CE: Oh, no. I think I've always reached out the other way. And
partly selfishly because the films that I grew up on, the ones that had a
strong female presence - whether it's It Happened One Night or Gone With
The Wind - the stronger the female presence, the better catalyst it is
for the male protagonist. I remember in the Fifties, it was really
depressing for women. They were all portrayed as the girl next door in
ponytail and jeans and nothing much with any substance at all. And I used
to wonder, where are the roles that Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis used
to play?
PT: That's odd, because other people would characterize the women
in your films as not having the prominence or strength that you just
suggested. In fact, one of the interesting aspects about Unforgiven was
that here was a film where Clint Eastwood is actually redeemed by a woman
- his dead wife. He's taken out of a life of crime and alcoholism, and
she carries this influence over from the grave. Yet since she's dead at
the beginning of the movie, we never see her. Is the only way a woman can
be strong in an Eastwood movie to be dead?
CE: No. Because, by the same token, there are the whores in the
movie who are the catalyst for the story. Their concern about justice or
lack of justice on their behalf was a very important aspect of the film.
And I think women were intrigued by that, because normally a Western
carries kind of an all-male stigma. I think women were a little shocked
to find that it wasn't just a male action picture.
PT: The character of Ned Logan in Unforgiven is played by Morgan
Freeman. In the film, nobody reacts to his being black. Why?
CE: That part was written for a white man. The only thing I added
was the whipping, because I felt that the character was a post-slavery
man. I didn't want to add the racial element or the element of racial
slurs. The role could have been played by a white man or a black man or a
man of any race. I'd like to think that we are at the point where it is
irrelevant.
PT: Would you ever make another "Dirty Harry" movie?
CE: I wouldn't only because I think that character's been worked to
death. But a similar movie might come along and it might have a lot of
interesting things in it. But there would have to be something compelling
about the action-something in the story that is really unusual or
interesting. I never objected to the violence in Unforgiven because I
knew that there was something to say about it. But I do object to it in
films when I see it just kind of gratuitously thrown about. Because a lot
of times there are people who approach films and say, "Look, you've got
to have an action scene every six minutes in order to make a commercial
film," and they have sort of a formula. They may be right; I don't know.
I don't claim to be an expert. A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of
money but that doesn't mean they're going to be anything cinema students
will revel over in the future.
You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in
characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless
special effects. But you never know. You are constantly fooled. I never
felt I had any great handle on it. I do everything, I pull everything out
of the gut a lot of times. I don't really get into a big intellectual
analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.
PT: You've been asked a lot of times about whether your films
reflect your own personal thinking or own personal values. But I'm
wondering whether somehow the roles you play begin to affect the way you
think? That is, that you create a role and the role returns the
favor?
CE: Well, I think there is some validity to that There are aspects
of characters I've played that I might like but I don't like all the
things about him. In Dirty Harry, the whole romance of the film is the
fact that he's a guy who hates bureaucracy. Well, who doesn't hate
bureaucracy? How many guys working in a factory somewhere haven't had a
problem with some bureaucrat? You go to the Motor Vehicle and you have to
fill out form after form. Or you go here and you fill out forms. At
Social Security or Unemployment you're filling out forms. That's part of
the bureaucratic nightmare that mankind has made for himself. There's
that aspect.
Then there's also the romance of somebody who would expend a
tremendous amount of energy on behalf of somebody they didn't even know,
which I think is sort of a fantasy that people would like to think police
officers might have. That if they were in trouble out there some guy
would work hard on their behalf, even to the point of shoving the law to
one side. Idealistically you'd say, well it's not fair, I mean there are
certain rules you have to play by but there become exceptions in the
course. Naturally, when you are doing a drama you are always telling the
exception. Because the exception is always more interesting than the
rule.
PT: A person like you who is powerful and a movie star is going to
attract a lot of young women. At 58, 60 years old, does that do anything
to you? Does it make you think you've found the fountain of youth?
Tags:
alfred hitchcock,
bartlett,
blight,
Clint Eastwood,
cure for cancer,
dirty harry,
entertainment value,
familiar quotations,
film,
first person,
Hollywood,
magnum,
mankind,
morality,
peole,
psyche,
social influence,
stuart fischoff,
violence,
violent films,
violent images,
william jennings bryan
