Clint: The Life and Legend [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

If McGilligan is correct, Eastwood's public image is a sham. Widely praised for his loyalty, the Eastwood in McGilligan's book banishes lifelong friends from his circle should they dare ask for even a tiny crumb of the pie they helped bake. Producers, directors, editors, writers, all of them working for comparative peanuts, become "non-persons" in the eyes of Clint the squint, and they are exiled from his Malpaso production company and from the film industry itself because, they insist, the big man is vindictive, and uses his considerable influence to deprive them of their right to make a living. But the macho icon is also a coward who loathes confrontation and never fires anyone directly, letting others do his dirty work for him. Rich beyond mere tabulation, Dirty Harry's Republican alter ego slams welfare and brags that he worked for "every crust of bread" he ever ate, yet never pays for a meal, insisting on being "comped" wherever he goes. And as a filmmaker, his legendary habit of delivering films ahead of schedule and under budget is nothing but carelessness and a wiliness to accept subpar work to keep his budgets low and his percentages high.

He's also a womanizer whose relationships produced numerous illegitimate children, an opportunist who used his brief reign as Mayor of Carmel for his own financial gain, and a father in name only.

Then there's that temper. Anyone who dares park in his unmarked space on the Warner lot will know holy terror as Eastwood vandalizes their vehicle with a golf club, hammer, or a pickup truck. Good luck if you sue him in court, especially with a judge who asks for his autograph.

As someone who always thought highly of Eastwood personally no matter what I thought of his films (most of which I admire), I found this account of his life rather disturbing, but the book is disturbing in ways that have more to do with McGilligan than Eastwood. The punctuation is often a mess with periods appearing outside quotation marks, and the spelling is often questionable, with the author spelling tires as "tyres" when describing the ludicrous climax of The Gauntlet. Maybe the guy is English and doesn't always Americanize his language but the biographical notes describe him as living in Missouri, so that may not be an excuse.

There are also more substantial errors. McGilligan has Ronald Reagan appropriating Dirty Harry's famous "Make my day" speech from Sudden Impact in March 1983, nine months before the film is released. And he gets other dates wrong: In his world, Paint Your Wagon opened a year later than it did, and Escape from Alcatraz debuts in the Christmas season of 1979 when, in fact, it opened the previous June. One can excuse errors here and there, but release dates can be easily verified, and McGilligan makes them consistently. If he can't get a film's release date right, how much faith can we have in his account of incidents from Eastwood's life, incidents at which the author was not present?

If nothing else, this book's sloppy research suggests McGilligan suffers from one of the same personality flaws for which he frequently reprimands his subject. Eastwood, he says, is always happy with the first draft of the screenplays he stars in and/or directs, never requesting and always resisting rewrites (perhaps because they require shelling out cash, something the miserly multi-millionaire is loathe to do). McGilligan's book reads like a first draft that never made it to the proofreader. Perhaps a quote from the Bible is in order here: "Judge not lest ye be judged."

McGilligan's book is certainly an improvement over Richard Shickel's earlier look at the Hollywood titan. McGilligan is fairly thorough, offering more information about Eastwood's ancestry than we might even want to know about our own, and providing a more subjective view of the star's contribution to the cinema. Thankfully, he never fawns over Eastwood the way "critic" Schickel did in his "authorized" bio, but one may be tempted to wonder if he went too far in the opposite direction.

Supposedly this author is a movie expert but the deepest analysis of Clint's movies he offers is his criticism that Clint takes his shirt off too often. In an interview the author admitted a distaste for rewatching movies, and it shows. A few times the author makes the claim like Clint has a perversion for liking scenes of him in a bathtub, pointing to High Plains Drifter as a reprise of his scene in a bathtub in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Of course, in the Leone movie it was Eli Wallach who had the bathtub scene, not Clint. Oh well. What's a little detail like that when you have an agenda to push.

And the inside book jacket claims this is a "balanced" book. Hahahahaha. That's pretty funny. An example of how "balanced" and "well researched" this book is: the author reads Sondra Locke's book and repeats her story here, without reserve as the definitive truth of the situation. As if nothing in her version of the story is at all suspect. Uh-huh.

The author claims that Clint, while in his Rawhide days, ran a hopeful actor out of Hollywood. As though a co-star in a popular TV series would have that power, to ruin another's career, and in effect literarily force them out of Hollywood and L.A. The author also claims there is no evidence that Clint showed any interest in directing during his Rawhide days, or had ever made any suggestions about camera shots, or had ever asked to direct an episode of the series. So in effect, Clint is a big fat liar, who has all along manipulated the media and spread his own propaganda to the public. Even though Clint was to very competently direct his first movie, Play Misty for Me, a mere five years after the series ended.

Does Clint have flaws as a human being? Absolutely. His womanizing has been chronicled in at least two other books (including his "official" biography), and he doesn't deny it. Has he made mistakes? I'm sure. Is he the despicable man that the author portrays? I find that very unlikely. The author clearly has a bias (and some very evident psychological issues), and while your average reader won't be in any position to question the validity of facts that occurred in private, there is much in the book that any casual fan of Clint's can spot right off as untrue.

Author's claim: Clint has a history of gay-bashing in his movies (and private life.) Well, I don't know what he's ever said in private and maybe he has said something spiteful at one time-- maybe -- but I would bet the author of this book has said much worse in private. Just my personal assertion. But his movies are out there for anybody to watch, and there's very clearly no instance of gay-bashing in any movie (including The Eiger Sanction), nor does the author actually give an example. He just makes the claim.

Author's claim: Clint has a sordid history of mistreatment of blacks in his films. Author's support: Dirty Harry is clearly a racist. (He's clearly not.) The scene with the black bankrobbers. Portraying a black guy as a pimp in Magnum Force. As though these are the only roles Clint ever had black actors play in his movies. The author will use even the flimsiest of evidence to try to make his case. Watch his movies and decide for yourself.

Author's claim: That Clint has portrayed women in his movies in a negative manner. The Beguiled, Play Misty For Me, and The Enforcer are three he singles out. Yes, there is sexism at the beginning of the Enforcer, but it's done with humor in mind, and to show how far Harry comes around. The movie could even be seen as an endorsement for affirmative action, though I doubt that was what interested Clint. As for the other two.... well, the author is apparently holding onto some archaic notion that women are pure of heart and only men are capable of greed, obsession, passion, deceit, etc. It's okay for a movie like Taxi Drive to show a man as a sociopath, but not okay to show women as such. In other words, women aren't allowed to have good roles in movies! I guess they're just supposed to look pretty, but not actually do anything. He also claims Clint had a hidden agenda to force Sondra Locke into roles where she's a hooker or is otherwise assaulted. Even though he always gave her good roles, roles that would require real acting, and give her a chance to shine. Whether or not she performed up to the roles is a separate issue. Then girlfriend Francis Fisher also plays a whore in Unforgiven, and a-ha! we have a pattern here, the author claims. If you really, really want to believe that, then go ahead, but Clint's movies speak for themselves. Go back and watch them, and you'll find he always had far stronger women in his movies than any other male star, and that holds true even in this age.

You could go on, but what's the point. His assertions of things we all in the public can see are false lead me think there is nothing in this book that is not questionable. This author isn't the first to parasitically try to ruin a celebrity's reputation for personal profit and spite, and I'm sure he won't be the last, and there will always be those in the public who want to see the worse in stars--they expect it, they even crave it, this idea that stars are by nature depraved and perverse.

One last note. I found it interesting that the controversy surrounding Tightrope was totally glossed over, and Tuggle given full credit for directing it, with the exception of some minor scenes involving Clint and his daughter that Clint directed. Now it's well known that Clint wrested directing duties from Tuggle early on in the production because of dissatisfaction with Tuggle's methods, but was not able to take credit due to a policy that was created after the Outlaw Josey Wales controversy. You would have thought that the author would have found this yet another example of Clint's egotism and... whatever else. But no. It seems that Tightrope is one of the few movies that the author actually likes of Clint's, even going so far as to concede through a quote by Tuggle that Clint can, actually, act when he wants to. Very strangely the author seems fascinated by the sexual content of the movie (which seems to hint at the author's own....no, never mind, I'm not going there.) The obvious conclusion is that the author thinks highly of the movie, and of the directing of the movie, and is not about to give Clint any credit if he can help it. No mention of the controversy is mentioned, not even to deny that there was a controversy, which Schickel detailed thoroughly in his bio of Clint. Interesting. Now tell me the author didn't have some (sick) agenda in this book.