The most dedicated actors are famed for putting their health in danger to do justice to the characters they play, whether it’s by adopting method techniques or performing their own stunts, but Clint Eastwood comparing a co-star to the first person to scale the world’s tallest mountain is nothing if not bizarre.
A true testament to the human spirit, on the ninth expedition to climb Mount Everest, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit on May 29th, 1953, after a 16-day ascent. It was a remarkable achievement and one that would be remembered by Eastwood 40 years later when he shot an action thriller, although he has his reasons for making such an unexpected comparison.
After directing, producing, and starring in the seminal Unforgiven, which drew a fitting line under his lengthy and iconic association with the western genre, became regarded as an instant classic, and won him a pair of Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, Eastwood decided to follow up his legacy-cementing success by fronting a blockbuster.
Scaling back his involvement to above-the-title star and no more, Eastwood headlined Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire as veteran Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, the sole remaining survivor working the presidential detail on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated who continues to serve their country from the front line.
John Malkovich’s elite-level assassin has a plan to kill the current incumbent of the White House, and he decides to instigate a nerve-shredding game of cat-and-mouse by taunting Horrigan over his inability to save one president, forcing him to manoeuvre himself into the current commander-in-chief’s security team to prevent history from repeating itself.
A top-tier Hollywood thriller that features one of Eastwood’s finest performances that never gets the recognition it deserves in the face of such heated and iconic competition for that title, In the Line of Fire found Malkovich on Oscar-nominated form as deranged would-be killer Mitch Leary, who took his scene partner by surprise when he improvised during one of the film’s most intense moments.
Looking back on his career with Esquire, Eastwood reminisced on Malkovich going off-script, which is where Everest came into the picture. “My character is crazed and he pulls out a gun and sticks it into John’s face, and John puts his mouth over the end of the gun,” he said. “Now, I don’t know what kind of crazy symbol that was. We certainly didn’t rehearse anything like that. I’m sure he didn’t think about it while we were practicing it. It was just there.”
What does that have to do with the world’s tallest mountain? According to Eastwood, in a roundabout way, it’s because Malkovich had the opportunity to do something, and he did it. “Like Sir Edmund Hillary talking about why you do anything: Because it’s there. That’s why you climb Everest,” he continued. “It’s like a little moment in time, and as fast as it comes into your brain, you just throw it out and discard it.”
While it’s not the most obvious leap in logic, it’s easy to see what Eastwood is getting at. Malkovich saw the gun right in front of his face, and despite never having rehearsed it that way or discussed his improvs with the person right in front of him, he decided to wrap his gums around the gun for no other reason than the opportunity to present itself.