Westerns

The Man with No Name Art Print

One of the greatest movies of all time, as well as Clint Eastwood’s best work to date (Gran Torino) is now out on dvd. If you haven’t seen this great movie, buy a copy asap. If you have seen the movie, buy a copy asap.

In honor of the movie hitting stores, here’s a little trivia about one of the coolest of all cats and baddest of all asses, Clint Eastwood.

• The future living legend was born on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California. He weighed 11 pounds, 6 ounces at birth.

• James Cagney is Clint Eastwood’s favorite film actor.

• Clint Eastwood has 7 children and, unlike a large number of celebrity’s kids, all of his children have beautiful names: Kimber, Kyle, Alison, Scott, Kathryn, Francesca, and Morgan.

• Is a partial owner of the Pebble Beach Golf Country Club in Monterey Peninsula, California.

• As an actor, Clint Eastwood has made a living from perceived violence. However, as a man, he absolutely despises violence and has shown its horrors in recent films such as Unforgiven (1992), A Perfect World (1993), Absolute Power (1997), Mystic River (2003) Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Gran Torino (2008).

• When directing, he simply says “okay” instead of “action” and “cut.”

• In 2004 – at the age 74 – Clint Eastwood became the oldest person to win the Best Director Oscar for Million Dollar Baby.

• Gran Torino grossed $30 million during its opening weekend in 2009, making Clint Eastwood the oldest leading man to reach #1 at the box office.

• He wore the same poncho, without ever having washed it, in all three of his “Man with No Name” Westerns.

• Clint Eastwood’s mother lived to be 97 years old.

• He’s an avid collector of western art.

• Ironically, although he often smokes onscreen, he is a lifelong non-smoker off screen.

• He was not nominated for an Academy Award, either as an actor or as a director, until age 62.

• Speaks Italian fluently.

• Clint Eastwood’s first really big break was the television series Rawhide. He got his role on Rawhide while visiting a friend at the CBS lot He caught a studio executive’s eye because he “looked like a cowboy.”

• In the 1990s, he named the following as his favorite Clint Eastwood films: Play Misty for Me (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Bronco Billy (1980), Honkytonk Man (1982), Unforgiven (1992) and A Perfect World (1993).

• 1950-1954:  Drafted and served in the United States Army, assigned to Special Services.

• Clint Eastwood names racism as the trait he most despises in others.

• He lived with actress Sondra Locke for 14 years although they never married. The made six films together: Any Which Way You Can (1980), Bronco Billy (1980), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), The Gauntlet (1977), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Sudden Impact (1983).

A few trademarks of Clint Eastwood-directed movies:

• He frequently uses shadow lighting.

• At the end, during the credits the camera will move around the location it was filmed in. The scene will then freezeframe for the rest of the credits.

• Most of his movies begin and end with the death of a character.

• Often plays characters who are consumed by regrets over past mistakesand are given one chance to redeem themselves (Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino)

• He refuses to test screen his films before their release. He’s done this with all of the films he’s directed.

• Clint Eastwood has directed 9 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gene Hackman, Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden, Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank, Angelina Jolie, and himself – in Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). Hackman, Penn, Robbins, Freeman and Swank won Oscars for their performances in one of Eastwood’s movies.

A Couple of Favorite Clint Eastwood Quotes:
“I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live.”

“I liked the Million Dollar Baby script a lot. Warner Bros said the project had been submitted to them and they’d passed on it. I said, ‘But I like it. They said, ‘Well, it’s a boxing movie.’ And I said, ‘It’s not a boxing movie in my opinion. It’s a father-daughter love story, and it’s a lot of other things besides a boxing movie.’ They hemmed and hawed and finally said that if I wanted to take it, maybe they’d pay for the domestic rights only. After that, I’d be on my own. We took it to a couple of other studios, and they turned it down, much like Mystic River was turned down, the exact same pattern. People who kept calling and saying, ‘Come on, work with us on stuff.’ I’d give it to them, and they’d go, ‘Uh, we were thinking more in terms of Dirty Harry coming out of retirement.’ They might have been a little more interested if I said I wanted to do “Dirty Harry 9″ or something.”

“None of the pictures I take a risk in cost a lot, so it doesn’t take much for them to turn a profit. We don’t deal in big budgets. We know what we want and we shoot it and we don’t waste anything. I never understand these films that cost twenty, thirty million dollars when they could be made for half that. Maybe it’s because no one cares. We care.”

“There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality. I got where I am by coming off the wall. I’ve always considered myself too individualistic to be either right-wing or left-wing.”

“I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead.”

“Maybe I’m getting to the age when I’m starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now. You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot – both on the Right and the Left.”

“If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.”

Pale Rider Framed Art Print

“Macho was a fashionable word in the 1980s. Everybody was kind of into it, what’s macho and what isn’t macho. I really don’t know what macho is. I never have understood. Does it mean somebody who swaggers around exuding testosterone? And kicks the gate open and runs sprints up and down the street? Or does handsprings or whatever? Or is macho a quiet thing based on your security. I remember shaking hands with Rocky Marciano. He was gentle, he didn’t squeeze your hand. And he had a high voice. But he could knock people around, it was a given. That’s macho. Muhammad Ali is the same. If you talked with him in his younger years, he spoke gently. He wasn’t kicking over chairs. I think some of the most macho people are the gentlest.”

“The Americans who went to Iwo Jima knew it would be a tough fight, but they always believed they’d win. The Japanese were told they wouldn’t come home – they were being sent to die for the Emperor. People have made a lot out of that very different cultural approach. But as I got into the storytelling for the two movie – Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) – I realised that the 19-year-olds from both sides had the same fears. They all wrote poignant letters home saying: “I don’t want to die.” They were all going through the same thing, despite the cultural differences.”

(About President George W. Bush) “You’ve got to admire somebody who stands up for what they believe regardless of how the polls go. A lot of presidents do everything by the polls. They do a focus group then all of a sudden they say, “OK, that’s what I’m going to be for because that’s where focus group is leading me.”

“At this particular time in my life, I’m not doing anything as a moneymaker. It’s like I’m pushing the envelope the other way to see how far we can go to be noncommercial. But I’m definitely not going for the demographics of 13- to 15-year-olds. I didn’t know if Mystic River would go over at all. I had a hard time getting it financed, to tell you the truth. But I just told Warners the same thing I did with Million Dollar Baby: ‘I don’t know if this is going to make any money. But I think I can make a picture that you’d be proud to have in your library.’”