I was doing. They thought: "Well, he just doesn't do anything, he's just standing there!" (laughs) But Sergio understood and finally when it was all edited together, it looked like people understood that he was doing something or thinking about something. But to a person who wasn't familiar with looking at films, you looked at the dailies and it was a very difficult film to analyse... (smiles)

Tell us about your team, the people who have been with you for a long time - Jack Green, Patrick Hampstead... What does each of them bring to your films?

Well, Patrick Hampstead has been around for many many years as a production designer. He's just wonderful. He's 86 years old, and he's still very lucid, very interested, and loves the work. He worked for Hitchcock, George Roy Hill, he won several Academy Awards, he's been very successful, but he still loves it to his day, so it's that enthusiasm that I like in people. When people lose their enthusiasm for the work, then they should probably allow somebody else to do it. But they all have that enthusiasm: Jack Green, and Joe, he loves editing, he's very protective, he's very loyal to me, when somebody comes along and wants to recut a film for television, he's always right there: "Wait a second, you can't do that, you can't do this..." and keeping me up to date with what's going on. So this kind of people you get to know after many many years, and you try desperately to get them on every project, or somebody like them.

It seems that art, painting have a very strong influence in your visual style.

I am not an expert, but I like what I like. When it has to do with a western, I start thinking: "What's the ultimate western artwork?" It's Charles Russel's, and you start looking at some of those views. There's a shot in The Outlaw Josey Wales where they're riding into this little small town, and it looks exactly like a Charles Russel painting, and when we were shooting I said "Oh, this is Charles Russel, we got to get this quick before the sun goes off the hill in the background!", because he always painted with the light in the background and the foreground dark. Like at the end of day, or the beginning of day. And that's a reason why I like to shoot in the fall of the years so much because the sun stays lower, and it is so much more effective.

Robin Gatto