From the book "Film Craft:
Directing," Screen International editor Mike Goodridge’s compiled
interviews with 16 of the world's biggest directors…Below is an excerpt from the
book: the main text of Goodridge's edited interview with Clint Eastwood, in
which Eastwood shares his early experiences gaining perspectives on directing
as an actor on "Rawhide" to agreeing to direct "J. Edgar." He explains what makes a good actor and why
he usually ends up using the first or second take of a shot.
Over the years when I was an
actor, I became interested in working with actors and found different
atmospheres that I liked with different directors that made acting more
compatible. The sets didn't have to be nerve-wracking or bell-ringing or
booby-trapped as it was with some. I started developing my own theories on it
and incorporated all my experience into them. A lifetime in movies is the same
as a lifetime in any profession: you are constantly a student. Every film is
different and has different obstacles to overcome and that’s what makes it
interesting. That’s why I continue to do it and enjoy the challenges of it. As
long as you remain open to new ideas and developing your own philosophies as
you go, it’s a very enjoyable process.
I took from everyone I worked
with of course—from Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, and all the directors on the
TV series “Rawhide” (1959–66). You see different people approaching things
differently and you can tell when they have a certain amount of knowledge or
when they’re faking it. Subconsciously I think you take from everybody.
Sometimes when I am doing a scene, I try to think how so-and-so did it in that
1936 film. Or you remember seeing some effect as a kid and try to get the same
effect. As an American kid growing up, watching Howard Hawks or John Ford or
Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder, you watched their work and it was amazing how
they created certain excitement in their films.
When I did “Rawhide,” we had a
lot of old-time directors who had stopped doing movies—people like Stuart
Heisler and Laszlo Benedek. I had also done three weeks on a movie with William
Wellman, and watched everything he did—how he approached things, how people
responded to him, how he liked the sets, the atmosphere. I found out what he
liked actors to do and what he didn't like.
For me, it’s very important to
have a comfortable and calm environment on set. It’s important that the actors
are submerging themselves into the character to the greatest degree and the
best way to do that is to give them full confidence and ensure they don’t feel
like they’re riding a ship that’s on the brink of disaster.
Sometimes I rehearse with the
actors, sometimes I don’t. Most actors have a pretty good idea coming to it,
because it’s what attracted them to the role. Some are extremely instinctive
and grasp the character right on. A great example of that would be Gene Hackman
in “Unforgiven.” He had the character so perfect right out of the box on every
shot, every sequence, and he really didn't have to do anything different—he was
amazing. Sometimes when I'm rehearsing for a camera move, the performance is so
good that I just turn the camera on, not wanting to lose it. I've seen it
happen in the past that actors come out really good at the start and then all
of a sudden, they start killing it with improvements.
Sometimes there are actors who
can drift in and jump in and out more easily. As a director, you have one
relationship with them. Others need to stay in character and you have another
relationship with them. I remember when we were doing “Rawhide” on soundstages,
people would use megaphones to get everybody quiet and the more people yelled “Quiet,”
the louder the extras would yell, nothing was quiet. I realized that actors
need a little bit of time to think, not feel pressured about the whole thing,
because not all of them are extroverted people who can’t wait to clown around
in front of a camera. They want to stay there and get into a role, and I want
to keep them there as long as they want to be there.
I have a reputation for always
going with the first or second take. Of course, I don’t always get it in one or
two takes. It’s more that I want to get the feeling that we’re moving. You have
to keep the crew and the production going at a business- like pace so they get
the feeling they are part of something that’s actually moving forward.
The cast and crew feel like they
are going somewhere when they go to work each day and feel like they are
accomplishing something and not just doing the same scene each day. I like to
do whole sequences in one day, so everyone has the feeling that all the parts
are there and, besides, it helps for editing purposes. It’s my job to make sure
that the set and atmosphere that everyone is working in is comfortable. That’s
the way to get the best out of people. Sometimes I don’t change a good
script at all. I bought the “Unforgiven”
script in 1980 and put it in a drawer and said I’ll do this someday it’s good
material and I’ll rewrite it. And I took it from the drawer ten years later and
called up the writer and said I had a couple of ideas and wanted to rewrite some
of it, and he was fine with that. I told him I might call him because I wanted
him to approve my changes. So I went to work and the more I tooled with it, the
more I realized I was killing it with
improvements. So I went back to him and said that I had been working on these
ideas and I really felt I was wrecking it, so I was just going to go with it
the way it was. So I did. Of course, you make improvements along the way, but
generally when you start intellectualizing it, you can take the spirit out of
it.
On other occasions, you get a
script where the idea is terrific, but the execution isn't quite right or
doesn't suit the actors that you’re hiring, so you adapt it and add things to
it. I've made changes to everything I've done, but with some of them it’s a minor knick-knack here and there, and
on others you rework it entirely from the start.
During shooting, I have certain
objectives, but I am never locked into things. In other words, when I am going
on a location, I don’t say it has to be this way because this is the way we
looked at it two months ago so this is the way it has to be. I'm always flexible, I always improvise. If
we looked at the location in the fall and the sun in the summer makes it a
different place, I change it. If an actor is left-handed instead of
right-handed, I ask them to come in whichever direction is more natural to
them. I am using simplistic analysis here, but there is no rule that has to be
stuck to rigidly.
Likewise, I am flexible with the
script during production. Sometimes I get an idea in one scene that will
stimulate something else. Or I’d like to see the actors do that, or maybe this
character would do that.
I always like to feel I am doing
something different on every picture. If I'm not, if I feel like I am doing something
reminiscent of a lot of things I've done before, it would cause me anxiety
that I was repeating myself. That’s why
after “Unforgiven,” I thought that was a perfect time for me to stop doing the
western. Not for anybody else, but I would hate to be doing the same genre
continually. That’s why I left Italy, because after doing three movies with
Sergio Leone I felt I had done as much as I could with that character and I
thought it was time for me to go home and get other ideas.
When I did "Bird," it
was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because
most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure
films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on
American music, was a great thrill for me. But whether it’s a drama or an
action film, the story content is everything to me. Sometimes it’s good and
sometimes not, and that is in the eye of the beholder. You definitely have to
step up to the bat and try to hit the ball out of the park. If you don’t, you
should at least try to be innovative, and hopefully the audience will respond
to that.
I always think about the
audience. When you are thinking about telling the story, you are thinking about
how you want the story to be as interesting as it possibly can be for the
audience—otherwise it will never take on the life it’s supposed to have out
there with the audience.
It’s hard to be a judge of that.
You can’t start thinking about it too much because a lot of wonderful movies
haven’t done any business and a lot of
not-so-wonderful movies have done tremendous business. All you can do is use
yourself as the audience; ask yourself if you were going to the theatre how
would you like to see this. What about this actor in that part? In every element
of the film, there’s always that thing an audience is going to see and judge,
like or dislike. Of course, once you have committed yourself to doing it on a
film, that’s it. If the audience likes it, that’s great; if it doesn't, go back
to the drawing board for the next feature.
I can work quite fast. If the
next project is there and it’s good and it’s something that’s been brewing for
a while, I can move onto it. If it’s not there, then I won’t. For example, when
I was doing post-production and editing on “Mystic River,” I read “Million
Dollar Baby.” I had read the book it came from some years earlier and liked the
script and I thought “Well, I’ll do this.” And they asked when I wanted to do
it and I said “well, right away.” We ended up getting Morgan Freeman and Hilary
Swank, and we just went ahead and started doing it. One went right behind the
other, but it doesn't always happen like that. Sometimes you have to wait for a
while for a very good script to come and I don’t make films just to be working.
I might have done that when I was younger, but now it has to be something that
I have a certain feeling for.
I am never looking for anything
specific. With “J. Edgar,” I read the script and found it interesting and said
I would like to do it. It’s not like I was longing to do something on J. Edgar
Hoover, although I had grown up on J. Edgar Hoover as a little boy. Everyone
knew about him as the head of the FBI and I was always kind of curious about
it. And, of course, he was an odd character who people were curious about, so
it was interesting to explore a little bit. I don’t always shoot a lot of
coverage.
I try to shoot just what I want to see and sometimes it doesn't work
out that way, because when you get into editing, you realize maybe there’s
something wrong or there’s a redundancy to one scene as it fits in the puzzle
and you forego it. It’s the final moulding process, like working with a piece
of clay and you can break a film in editing by doing it improperly or enhance
it with good editing.
My relationship with Warner Bros.
helps me. As long as somebody finances
you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language, then
hopefully it’s a success. You can always look at it like it’s a crapshoot. Either
way, it’s a lot of good people working hard to tell a story. It’s really a little army, or a platoon, and you’re
going out into the field and trying to make something. You’re only as good as
your weakest link and I try to get everybody to contribute imaginatively. If
somebody has an idea, I don’t care what department they are in, I listen to it
because people come up with good ideas. And because directors have so much to
do, you can stymie yourself by not paying attention to what’s around you.
As the story goes,
there were a lot of people unhappy about dialogue being included on the
original Rykodisc release. I spoke to
the person who was responsible for making the deal with MGM (the Senior VP of
A&R and Special Projects at Rykodisc) and was responsible for producing the
first wave of releases with Andrea Troolin. These acetates appeared from
Northeastern Digital, the mastering house that did most of the Rykodisc work
from Bowie to the sale to Chris Blackwell in the late 90's. When these acetates
were produced there were 2 copies for internal label approval and somewhere
between 3 to 5 copies for MGM approval. These acetate discs were struck from
the original two-track album masters. Initially, they were not in good shape and
one of the reasons why it was remastered many times. There was an eventual
breakthrough later ‘when Gato Barbiere asked MGM to allow us to add more stuff
to Last Tango in Paris, and MGM realized there was an upside to doing them right.’
However, MGM still had concerns
and were not exactly clear regarding their rights beyond the soundtrack albums
that had been initially issued. They were also concerned about certain repercussions,
which I won’t elaborate on. In any case,
‘MGM cancelled the release at the last minute’ because they feared (of those repercussions).
‘We had cut all the dialogue off, the master and artwork was mocked up and
approved’ but the CD release never got to see the light of day. 
A: That's true. I didn't meet
Clint in person until he invited me to see the movie at Warner Bros. But he and
I were enough in sync that he didn't feel it necessary to ask for rewrites. One
of the stars, Francis Fisher, told me that this was the first time she saw a
shooting script that was entirely in white. Most of them are multi-coloured,
full of blue and red pages or whatever representing various changes
I bought the “Unforgiven” script in 1980 and put it in a drawer and
said I’ll do this someday its good material and I’ll rewrite it. And I took it
from the drawer ten years later and called up the writer and said I had a
couple of ideas and wanted to rewrite some of it, and he was fine with that. I
told him I might call him because I wanted him to approve my changes. So I went
to work and the more I tooled with it, the more I realized I was killing it with improvements. So I
went back to him and said that I had been working on these ideas and I really
felt I was wrecking it, so I was just going to go with it the way it was. 
The cast and crew feel like they
are going somewhere when they go to work each day and feel like they are
accomplishing something and not just doing the same scene each day. I like to
do whole sequences in one day, so everyone has the feeling that all the parts
are there and, besides, it helps for editing purposes. It’s my job to make sure
that the set and atmosphere that everyone is working in is comfortable. That’s
the way to get the best out of people. Sometimes I don’t change a good
script at all. I bought the “Unforgiven”
script in 1980 and put it in a drawer and said I’ll do this someday it’s good
material and I’ll rewrite it. And I took it from the drawer ten years later and
called up the writer and said I had a couple of ideas and wanted to rewrite some
of it, and he was fine with that. I told him I might call him because I wanted
him to approve my changes. So I went to work and the more I tooled with it, the
more I realized I was killing it with
improvements. So I went back to him and said that I had been working on these
ideas and I really felt I was wrecking it, so I was just going to go with it
the way it was. So I did. Of course, you make improvements along the way, but
generally when you start intellectualizing it, you can take the spirit out of
it.
