Clint Eastwood on "Baby"

By Richard Schickel

HOW DID YOU FIND MILLION DOLLAR BABY? I read the stories. [Producer] Al Ruddy gave me the book, Rope Burns, four years ago and said he had been talking with F.X. Toole, who'd written these great stories set in and around boxing. So I read them and particularly liked Million Dollar Baby. I thought it would be relatively simple. Mystic River had done reasonably well. So I went to Warner Bros., and they said, "We don't think boxing movies are really that commercial now," and I said, "Well, I don't quite see this as a boxing movie." I said it was a love story between a surrogate father and his surrogate daughter, and it's the next picture I'm going to do. So we went out [to sell it elsewhere], and we had two or three little turn-downs. They all thought it was interesting material but not commercial ...

WHEN I READ THE SCRIPT, AND WHEN IT STARTS TO TURN DARK, I WAS THUNDERSTRUCK. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT WOULD INTEREST PEOPLE. I would have thought so too. Because it does hit you with sort of a left hook. But nobody seemed enthralled with that. Lakeshore Entertainment was always bullish but couldn't afford the whole thing, so as we were talking Warners called back and said it would come in for half of it. And the half was $15 million. In today's market, you know, 15 doesn't buy you a lot, but Lakeshore raised the rest, foreign. So we went ahead and made it under the radar. Nobody knew we were making it, and nobody gave a damn that we were making it.

DID YOU IMAGINE THAT IT WOULD BECOME "CONTROVERSIAL"? I didn't really know. I was very surprised that it was out as long as it was before people started even publicly discussing the ending [SPOILER ALERT: in which a character who is paralyzed seeks euthanasia].

THERE'S A NOTION THAT CLINT EASTWOOD, THE GREAT AMERICAN ICON, HAS SOMEHOW DISAPPOINTED A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF HIS CONSTITUENCY WITH THIS MOVIE. Well, I got a big laugh out of that. These people are always bitching about "Hollyweird," and then they start bitching about this film. Are they all so mad because The Passion of the Christ is only up for the makeup award and a couple of other minor things? Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.

WHEN I LOOK BACK ON ALL YOUR FILMS, EVERY ONE OF THEM, TO ME, IS EXTRAORDINARILY SPECIFIC, BY WHICH I MEAN THEY'RE ALWAYS ABOUT PEOPLE DEALING NONIDEOLOGICALLY WITH SOME ISSUE. I don't think I've ever done a project 'cause I said, "Geez, philosophically, I'm right in line with this guy. This is me." I think I'm more apt to choose a role that isn't me. If you think back on Dirty Harry, for instance, people saw him as just a rogue cop. But he's a rogue cop who's just lost his wife. He's sort of a sad guy, and he's equally saddened and angered by the bureaucratic nightmare he's dwelling in while trying to apprehend a sadistic, psychopathic serial killer. If you showed him as a happy-go-lucky guy with no problems at all, you'd have no emotional excitement in the picture.

IT'S INTERESTING THAT YOU BRING UP DIRTY HARRY BECAUSE IT'S THE ONE PREVIOUS PICTURE OF YOURS THAT GOT IN A WHOLE BUNCH OF IDEOLOGICAL TROUBLE--THAT TIME FROM THE LEFT. Because he's saying Screw the Miranda ruling. But that doesn't mean that the picture is saying Screw Miranda. That doesn't mean I'm personally in favor of forfeiting the rights of the accused.

DO YOU THINK WE'RE ALL IN SOME WAY DRIVEN BY INEXPLICABLE FATE? Sometimes, yeah. I think sometimes certain things are just meant to happen for who knows what reason. I mean, I look back at myself at 15. I was a slow learner. Nowadays they have ADD and all these different syndromes, but when I was a kid we didn't have any of that. It was just, "Mrs. Eastwood, your son is a little slow." I'm striking a blow for C students everywhere. It took me a while to get my wheels rolling. I guess that's why they're still rolling at 74.

YOU HAD A LONG APPRENTICESHIP--ALL THOSE YEARS ON RAWHIDE AND THEN WORKING IN THE SPAGHETTI WESTERNS. THINK THAT WAS GOOD FOR YOU? OVERNIGHT STARDOM CAN BE HARMFUL TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. Yeah. It has ruined a lot of people. Like Orson Welles. He comes right out of the box with a project that everybody's knocked out by, and then all of a sudden it's like ... What do I do to follow that?

WHEN I LOOK BACK ON YOUR FILMS, EVERYBODY IN THEM IS BASICALLY A WORKING-CLASS PERSON. Yeah, well, I guess I've gravitated toward those roles. And if I have any understanding at all, maybe it lies in that area.

I THINK OF BRONCO BILLY, THE SHOE CLERK, WITH HIS DREAMS OF RESTORING THE MYTHIC OLD WEST. THAT'S HILARY SWANK'S CHARACTER TOO, ISN'T IT? Exactly. Without getting too French on you, that's the connective thing between Bronco Billy and this picture.

I'VE ACTUALLY HEARD PEOPLE SAY, "GEE, CLINT DOESN'T SEEM TO DO MUCH DIRECTING WHEN HE'S DIRECTING." Actors can become very self-conscious. They have to walk out in front of a lot of people they don't know and start performing something that may be kind of silly out of context. And even the most experienced ones come on with a certain anxiety the first few days on a set. And also, directors can get in the way sometimes by just talking too goddam much. Most of the time they're making up for their own insecurity, and it's condescending because everybody really knows what the script's about or else they wouldn't be there. So I just come in being a nice host at the party. You get them very comfortable, set a certain attitude, a certain lack of hecticness, so they can get up and make fools of themselves and not really feel foolish. And I love it.

DO YOU THINK YOUR MOVIES HARK BACK TO OLDER MOVIES? Well, I'd like that. That would be a compliment if they did. But you do it because that's the way you see it. And I suppose another person might see it differently; a younger director would maybe approach it differently. But then there's Alexander Payne [director of Sideways and About Schmidt], who's a young man but has a scope to his movies that's sort of old-fashioned.

IT'S INTERESTING THAT YOU BRING UP PAYNE'S WORK BECAUSE IT REALLY IS MUCH CLOSER TO YOUR WORK IN SCALE THAN ANYBODY ELSE'S THAT YOU'RE COMPETING WITH IN THIS YEAR'S OSCARS. Yeah, he tells a small story with a certain size. It would be easy for a story like that to be told almost in head shots. But he makes it feel like a movie and not something you could see on TV. It isn't just MTV drivel. And not that there's anything wrong with MTV. I guess ... well, there is to me because I think that stuff is fatiguing to the brain. If we're going to have a pop culture that's just going to be a lot of flash images, we're never going to get a chance to look at anything.

DESPITE THE TROUBLES YOU'VE HAD GETTING THESE LAST TWO PICTURES FINANCED, YOU THINK YOU CAN PROBABLY GO ON TO THE END OF YOUR CAREER DOING WHAT YOU WANT TO DO? Well, I will because if I can't, then that'll be the grand hint to get the hell out of here. But I think the next picture I'm going to do [Flags of Our Fathers] has a little bit broader scope. It bounces back and forth between 1945 and 1996, and it's got to capture several generations. There's the generation of the men who fought World War II and also their families and the impact it had on all of them when they were brought back to the States and were treated as heroes--that horrible thing about being anointed as a hero when you don't feel like you've done anything heroic.

THIS IS GOING TO SOUND ABSURD, BUT BEAR WITH ME. ISN'T IT SOMETHING LIKE BEING A MOVIE STAR? As far as movie acting, yeah, sometimes people expect you to be something more than you are. Really, you're just doing a job, applying some techniques you've learned. But it's ruined a lot of people. You tell somebody like Marlon Brando that he's brilliant and exceptional and you ruin his whole life--all of a sudden this Mid-American guy feels like a fool. But, you know, you become what you become in life, and you don't sit and think about it. You just go ahead and do it. You've entertained some people, and that's great--hope to do it again. But you don't want to sound like Frank Sinatra singing My Way.

YOU'RE ONE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST LIVING CELEBRITIES. HOW HAVE YOU AVOIDED THAT PITFALL? I'm not a great self-analyst, but the only secret is just being interested in new things and being interested in moving on. I think I've always reached out for expansion. I've kept working, I've kept learning. Let's say you keep a piece of clay or something. You just have to keep shaping it, molding it. And hopefully it gets better and better. I like to think I'm a better person now than I was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. I don't know, but I certainly had different habits then than I have now.

WELL, I THINK YOU'RE LESS HAIR-TRIGGERED. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

A LITTLE MORE TOLERANT. Yep. I used to be terribly intolerant of inefficiency and things not going the way they should. Now I sit there and kind of figure, "Well, O.K., I'll just keep going."

I WAS WITH YOU ONCE WHEN YOUR FANS SORT OF GOT OUT OF HAND. YOU SAID, "WELL, WHEN YOU SIGN ON, YOU SIGN ON FOR THE WHOLE RIDE." WOULD YOU LIKE TO EXPAND ON THAT A LITTLE? It's just, you know, a trail boss--ism. I used to get a kick out of actors who'd have 10 minutes of fame and they'd start going, "Oh, my God, I can't stand this, and I don't really like it and I just wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to really be successful." And you go, "Oh, come on. Who the hell are you trying to bulls___?" The only people who are working are the ones who are successful.

IT SEEMS TO ME, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT HAPPENS TO AN ACTOR IS THAT FAME CUTS HIM OFF FROM HIS SOURCES. Yeah, You can't see out if everybody is seeing in.

STILL THERE'S SOMETHING ENVIABLE IN THE WAY LIFE HAS COME OUT FOR YOU. I'M NOT TALKING NOW ABOUT MOVIES-- I know what you mean. I've been lucky. You have to be lucky. I've kind of made a life for myself here in Carmel, and I was lucky to run into my wife Dina. She's enhanced my life so much, bringing my family together. I don't know if I could have done that on my own. She's helped me put all the pieces together.

FINALLY, HOW DO YOU HANDLE OSCARS? I MEAN YOU'VE BEEN THERE A FEW TIMES. You go. Sometimes you have the goods. With Unforgiven, we were kind of favored and we prevailed, at least as Best Picture, the nicest one to have. And then last year [with Mystic River] we got Hobbitized. Now, here I am back the second year in a row. It's almost like the kid won't go away. Maybe they'll give it to him just to get rid of him.