Eastwood has occupied the bungalow since 1976. He and his fledgling production company, Malpaso, had just left Universal. He was making The Outlaw Josey Wales and incurred the wrath of the directors' union for firing the director and taking over himself. He wanted to make movies his way — he wanted to make what members of his crew call "Clint Movies" — and Warner Bros. wanted him to feel comfortable doing so. It gave him the bungalow, and with it a place where only he can sit.
It is not called a special place, and visitors who make the mistake of sitting in it are not kicked out, not exactly. They are only told, by his assistant, that they are sitting in the place where Clint Eastwood "feels comfortable." This is not a reference to the softness of the couch. This is the first lesson in how Eastwood does business: He does not do anything unless he feels comfortable. He does not make a movie unless he feels comfortable. He does not hire an actor unless he feels comfortable, and once he's on the set he sees to it that his actors and everyone else who works for him feel comfortable in return. He makes most of his movies about people in extremely uncomfortable situations, and the precondition for making them is a feeling of comfort that should never be confused with ease. He sees work as the necessary ingredient of comfort and comfort as the necessary ingredient of work. He draws no distinction between them, and makes his movies — Clint Movies — as a way of demonstrating that they are the same. (...)
He has made Clint Movies in four phases of his life. He has made Clint Movies as an actor, as an icon, as an artist, and now he is making Clint Movies as an old man. He has controlled both his career and his image through the making of Clint Movies; a Clint Movie is indeed the expression of his desire for comfort and control, and he is able to keep making them as an old man because of the choices he made as a young one.
He has starred in fifty-one movies and directed thirty-two. He also composes his soundtracks and pilots a helicopter. He works out every day and plays golf every weekend. He is husband to a woman thirty-five years younger than he is, and is father to seven children ranging in ages from forty-five to fifteen by five different women. He takes long family vacations. He is a famously loyal friend and the employer of sixty-odd souls. He served as a small-town mayor, claims to be a libertarian, and recently endorsed Mitt Romney's presidential run. He disparages Barack Obama every chance he gets and did a famous commercial for a car company he believes should have been allowed to die. He has survived one plane crash and didn't board a doomed flight that killed several of his friends. He is an Army veteran who never served in a war and possibly the most prolific cinematic killer of all time. He embodies ingrained American badassery and exists as a principle as much as he lives as a person; he also shows up as the reluctant supporting player on a reality-TV series starring his wife and daughters.
And yet for all that he has done and decided to do, he has lived a life of epic refusals. He has refused to stop working, but he has also always refused to work harder than he has to. He has made Clint Movie after Clint Movie, but the Clint Movie is itself defined by what he won't do. He won't go over budget. He won't go over schedule. He won't storyboard. He won't produce a shot list. He won't rehearse. He doesn't say "Action" — "When you say 'Action' even the horses get nervous" — and he doesn't say "Cut." He won't, in the words of his friend Morgan Freeman, "shoot a foot of film until the script is done," and once the script is done, he won't change it. He doesn't heed the notes supplied by studio executives, and when Warner Bros. tried to tone down the racial innuendo in Nick Schenk's script for Gran Torino, he told them, according to Schenk, "Take it or leave it." He won't accept the judgment of test screenings; as he once told one of his screenwriters, "If they're so interested in the opinion of a grocery-store clerk in Reseda, let them hire him to make the movie."
What he will do and has always done: use his leverage, in all senses of the word. He earned his leverage as an actor, as an icon, and as an artist; he is using it as an old man, with executives, with other actors, and with audiences. With executives, the Clint Movie exists as a form of leverage, because it exists as a form of thrift. With actors, he's leveraged both his artistry and his iconic status — his fifty years of stardom.
by Tom Junod, Esquire | Read more:
Photo: Nigel Parry
