Clint Eastwood’s Hollywood career officially began in 1955 when he made a brief, uncredited appearance as a lab technician in Jack Arnold’s “Revenge of the Creature.” Nine years later, unhappy as a midlevel television star on the CBS Western series “Rawhide,” he jetted off to Spain to make a different kind of Western with a very different kind of director named Sergio Leone. The result, “A Fistful of Dollars,” changed the face of the genre forever, and set Eastwood down the path to becoming a filmmaker in his own right.
Eastwood’s career got off to a curiously assured start with the wildly suspenseful thriller “Play Misty for Me,” in which the tough, swaggering star of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Dirty Harry” played a victimized Bay Area disc jockey. No one expected this from Eastwood, and it’s fair to say no one saw this hugely popular big-screen idol go on to make a film about jazz great Charlie “Bird” Parker, a heartbreaking adaptation of the shamelessly sentimental novel “The Bridges of Madison County” and, well, “Space Cowboys.”
Since 1992’s revisionist masterpiece “Unforgiven,” Eastwood has repeatedly strayed outside of his comfort zone to share with audiences his difficult-to-pin-down worldview. You may think you’ve got him pegged politically (especially after he bombed at the 2012 Republican National Convention), but judging from his movies, he deals in shades of gray. So I’m curious to see how this philosophy manifests itself in his latest movie, “Juror #2,” another zig from the legend in that, if the trailer is an accurate reflection of the finished film, it’s an old-fashioned courtroom drama with a doozy of a twist.
Speaking of zigging, when it comes to rattling off his favorite movies of all time, Eastwood has expressed a deep and abiding love for films like John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley,” William A. Wellman’s “The Ox-Bow Incident” and John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” But his all-time favorite? It ain’t a Western, though someone does get shot in it.
Mr. Eastwood is ready for his close-up
In a joint interview with his son, Scott Eastwood, for Esquire, Eastwood père singled out Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” as his all-time favorite movie. The pitch black dark comedy (which doubles as a film noir) starring William Holden as a sap of a screenwriter who finds himself in the employ of an out-to-pasture silent film star (Gloria Swanson), doesn’t seem to have a direct influence on any of Eastwood’s movies — maybe “Black Hunter, White Heart,” a fictionalized Hollywood drama about the making of “The African Queen.” So what about it places it above all of the Ford Westerns and hard-boiled detective flicks that influenced, respectively, The Man with No Name and “Dirty” Harry Callahan?
Per Eastwood:
“Two different styles: the style of the silent-movie actress, and then with William Holden’s character, someone more contemporary. The two styles working so well together. And I always liked Billy Wilder.”
If you’ve ever seen Eastwood talk movies or even delve into his own craft, this is about as introspective as he gets. I’ve no doubt he loves this movie, but if you’re hoping he’ll open up a little more you can pretty much forget it. What’s truly special about “Sunset Boulevard” to Eastwood will remain a secret. And if you’re wondering what he watches when he needs a good laugh, try “Tropic Thunder.” The man is an enigma.