The Big Picture - Top 5 Clint Eastwood Movies and ‘Cry Macho’

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

'Cry Macho,' the 44th film directed by 91-year-old Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood, arrives in theaters and is now available on HBO Max. Adam Nayman and Chris Ryan join Sean to talk about the expansive, six-decade career of one of the signature filmmakers and movie stars of all time. They analyze 'Cry Macho,' his on-screen persona, his complicated political presence, and his relationship to genre, and, finally, they share their five favorite Eastwood films. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan and Adam Nayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join Justin Charity and Micah Peters in Sound Only as they discuss their deepest, darkest thoughts about the millennial lifestyle, rap music, video games, anime, YouTube, social media, and their underlying themes. Check out Sound Only on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. His name is Macho. Like me. Very strong rooster. Whatever. What's wrong with that? Nothing. He wants to name his cock Macho. It's okay by me. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show about Clint Eastwood. Today sees the release of Cry Macho, the 44th film directed by the 91-year-old Hollywood icon. That movie is in theaters and available on HBO Max to stream right now. An Eastwood episode of this show has been a long time coming, so joining me to discuss a movie career that spans six decades, Ringer contributor, esteemed film critic, our pal Adam Naiman, and the most macho man I've ever met, Chris Ryan. Hello, gentlemen. Hey there. What's going on, man? I've been thinking about it for a couple of decades, and I do feel lucky.

Well, we feel lucky to have you here to discuss Clint. I think let's just start with Cry Macho. We're going to talk about Clint's entire career as a filmmaker, as a movie star, as a cultural figure, as someone who has been on the wallpaper of our lives for many, many years. But he's got a new movie. He's 91 years old, and he directed and is starring in a new movie. I can't get over it. Cry Macho is a movie about a nonagenarian ranch hand, an ex-rodeo star who, on behalf of his boss or ex-boss or benefactor of some kind, travels to Mexico in order to retrieve his boss's son,

who's played by an actor named Eduardouardo manette and for various reasons maybe sentimental maybe financial he needs to bring this kid back to the united states and they go on a bit of a journey of discovery of of masculine reflection of romance of adventure of cockfighting it's a very unusual movie i will say ultimately i liked this movie but there's a lot to unpack here adam i'll start with you what do you think of cry macho uh i had very nice time at cry macho this is uh like the 30th victory lap after unforgiven around eastwood's legacy um and that said only semi-sarcastically i mean it's amazing to think that in 1992 which predates i think the word think piece that was

when they were actually just called articles, you know, or essays. But, you know, the think piece would have been in 1992. Wow, Clint Eastwood's pretty old and he seems to be taking stock of the things he did in his personal life and his movie life and the ways in which they intertwine. There's a good movie and let's give it the Academy Award for best picture

and then we're done. And then he just keeps working, right? Sometimes at a very high level, sometimes like in Crime Macho, not at a super high level, but in very likable mode. But in all these different movies, and there are a couple of subset of Eastwood movies that aren't about Clint, you know, like Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima are not about Clint Eastwood. They're directed by Clint Eastwood. They're not about Clint Eastwood. Mystic River is not about Clint Eastwood, but you know, Million Dollar Baby kind of is. Gran Torino definitely is, you know, The Mule is. And I think, I think Cry Macho is, it's like, you know, as he gets older, um, he keeps making variations on the

same movie, which is how do we feel about seeing Clint Eastwood getting older? How does he feel about getting older? How does he fit or not fit in America, in American cinema, in a millennial sort of moment? And because he's such a giant icon, I mean, I did a Ringer video essay on him last year about this iconicity that he has. These questions matter as they pertain to Queenie's Wood. This goes beyond like or dislike or right or left or almost beyond good movie or bad movie. And other people listening to this were like, he's not capable of making a bad movie. And there's a lot of people who think he's not that capable

of making a good one anymore. But this is past that. This is like one of the last men standing, or as in the case of this movie, kind of stooping. There's a part in Cry Macho where he gets on his knees to look under a car, and this is like a horror movie. I'm like, don't bend down, Clint. But at the same time here, he has directed and starred in what's probably going to be a pretty profitable movie.

And it's unreal that he keeps doing this because why does he keep doing this? Is it pleasure? Is it compulsion? It's a big question. I think part of what's interesting about that question is Clint has been very deft at not necessarily speaking specifically to those themes in interviews and in press. He is a bit more reserved and a bit more... He's pretty circumspect, yeah. Yes, he's brief in his comments on his work, and he likes the idea of people interpreting his work on an ongoing basis. So the question of why does this person, who you're right, 30 years ago after Unforgiven, could have just said, I did it. I had one of the most magnificent careers, one of the most iconic careers in Hollywood history, and I'm hanging up my spurs. And in fact, he has gone on to do so much more. I think the idea of the Clint remainder or viewing a film through the Clint

sunglasses is an interesting way to look at Crime Mach macho chris we talked about it a little bit yesterday before the pod but you know it's a film that um neither good nor bad has has to be understood through the lens of his career and his age and it makes it a difficult movie to evaluate on its own terms if you showed this movie to an alien yeah the alien might think, why is this extremely geriatric man at the center of this film? It doesn't totally track why a land baron in the United States would send a 90-year-old man to Mexico to get his son. But as we think about it in the way that Adam is citing, which is that this is a treatise on Clint himself, does it make you like the movie more? Does it make you grade it in a different fashion

because of its origins? Well, because Clint Eastwood has spent more time commenting on the idea of Clint Eastwood than he has making Clint Eastwood movies in some ways, I think you can't help but do that. I found this movie to be, intentionally or not, one of the more confrontational movies I've seen in a really long time

just because of the exact thing you're talking about, is like you are never not aware of this guy being in his 90s and the sort of state of his body. And even from the mule, it looks like he's aged quite a bit. And when I was thinking about the circumstances under which he made this movie, which is in a pre-vaccine COVID era, and he's obviously an at-risk gentleman in his later years, I can't help but feel like he felt like he had to do this before it was too late. You know what I mean? And that there was something about

making this movie, which is him saying like, I will always have a place and a purpose, which is basically what this character is searching for, as long as I am behind a camera, as long as I am making movies, which is what I've done for my whole adult life, I will always have a sense of purpose, a sense of worth, a sense of place. And that's what this guy, Mike, is kind of looking for in his journey.

I've been kind of cast aside. I'm living in this house of memories. And finally, even if there's a lot of like, uh, questions to be asked about the purpose of my journey, I'm given a quest and right. Like, and, and so I get that.

And I, I kind of really dug that part. There are large swaths of this movie that I found almost borderline unwatchable, but in the same time, you can't, you never really look away. Cause it's,

it's still Clint Eastwood. Did either of you gentlemen happen look away because it's it's still clint eastwood did either of you gentlemen happen to see paul schrader's the card counter oh we certainly did oh adam we we saw the card counter yeah because i saw it the other day later than you guys and the character in that talks about small scores and don't make too much of a fuss and just you know don't get indebted to backers so deeply that you can't do what you want. And Paul Schrader, who is himself an emissary or avatar of late style, though not as late as Clint. I mean, Clint is as late.

It's so late, it's early. But Schrader, he's obviously making a movie about himself and his filmmaking in the card counter. It's about other things too. I was watching this and I was thinking, Eastwood has made so many movies where he is sort of humanized by a younger character, another character, put into a kind of mentorship role or a tutor role. But those trainees or those apprentices don't really exist in the American cinema because no one's making movies the way

Clint always has. The great filmmakers who kind of exist maybe at his level of name recognition, they're off all doing their own thing. They don't betray Eastwood's influence. They might admire him and to some extent they may have internalized things about the way he makes movies but he's not really copied or emulated that much maybe because his style so kind of like just classical and foursquare that you're not really copying him you're copying like an entire legacy and mode of long-standing industrial production but like i feel what's interesting about eastwood is i find this movie generous without much to pass on right you're not a copy of this movie you can't no one's going to be like i want to make a movie like cry macho eastwood's the last man standing in a different way too he's

a practitioner of a certain kind of filmmaking that i think if it wasn't his name on it or him doing it no one would really want to copy it or live in that house or occupy that form so then to chris's question you say borderline unwatchable i didn't find it that but i did find myself thinking if this script which like the other scripts by this guy seems to have been written on a cocktail napkin if it's if it's made by someone else would you care at all and what is the space between not caring at all versus caring so much but all the things you guys are saying about Eastwood. I think it's like unbelievably interesting. I think that there are very few people that you can actually compare him to creatively because he is both a filmmaker and an iconic movie star

wended together consistently riffing on his own iconography. And I think the only person I could really think of who occupies that space consistently is Robert Redford. He's really the only filmmaker who... George Clooney is a filmmaker like this, Ben Affleck. I got one that'll get you in trouble for me saying it, which is Woody Allen. Well, that's true. That's true. Although I don't get the sense that... Well, I guess it's variations on a form, variations on an identity, but you never get the sense that woody allen is necessarily um actually he has denied that the his films are reflections of his vision of the world but and he's also avowed that he's miserable making them and that he doesn't think they're good it's compulsion and with eastwood i thought a little bit about compulsion but there's so much

pleasure in the movies that he makes. He clearly likes doing it. And that way he and Woody Allen are, are, are, are negative mirror images of it. They're Allen does this and says, every time I don't think I'm very good, the movies I'm making aren't good. I don't know why I'm doing it. And Eastwood, you know, actors like working with him. He keeps working. He's excited. He obviously reads newspaper articles and wants to make movies out of them or reads novels and wants to make movies out of them. This is not a work of obligation and not just because it's a 91 year old getting up out of bed to do it. I mean, he's having fun making this movie. This is something he wants to do. I'm moved by the desire for him to want to keep filmmaking

at this point beyond the movies that he's making. I just find quite resonant. I completely agree with you. I also really enjoy the prolific nature of his filmography suggests someone who understands it's the body of work, not maybe any single limb. So if you're Clint Eastwood, and I think in reading interviews with him, it sounds like he's had very few experiences where it was a challenge to get funding for a movie. He's this longstanding relationship with Warner Brothers that seems to have a grandfather clause that no matter what corporate overlords Warner has, he can just make a movie every 18 months if he wants to. And he was saying to Amy Taubman, he was like, oh, Million Dollar Baby is one of the few movies

I've ever had. It's ever been a challenge to get the money for, which is funny because Million Dollar Baby was a hit and an Oscar winner. But for the most part, if you know there's another picture coming, if you know I'm going to do another one in 9, 12, 15 months, I think it maybe leads to something like what Clint has where he's like, we're going to be done by lunch. I'm going to work with the same people over and over again. They're going to know how I I work my sets are quiet that we do one or two takes and we move on because I know what I want and I know how to get it and it's such a old-fashioned way of working but it is a very rarefied way of working because I think of his bridge-like kind of reputation from 1950s to contemporary filmmaking. I find him to be an interesting and difficult to kind of calcify director and star too,

because we have this vision of him as the great Western hero, the vision of expansion and kind of anti-hero figure, lone man who comes into town. That's not just reductive. It really doesn't speak clearly, I think, to anything that he's trying to accomplish. Cry Macho, as many people pointed out, is essentially his first Western since Unforgiven, which was this kind of denouement on this era of American Western filmmaking. And it's also clearly a romance. And he's made a few romances over the years. It's clearly, as Adam, you point out, a story about a kind of mentorship

with a young person. He's made a lot of movies like that over the years. It's also a story about somebody who's over the hill and trying to understand how to better reflect on aging and the loss of a vitality. It's also a movie that's very clearly about what does it mean to be a man? Almost all of his movies are about what does it mean to be a man. And so he's not, he's just not a, it's difficult to drill down clearly and say that is Clint Eastwood. And he's become something, you know, difficult to interpret for a number of people over the years, but he just keeps making and piling on and piling on movies. Because what you're trying to drill through is pure granite. You're trying to drill through

Mount Rushmore, right? Because that early action persona in a moment before the action movie was even really created as a genre. I mean, when we say the action movie, we're kind of thinking about the urban action movie, because before that, a lot of what we get out of the action movie was through things like westerns, right? And crime films and war films. I mean, Dirty Harry didn't just urbanize Eastwood, it kind of urbanizes the action movie along with French Connection and whatever else. And that's the vision of Eastwood that I think people tended to form their dislike of him around. Because all the critics of the era liked the spaghetti westerns. Even like they liked them not in spite of their populism and their popularity, but they were like, these are also good.

I mean, this is the work of a no-uteur filmmaker, and Eastwood is this blank star. It's in the 70s that the crossover between the arguably fascist ethos of the movie, like Dirty Harry, and then Eastwood's own politics, right? And then his shamelessness in recycling the character, and his absolute shamelessness in movies like Every Which Way You Can, where it's just like, you know, this is, this is, this is not the new Hollywood, you know, this is, this is what plays on a Friday night and why people won't go see heaven's gate. You know, like that predates then the other turnaround Eastwood,

which is in the eighties when the, when the French started being like, this guy makes some interesting movies when he's not shooting people. This guy's Howard Hawks. This guy's Howard Hawks, you know, and it's, and,

and, and that then turned again after unforgiven into the phase that I think is This guy's Howard Hawks. filmmaking. People will stand up for them maybe on individual merits, but that's not where people now go nuts over them. They go nuts over the late, late films and the idea that there's an essence of Eastwoodian-ness to them that is profound. And that's where you get stuff like Mule and Cry Macho. I mean, that you reduce this stuff to its barest, simplest essence. There are parts of Cry Macho I wouldn't say unwatchable. It is kind of barely a movie. And yet it contains the multitudes that Sean was saying. Each thing Sean listed Cry Macho as being about, I'm like, that's actually true. It kind of is about those things in a way that's also just so offhand. And also, I can't recall which critic pointed this out, but there are long stretches of the film, and it's not the first time

he's done this, in which there's just long stretches of Clint driving. Just on a journey. Maybe there's someone in the car. Maybe there's not. The Mule also featured long stretches of him driving.

And on the one hand, it's like, that's actually not terribly cinematic and a little bit dull to Chris's point. On the other hand, it's such a load-bearing metaphor for exactly what Clint is trying to say right now, which is like, I'm just still going. I'm just still on the move. I can't stop making these

movies because it's really all I know how to do to survive. It's fascinating. You know, it's funny, Sean, you actually said, like, I mean, you said to me yesterday that you were like, the scenes where no dialogue are actually quite beautiful. And you could, with the exception of maybe one or two scenes here or there in the movie, make Cry Macho as a silent film. I mean, it's pretty obvious. Like, this is a man. He's been given a task. He's driving south.

He finds the boy. He puts the boy in the truck. They start to drive around, you know? And that is just like a really obvious and very clearly told story i sometimes wonder whether or not it's the engagement with the eastwood mythos that gives him his like not his filmmaking reputation because it's not like i think of cruelly eastwood movies as being idea factories or incredibly verbose movies. But I've been really racking my brain over the last couple of days trying to think of

what makes a Clint Eastwood movie? What are the quintessential aesthetic qualities of Clint Eastwood movies? Adam, have you boiled that down in your head beyond the iconography and beyond the interrogation of the Eastwood myth? Like what are the things that make Eastwood movies, Eastwood movies, the way we might say that about a PTA movie or a Tarantino movie? Well, the thing about the two guys you just mentioned, Anderson and Tarantino, neither of whom are remotely Eastwoodian, you know, their models reside elsewhere in the States and overseas, you know, although when Eastwood gave

Tarantino the palm door, it was a bit of a passing of the torch maybe between his grudging canonization and the thing that came so fast, so soon and so easy to Tarantino, right. Which is, you know, Hey, American violence is profound. And Eastwood was like, man, I've been doing dirty Harry movies for years. They didn't say that about me, but, but you know, when you're, when you're asking what makes an Eastwood movie, I mean, I think that recently it's been a slowness and kind of, slowness isn't the right word, a sparsity that is often attributed to the idea of late style. A kind of sparsity that some people will look at and say, this is total mastery. And other people will say, this is one take and lunch, you know, and working with talented enough collaborators, especially usually in terms of actors that the working method works.

You know, I mean, I look at a movie like Gran Torino, which some people have like literally threatened my life over not liking very much. I've had some friends in conversations be like, you are an idiot for not thinking this is one of the greatest American movies. I'm like, I don't think that that's true. But you look at the young teen actors in that movie, or even at the guy in Cry Macho, and you're like, one take in lunch doesn't work as well for these guys as it does for Sean Penn. Yes. Sean Penn can win an Oscar that way.

These guys can't. But I would also say that in Eastwood, with a few exceptions, sometimes in his period pieces, he strains a bit with the production design. I don't really think movies like The Changeling or J. Edgar are particularly good by mid to late Eastwood standards. Some other people I know love them. But what I guess I would say is you rarely feel him straining. confidence in what he's doing is so beguiling. In a movie like 1517 to Paris, where you just are like, wow, you've conceptualized this, and now you are just executing it with no oversight.

No one's telling him what to do in that movie. And the weirdness that he cultivates, it's not the eccentricity of an Anderson or the idiosyncrasy of a Tarantino. It's like this strange kind of documentary quality he has where it's like, I guess he is just traveling and shooting these guys at the pace that he's observing them. And yeah, it's not a set of formal characteristics. It's not a sheen or a color scheme at the risk of practicing bad film criticism.

It is also kind of a vibe. On the other hand, we impart that vibe because nobody meets a Clint Eastwood movie anonymously. Nobody meets a Clint Eastwood movie anonymously. There's no process of discovery with Clint Eastwood. There is viewing. But man, do we all bring our stuff to his movies, which is almost why writing about them is pointless. Or not writing about them is pointless, but like evaluating them is pointless.

Because for the people who are bringing the undying Clint love to it, you're not going to tell them it's bad. And to the people who've made their mind up about him because of his politics or his ideology, to people who are, say, disciples of Pauline Kael, who hated him and who passed her hate of him onto her followers, they're never going to say that he's good, or they're never going to give him his due on certain things. He's a pretty intractable case i think do you think it boils down ultimately to those politics that are the kind of differentiating fat the dividing line because he is he is the rare still active divisive filmmaker i mean very few filmmakers have that kind of need i mean you know I've been tweeting and talking about on the show how we're going to do this episode. I've been looking forward to doing this episode. Really, I think since I saw Sully and thought,

wow, he's now entered another phase. Like this is another iteration of his career and very much capitalizing on the thing you just discussed there, Adam, which is when he is working with highly trained, deep-seated professional movie stars, those movies almost invariably are quality. They're good. They're watchable. And they're often successes. And you see that in Sully. You see that in The Mule. You see that in Richard Jewell with just watching Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates kind of go at it in a room. And he's consistently able to deliver at this advanced age but when you communicate hey we're going to celebrate this guy people will people will very quickly share the empty chair at the republican national convention photo with you and be like fuck off and die so is it just as politics is it the idea that he is this avatar of a fascistic way of um communicating

violence in our society like what is it specifically you think that makes us knee-jerk with him in one direction or the other? Well, I think that there's, to some extent, I was just talking about this on an NBA podcast, actually, when we were talking about the NBA Hall of Fame. And I was just like, you just make this assumption that people have the same relationship to the history of a sport or an art form that you do. And that people who are younger than you are like, Oh, I still am fluent with like rawhide all the way through dirty Harry,

all the way through his Oscar sort of autumn and into this late winter. And a lot of people might really only know him from it's halftime in America and mystic river and million dollar baby and they're like their relationship to him is more as like this guy that used to be famous and makes movies now that are kind of weird but sometimes good and i so i i think you have to have like make some allowances for the fact that i had to teach myself spaghetti westerns i mean that was that was something that was cool. And I was like, I want to be a part of that.

But that's not necessarily something that I think is like, I don't know if people are firing up for a few dollars more on like a Friday night for fun, the way they might rewatch 24-Hour Pranos. You know what I mean? So I think sometimes we make assumptions about what people's relationships. So that being being said maybe somebody's seen the the chair maybe they know he was like a mayor of one of the tonyest parts of california maybe they know he was a romney supporter whatever

it is maybe they know bits and pieces about his personal life which is checkered but like i i'm always it's always kind of surprising to find out. It's like, Oh yeah, you, you probably never saw a pale rider or like had no idea about that movie's sort of importance to his body of work. I don't know if any of the star directors, I'm trying not to make too hyperbolic a statement here, especially because I always try with Eastwood in my writing to be balanced. My various, you try to do two takes and go to lunch.

Two takes. Yeah. No, no, no. I, I, I overdo it,

but unfortunately this is the big picture. So hyperbole is the order of the day here, Adam post people like Charlie Chaplin. I don't know how many of the actor directors we're talking about who contain that kind of multitude where it's like, what are you in front of the camera and what are you behind it? Are, we're as genuinely and thoroughly popular

as Clint Eastwood. So he's not just an old movie star. He's popular enough that even for people who don't know him, whether it's because they hear a Gorillaz song called Clint Eastwood or because he comes up in lyrics to songs or whatever, there's residue there.

It's like Elvis, right? And then as a director, we're still talking about someone whose movies are mass distributed. I mean, if they're at festivals, they don't need to be. The festival wants him. He doesn't want the festival. He shows up on the Oscars and whatever else.

He's so popular in his way that he transcends what's even kind of popular now. He's not popular by these standards. And I love a line in The Mule where he's like, I've been texting my brains out. He's joking about how little internet era millennial currency he has, but he's not obscure to this audience. Whereas I don't think you could say that about Paul Newman or Robert Redford or Warren Beatty, some of these other people. We're dealing with a legacy of popularity that is above and beyond.

And then the political stuff is because for all his self-effacement and his not wanting to go into his personal life and how cryptic he makes his political comments, he throws himself into it. He doesn't have to narrate a Super Bowl commercial about halftime in America. He doesn't have to speak at the Republican convention. He didn't have to run for mayor, Tony Town of California or not. However much he wants to withhold or say, ah, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's a function of it. I'm not using this word negatively. I'm just using it objectively as a function of his narcissism. I mean, he exists in ego. He exists

to be out there and ego and narcissism can sometimes be indivisible from humility. Like I'm watching him in this film and he has the romance with a woman who by movie standards and even by the standards of the characters life is older. mean she's a grandmother she's not 91 years old no and she is one of two very attractive comely you know late middle-aged mexican women in this movie who throw themselves at clint the same way that he has those threesomes in the mule you know where the where the girls at the drug dealer mansion like i want to party with this guy you know and he plays a ladies man in that film hey and clint eastwood plays a ladies' man in that film. Hey, and Clint Eastwood is a ladies' man.

He's one of the handsomest people in the history of American movies. And his charisma, his sexual charisma, his power is very, very real. In other words, you try being Clint Eastwood and not have an ego. You try being Clint Eastwood and not interject yourself into the texture and fabric of American life. But that's why people can't leave that stuff alone. He's not a private political person. He's a public political person. And those politics drive some people, including me sometimes, nuts, even though they probably shouldn't. They probably shouldn't, I think. I think it's very difficult to navigate

specifically the political aspect because it feels like um he is getting in the fight and getting in the conversation in a similar kind of mild provocation that a lot of his films are and it's a little bit i'm i'm i'm ultimately disinterested in what his specific political party affiliation is or how he governed carmel in california um I don't really want to analyze that specifically, but because he's a filmmaker that has driven a significant amount of political introspection, I think, in American movies, I think it's worth at least acknowledging that he can't stay out of the fray, just like he can't not make films. He's consistently participating in the culture of our lives

in a way that very few people have been able to do across six decades. And his relationship to women and female stars is also very fraught. I certainly noticed the same thing you did, Adam. Chris and I were laughing a bit about that yesterday, that these very beautiful women who are decades younger than him, for I would say, borderline inexplicable reasons are like, I need you to have sex with me right now. I need this ranch hand. There is a specific scene in Cry Bacha where you're just like, am I tripping on LSD right now? Like, what is happening? And it's also, you know, I noted to Chris yesterday, that is almost the organizing narrative action of consecutive films in the early 70s.

Like a dozen of them. Yeah, if you look at Play Misty for Me or High Plains Drifter, I mean, these movies are basically set into motion by the idea that a woman desires Clint so deeply that they will go to grave action and then that will trigger a series of events that will give us a movie. And so he does, this is important to him to be seen this way, but also because he ultimately is seen this way in real life. And so you have this similar mirroring effect that we're talking about here, where when you're this famous for this long, and you're this talked about, and this understood, and this known, and this beloved, but also kind of a weird retiring man, as Clint Eastwood is, it creates this unbelievable friction with his screen persona and with his presence as a movie figure. So he's fascinating to discuss. Before we get into the

contours of his career starting out as a movie star, do you guys think that Cry Macho would be the right swan song for his career if he doesn't make another film? It's an appropriate capstone. I think that I would be curious to know whether or not he has, like, I can do one more that I'm not in. And if there's like a story he really wanted to tell. But the thing that Adam kind of touched on is that he is actually somebody who's pretty motivated by, he's stimulated. You know, he's thinking about like, oh yeah, you know what, this Changeling story is pretty interesting. Like There are scripts lying around at my agent's office that I'll check out, or there's this article, or Sully landed a plane in the river. I think

I'll make a movie about that. I don't know necessarily that for as much as he comments on his own quote-unquote character in in American life that he is necessarily thinking about things in terms of what will make an appropriate ending for my career. Because if he did, it would have been super appropriate for him to have ended it in 1992. Like we talked about at the beginning of the podcast with Unforgiven. I mean, this is a little reductive, but I'd say that Eastwood is a guy who doesn't have passion projects. He just has passion. Yeah. He's a thoroughly curious man, you know, and he has,

he has passions like passions for jazz and passions for aspects of history. And certainly for, you know, in the last four, four out of the five last four movies being about these men who've had heroism kind of thrust to them. He's obviously interested in the news cycle and the relationship between private media life i

mean you know but but unlike some of the other filmmakers who people might say is taking if not his mantle like a mantle of of big dick of tourism in the united states your tarantinos your anderson's even someone like katherine bigelow or sophia coppola they take a long time in between projects these things stew these things marinate they make films with a possessive attached to the title, M. Night Shyamalan's old, you know, whatever. But he saw it just works, you know, and he lets the praise and the myths or the epitaphs write themselves. He doesn't make, I mean, Unforgiven, maybe if you want to project onto it, probably when he was about to release that one in 1992, there must've been a little voice in his head being like, I really wonder what people are going to think of this. Cause this is really putting a lot of things on the table, you know?

But even though I think he has detail and care about what he makes, it's just about making it, getting it done. And then he's interested by something else, which is why whatever his last movie is, whether it's, it's crime macho or not, it's probably not going to be a self-consciously valedictory work. But when you get this old, everything feels valedictory. I mean, the Mule, we could have had this exact, literally, short of the fact that Cry Macho didn't exist, could have had this exact same discussion around the Mule, give or take a Richard Jewell and a pandemic. We could have had this when the Mule came out. And that's not a reason to not do it it just speaks to his constancy yeah the only

distinction I would say between this and the mule is that the mule seemed quite self consciously comic it felt very much like in often a comedy in fact when when the movie kind of reaches its pinnacle of you know Bradley Cooper's FBI agent kind of seizing upon the

figures in the film it was almost like it was secondary, I think, to a lot of the hijinks that that character was getting into. This movie is much more sort of emotionally direct about what he's trying to tell us. It's a movie that was 33 years in the making. This is the list of people who almost appeared in this movie over time. Clint, a number of times, was attached to it and then ultimately didn't make it. Robert Mitchum, Roy Scheider was going to make it, Burt Lancaster, Pierce Brosnan, and then Arnold Schwarzenegger was deemed to be the star of Crime Macho up to the moment when the scandal revealed around him having an affair outside of his marriage, I believe, with someone who worked in his home. And then they had to put the movie on the back burner. And so Clint waited 30 years

to make this movie. And so that also indicates a kind of closing of the curtain, I think. In Arnold's version, he was going to kill the kid. Tracking him down. I thought he was going to make it

a Last Action Hero 2 kind of sequel situation, you know, where he mentors a new kid with his movie stardom. No? Right. Yeah. But that was going to be the rooster. The funny thing about Clint is Clint was a late bloomer. Clint didn't become Clint Eastwood until he was 29 years old. He kicked around Hollywood in bit parts and playing an extra and working as a contract player in studios until he got the part of Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. And that is really what kind of kicked him off. But we think about some of these people, you know, you mentioned Elvis. Elvis was very young when he became famous.

A lot of the iconic figures of American memory got started with us. You know, the Beatles were incredibly young when they got started in Liverpool. These historic figures often feel like they're jet streamed into youth culture and then grow through youth culture. Clint Eastwood is kind of grouchy, grumpy, kind of that grimace that we know so well started at an older age than most of the time that we see, which also makes him kind of fascinating. It's like he's been old forever. And that's another

thing that i think is a part of his character is not necessarily wisdom but a kind of like i've had it up to here with this bullshit feeling that he tends to emit in a lot of his work it imbued him with like a little bit of like um like folklore right because i think i can't remember which producer was commenting on the fact that this is a guy who looks like he's done other jobs but besides acting you know like that he's worked on construction. And I think that, uh, I think Sandra Locke once mentioned that he would like to have you believe

that he's like fought in Korea, but he was like a lifeguard during the Korean war at a, at a, at an army fort. So it's like, he kind of allows this, you know, kind of air of like,

Oh, that's a guy who's really done some things chopped down some trees in his time and then he just did this sissy work of acting once it was once it was time to like kick his feet up a little bit but the rawhide thing is amazing because in some ways i feel like most of his career is a reaction to rawhide it's a reaction to the fact that they wouldn't let him direct rawhide it's a reaction to the fact that he didn't like the stories in rawhide that the writing got bad and that his character wasn't interesting to him and so most of what he does afterwards in a lot of ways is rooted in this

one time in his career where he didn't have total control yeah but what he was absolutely but he leveraged whatever that whatever the star persona in those spaghetti westerns was again this is what this is what happens when you're really, truly famous. You know, he, he leveraged that celebrity against very modest filmmaking ventures. I mean,

and we're talking about filmmaking at a different time and different registers of modesty. I mean, there weren't giant conglomerate intellectual properties to go strike out for in 1971 either, but he's a big enough star that he can make a small little movie like Play Misty for Me, right? That's going to get made because people will buy the ticket to see him in it, even if he's not playing the man with no name. It's like, go see him in something else.

And the fact that he directs that movie is sort of incidental to its popularity. And that's what you have in the first stretch of Eastwood as director, is movies where his name as a director is incidental really to whether the movie is seen by an audience or not. And it's not really catnip for critics yet because they're a little preoccupied with your Coppola's and your Scorsese's and your new Hollywood directors who he doesn't really fit with the same way he doesn't fit with certain movie stars. Because I think as Sean has pointed out, and I think it's a really good insight, in every way, he's kind of this weird tweener. He's been around forever and he doesn't belong to any one exact era. He just doesn't. He's kind of a peer of the 50s and 60s guys, except not

really. And he's coming of age in the 70s, but it's weird. You wouldn't put him in that easy rider, raging bull, easy rider category. No he reminds me more of like John Sturgis or something like that. But John Sturgis- Except globally famous. Yeah. And if John Sturgis was like, what if we made a movie about a DJ with a stalker?

You know, like it's just- Yeah, it's more idiosyncratic than that. That's the thing. You know, he's well known for having studied John Wayne and the films of John Ford. And I think in the same way that he's reacting to Rawhide, Chris, he's also reacting to that. But there are also these other kinds of movies that he's making, you know, Coogan's Bluff, which seems like it's going to be a Western

and then ultimately becomes this kind of urban crime drama. He makes Play Misty for me, which is, you know, kind of a precursor to the Glenn Close, Michael Douglas kind of erotic thriller, you know? he is seated in a lot of different kinds of genre, a lot of different kinds of psychological storytelling that a lot of those classical Western filmmakers

either didn't have interest in or were never even approaching. You know, you mentioned Hawks. Hawks is probably the closest because Hawks was so flexible and could work in any kind of genre and apply his formalism to it. But as far as movie stars go,

it's weird. I mean, he's not John Wayne. He's not Robert Mitchum or Kirk Douglas. He's not Paul Newman or Robert Redford or Jack Nicholson or De Niro or Dustin Hoffman. He doesn't really, he doesn't have a lot of comps.

You know, you can look at say Richard Dreyfuss and Dustin Hoffman and say, you know, there's kind of something similar there. There's, there's, there's a similarity to the performance style and to the era and the kind of, you know, protagonists that they portrayed in films. You could say the same about Kirk Douglas and Burt

Lancaster. They appeared in films together. They had a kind of a likeness to them. Clint is Clint. He is solely individual. And that's part of what makes him so fascinating. And him choosing to consistently comment on that individuality is also what makes him a fascinating subject as a star and director. These are two sides of the machismo coin, right? The alpha male and the super nerd. I mean, Woody Allen is the kind of guy who would joke about, you know, going to see Dirty Harry and make a joke about Dirty Harry. And it's interesting because Allen never did a Western. That's like the one genre he left alone. But they both have this way of leveraging the incredible fame they have as these figureheads and as these famous faces and these personas. And then, you know, leveraging that against doing the kind of work they want to do, which sometimes doesn't have much to do with the persona. I mean, with Eastwood, it, it sometimes does and sometimes it doesn't. And with Alan, it sometimes does and sometimes it doesn't.

But I think of both of them who kind of bloomed as icons and who signed their forever checks in the seventies, right? That was when the relationship started. It was like, you guys can all make a movie every year. And, you know, they, Alan got kind of Academy acceptance and Eastwood sort of had blockbuster acceptance, but it's also true that Eastwood as a leading man dries up and becomes more selective aside from the Dirty Harry movies after the 70s. I mean, the Clint in the eighties, there's a few movies where Clint Eastwood appears, you know, cause he's in it and cause he's popular, but he really, at that point is just, I want to make a movie every year. And even the other actor I mean, in the 80s, there's a few movies where Clint Eastwood appears, you know, because he's in it and because he's popular. But he really, at that point, is just, I want to make a movie every year. And even the other actor directors who we might compare him to, nobody did that.

You know? I mean, Warren Beatty makes movies every four or five years because he wants them to all be big. Eastwood's just like, leave me alone. Make a movie every 18 months. That's not a new phenomenon. That has always been there. Yeah, Beatty, I feel like, often is trying to subvert his persona whereas Clint is like getting closer and closer with a magnifying glass on who he is and what he represents you know it's it's an interesting contrast in the way that they approach those things I mean he also represents like all of these

archetypes across movie history he obviously is in part when he starts making these movies with Leone, during basically his summers off between Rawhide, travels to Italy and starts making the Man With No Name trilogy and forges really the anti-hero. Chris, I heard you and Bill talking on the Rewatchables recently about the origins of the anti-hero.

It might have been on the Fight Club conversation you were having. And all I could think of was, actually, it starts with Clint. You know, there are... It's Benko! Yes, yeah. There are noir film stars and Bogart and a handful of people who do bad things,

but also we root for them throughout movie history. Jimmy Cagney is like this too. But specifically, the Man with No Name trilogy, I think essentially confirms the anti-hero era. His behavior in that movie is so, so violent and so indiscriminate. You know what I mean? I mean, there is like a certain moral component

to a lot of the violence he doles out, but I was watching For a Few Dollars More last night, which is my favorite of those. And it's just, it's wild. He just like walks in and just guns down a dude playing poker. And it's like, that is, I think I felt like that was a pretty

shocking thing to see at that time. And also just the fact that there was no rhyme or reason to it because the whole thing of the character was like, you have no idea who this guy is. You have no idea what his name is or what his background is or is he a ghost

or is he an avenging angel or whatever it is. And he obviously did variations on that character throughout the 70s and into the mid-80s. Well, really up until Under Given. The other thing that he does is he's one of the signature cops in movie history.

I mean, the idea of justice is kind of intertwined in a lot of the first 30 years of his film roles, less so I think in the later stages when it'd be difficult to imagine someone his age kind of meting out justice. But Dirty Harry, obviously, but even Tightrope and films like that, when it'd be difficult to imagine someone his age kind of meting out justice. But Dirty Harry, obviously, but even Tightrope and films like that, these complex portrayals of seemingly very angry men who are stuck in systems that don't fully understand how to carry out the weight of moral rectitude. And he seems kind of obsessed by this.

He doesn't write these movies. He's finding scripts or he's, as you guys are saying, reading novels or looking at inspiration in the news. And yet he gravitates towards kind of a godlike power in a lot of these movies, which I find so interesting. Same thing with his work as a soldier you know it's this the density the of the weight of having to take a life and then also feeling like you are justified in taking that life is like a theme that comes up over and over again in all of his movies you can i mean we'll talk about it later because we have our lists or whatever but you cannot overstate the power of dirty harry you know that's not a throwaway movie it's not one throwaway movie. It's not one of its sequels.

It's not one of its parodies. It's not one of its ripoffs. It's not McGarnacle from The Simpsons. I mean, it's big enough to inspire all those things and to contain them. But that was an unbelievably popular, potent, zeitgeist-biting kind of movie. Made with otherworldly proficiency and skill by don siegel otherworldly and organized around eastwood's star persona in a way where again this is why the guy is famous for the rest of his life because he embodies not contradiction in that movie but like this

incredible numbness i've always thought it's amazing that the character in zodiac that ruffalo plays is based um or two like both both Bullet and Dirty Harry were based on him. And Bullet, Steve McQueen, is so self-doubting and scared and worried that all this exposure to violence is making him numb. And this is a tragic thing for him. And in Dirty Harry, it's just like totally, totally internalized. This numbness. It's not even anger. I mean, if anything anything it's anger at

the people who don't let him rock and roll you know and uh that uh that people said it was a non-performance or a blank performance it's an incredible performance it's an in in dirty harry i think as much as man with no name it solidifies clint as a kind of anti-hero except i don't know if the movie has the same ambivalence about him that that maybe it it should and by the time of the sequels it becomes for people to just cheer you know i mean dirty harry becomes a franchise and that's i think where a lot of the critical impatience and scorn that he underwent kind of comes from because people are like you know what this is really kind of tiresome you are a version of the sequel itis that's wrecking other parts of of of hollywood like he was not really those those did not help him get taken seriously in the period that he was churning them out even though tightrope and impact are really interesting

really interesting movies yeah i think i i have a lot of appreciation for the second and the third uh dirty harry films which i'll you know probably talk about when we get to my list but and and there's a reason for that and it speaks to i think a lot of the conversation we already had about him and his reflection on his own persona but okay so let's just say for the sake of conversation there are six or seven kind of signature archetypes right there's the the lone gunman who comes to town there's the the cop seeking a kind of justice there's the stoic soldier. There's the con man, the crook, the kind of the ne'er-do-well.

There's the cranky old man, which we're very familiar with these days. And there's the kind of nobleman of those types. Which Clint do you guys like the most? Chris, what about you? I'm still a cowboy at heart. I actually like different versions of all of these movies, but for the most part, I think that he's one of the three or four best Western filmmakers and one of the two or three best Western actors.

Adam, what about you? I mean, again, this will come up in our lists, but when I think about the on-screen Eastwoods who I like the most, it's ones, and I'm not trying to be contrary, but they kind of slip in between the seams. I love his performances, and they're all grouped together in the mid-90s. I love Clint where he's still kind of witty and playful and physically up to it, but there's this undercurrent of ruefulness and wisdom regardless of genre. I group things like In the Line of fire with bridges of Madison County and absolute power, like it does in perfect world.

Like it seems hard to reconcile those movies because they're all very different, but that's the Eastwood that I kind of came of age in real time watching. Cause that's when I was a teenager. So like old enough to belong to an earlier era, still somewhat potent in this one you know that there's sort of gas in you know gas in the tank and especially in the line of fire there's a little bit of self-deprecation that goes a long way same with unforgiven where he

you know films himself falling off a horse which rhymes very much with the moment in cry macho which i wish had maybe been a bit better edited or directed, but it is there where he at 91 is on a horse. Well, yes. Yes, but not riding the horse, I would say. When they cut away, it's quite clearly not Clint. But as a metaphor about getting back on the horse

or staying on the horse or riding the horse, it's a poem. I mean, Unforgiven, when he falls off of it, there's a lot in there about, you know, know riding the horse it's it's potent i mean unforgiven when he falls off of it there's a lot in there yeah about you know does this guy still have it i like that mid-90s eastwood and i particularly love him as a master of disguise and absolute power where laura lindy's like he's a ghost he'll disappear you'll never see him if he doesn't want you to and then it just cuts to quentin a fake mustache and just like this is great. His sense of humor is quite underrated.

I really like all those 90s movies too. I think we'll talk about them on our lists. But you're right. That's a little bit like the best music of all time is the music that was released when I was 13. I had a very hard time getting away from that era. When did you guys start digging into

the Leone films or the Don Siegel movies? Was it going to film school was it like did did seeing in the line of fire get you interested in the in the clint story yeah probably i mean i can't cause and effect trace it like i can with certain filmmakers who frankly i like more or mean more to me personally but you know once you start watching the westerns it's pretty hard to stop because they're super great and and fun and i definitely remember going and renting some of the the 80s cop movies you know because it's just something you watch when you're a a teenage boy but i mean i didn't really go into the deeper cuts until later when you feel like this is part of your

film education and part of the you know the the the, the, the, the tour protocol, you know, you got to find a copy of Bronco Billy. You got to watch the Iger sanction. You know, what does play Misty for me mean? I should find out though. I will say about play Misty for me.

It's the only movie where the two characters have the same first names as my parents, David and Evelyn, which is why it's sort of a beloved movie in our, in our household. But the thing too, is there is a lot to catch up with because I don't have the exact number in front of me.

So I don't want to embarrass myself by getting it wrong, but we're talking about north of 40 features here or something like that. It's in that neighborhood. So it's a lot to go back through. If you choose to want to, if you want to know it all, you got to work for it. I mean, he's been the center central figure in front of the camera in 50 movies.

And that, I mean, that's, there are very few people who are not a part of the like churning thirties and forties film system that can say that who are still alive. And the other thing too, you, you, you made me think of this when you mentioned the Iger sanction, just like play Misty for me has shades of films like fatal attraction. You know, that was cliffhanger before cliffhanger. There are so many movies that Clint made before other people made other versions of those movies. And that's the other thing that's so fun. I think when you get into that second tier of exploration, when you go hunting for the copy of Pink Cadillac, or you go looking for the Enforcer, there is something to glean about how Hollywood filmmakers and international filmmakers just basically pulled apart not just his persona, but the kinds of movies he was making and regurgitated them.

And he can be blamed maybe for franchise growth and fatigue with the Dirty Harry movies. He's as responsible for that as anybody because of his ability to kind of continuously comment on this persona that he's drawing from. Except for the things he never got into, right? There are certain things that happened in 80s American cinema that didn't happen to Clint. There are some things that happened because of him, I would say, but they didn't happen to him. Special effects didn't happen to him. Non-human subject.

I was like, are you talking about like Repo Man? Like, what do you mean? No, what I mean is that we're talking about the shadow he casts in the 70s. And because of Dirty Harry, there are a lot of movies that got made that might not otherwise have existed or existed in the form they did

because of Dirty Harry. I'd say that about the Spaghetti Westerns too. But Clint, in the early 80s, who's not yet an old, old man, those other things didn't happen to him. Special effects movies didn't happen to him. other things didn't happen to him special effects movies didn't happen to him spielberg didn't happen to him they would work together later and become friends and peers but he escaped the tractor people like the coens or spike lee or john sales or allison andrews were doing he wasn't

even reacting against obviously had like conflict with spike lee at various points in his career and i would i you know i don't i can't i wouldn't be able to 100 say this with confidence but you never hear tarantino really refer to eastwood he refers to leone you know what i mean like he doesn't ever say oh you know what's great is Josie Wales or High Plains Drifter. He's like, it's the specific... But those movies are so influential on his films. I mean,

Josie Wales is so influential on anybody who makes a shoot-em-up because it's so directly violent and intensive that you can't deny him. I would just say that a lot of the things that, depending on what word you want to use, and we'll be careful using words like ruin, we don't want everyone to think that we hate Marvel or whatever else,

but whatever happened to American movies didn't happen to Clint. He resisted it without even putting up a fuss. He's just like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make a Charlie Parker movie now. I'm going to make a movie about John Houston now. I'm going off into my corner and you're still going to come see it because I'm me. The one thing that he does that puts him vaguely in that category is he has no interest in science fiction or fantasy or comic books. Completely disinterested. He is deeply interested in the spiritual paranormal. The idea of ghosts is in so many of his movies.

High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, Hereafter. In every decade, he makes a movie that is about this ghostly figure who enters into a world. And that is, you know, that's supernatural. That is, but he is not relying on exactly what you're saying. He's not using ILM

to create these films. He's making them feel corporeal and real and out in the space. But that sensation of something beyond physical life is there. It's just he doesn't seem very interested in using

the tools, like you're saying, Adam, of modern Hollywood to explore those stories. Or when he uses them, he uses them in a kind of very invisible way. He uses it for his period pieces. He uses it for his war films. There was a period where the lighting in Eastwood and the lighting in Spielberg in the 2000s start looking the same.

It's a certain sheen and a certain period where they almost become indivisible filmmakers from each other. I mean, Spielberg's Invictus wouldn't be exactly the same as eastwood's but you can have a conversation about invictus and lincoln in a way that you could not have a conversation about et and height and pale rider you know i mean they they kind of come a little closer together in their latest period than they were when they and then spielberg starts producing some of eastwood's movies at a certain point yeah and i'm sure they both have a lot to talk about because Eastwood has more as star than director maybe and Spielberg as director more than anyone ever.

Imagine being those guys. That's a conversation they can have. Hey, you're Steven Spielberg and I'm Quinn Eastwood. Who else are we supposed to talk to? Let's talk amongst ourselves. According to Spike, Spielberg is the person who kind of brok the the eastwood lead truce in some ways eastwood lead truce yeah but i find i find it fascinating how the bigger trends of the 80s and early 90s don't happen to clint but he doesn't go away either he is um he's able to consistently produce in the face of the changing industry i i think even of robert redford showing up in Avengers movies, and I'm like, even Redford was like, I can't stay away from this stuff. Clint never did it. He never signed up. Okay, let's do our list because we're getting on in

years ourselves. Number five, favorite Clint Eastwood film. Now, we are accounting for both films that Clint has directed and films that he has starred in. Adam, you've got a barn burner at number five. I'm going to let you make your case. We're going to go old school, clear out for Adam. You have the whole shot clock. I don't truly believe this,

but I believe it enough to make you guys talk about this movie because I can never not think about it, which is 1517 to Paris, which has become a bit of a film Twitter rallying point and a bit of a meme because of the scene where the guys just ordered gelato and which is in some ways the least effective of the star quadrilogy because American sniper, whatever else you say about it.

And I don't like it. That's a great performance by Bradley Cooper. Sully has Tom Hanks as the conscience of America, which is typecasting. Paul Walter Hauser is incredible in Richard Jewell, which is the only Eastwood movie so far I've actually reviewed for Ringer. And I tried to give a due to his performance because it's amazing. 1570 in Paris doesn't have actors in it. It has non-actors. So it's a real test of the one-take-and-lunch style. Plus, they're playing themselves in a way that's not fully successful, but then who am I to judge? Because they are playing themselves,

recreating things that happened to them. So if I say none of this feels plausible, I think the joke's on me. It's like a Reddit am-I-the-asshole thread. It's like, am I the asshole for thinking that these guys playing themselves, doing things they did in the places that they did them, aren't convincing? That can't be it. It's got to be me. That movie is so interesting. It's like something that they did in the places that they did them aren't convincing that can't be it it's got to be me that movie is so interesting it's like something that they did in the 40s like an

audie murphy movie you know it's like war hero plays himself i mean it's not bradley cooper as chris kyle it's these guys as those guys and then there's that scene at the end where they're getting their medals and they're in it but they you know like the leader of france is an actor because they couldn't get him back but everything else is the real busy he's busy you know making free guy free guy you know but they but they but they but they but they they got everyone except you know the one pinning the medals on their chest and the way that the docu fictional style completely disappears in the train and it becomes like a really proficient action movie you know that is the weirdest damn movie and i saw it with a friend who does not like quinn eastwood and she was mad at me for taking her to which also someone who's never gonna listen to this podcast but

afterwards we were having coffee she's just like have you ever seen a weirder movie than that have you ever seen a weirder movie than that and i'm like i can't remember the last time and so in some ways i want to give due to this late politically contentious and also by a younger generation of mostly male critics like obsessively deeply beloved clint the clint stands the god clint side of this social media sphere we inhabit and i find the fact that 1517 to par seems to to bring those guys out there's something in it the strangeness and the weirdness of it is is is is powerful and I have re-watched it and I have not done that for any of the other three or four Eastwood movies around it so you know like is it actually like better than I don't know you know the good the bad and the ugly no of course not but it's on it's on my list um this

this is quite a flex i'll be honest with you um i'm not a fan of this movie i've said that on this podcast before i i don't think it ultimately works i think it's a very cool experiment and i think the audie murphy comparison is apt that seems to be what he's going for very specifically sometimes though men are not made to be put in front of the camera and these three men i just did not think i had a hard time hanging with them sean we're beyond we're beyond works here you're right works is too weak a word for 15 17 to parents we're in the hereafter i do not like this movie but i will die protecting adam's right to put it in the top five lists uh i will say when sully came out and i mentioned that that was when I had a little bit of a

reawakening with Clint, I thought he was in a pretty big down moment. The sort of Invictus here after J. Edgar, Jersey Boys, a lot of movies that I just didn't think worked very well. Sully came out. It's very traditional, and I think you're right that there's typecasting going on there. But I thought a very effective and engaging movie that I liked seeing felt like a mainstream kind of a movie that we were losing. And then 1517 came out and I was like, oh, I was wrong. We lost it again. And he has since rebuilt my love for him

with The Mule and Richard Jewell and Cry Macho. But as Chris said, you are not only entitled, but you are empowered to place films like that on the list on this show, Adam. CR, another movie that you're going to pick at number five

that I believe is also on Adam's list. So why don't we have this conversation right now? I love this movie as well. Yeah. Uh, perfect world, uh, which I think is a real testament to him, uh, splitting that actor director role. So he's quite good as the, as the Texas Ranger chasing down Kevin Costner's on the run convict. That's basically cry macho.

Uh, again, it's about a guy sort of living out his last days by trying to like learn from yet also bestow lessons onto a child you know i like the governor he and i go quail hunting at least once a year but he knows and i know that when lose your draw this is my shit you understand that oh yeah i got that uh this movie came out right after Unforgiven. And I remember just kind of like, the idea of trying to follow up Unforgiven was like a tremendously difficult concept to me. You know, even as a kid watching it, Unforgiven was probably like my favorite movie,

you know, my first favorite movie in a lot of ways. And then I remember just being so deeply moved by this movie, partially because it was so unlike then I remember just being so deeply moved by this movie, partially because it was so unlike Unforgiven in so many ways, because it went away from the places that you would go if you thought, oh, I'm seeing the next film from the guy who made Unforgiven. So it really taught me how to challenge my expectations, I guess. And I would also just say that we've talked a couple of times about Eastwood's facility with actors who are

already really good at what they're doing. This is my favorite Costner performance, I think. Yeah, I mean, this is sort of Costner cresting the hill as the great American, white American movie star of the early 90s, right?

Field of Dreams and JFK and The Bodyguard, these movies are of variable quality, but the star persona is kind of undeniable. And it's such a pure part for him too, because he's really good at projecting kind of like wisdom and moral authority, which he has in this movie until he doesn't. And the extent to which he loses that late in the film,

that the Butch character kind of comes apart is pretty heroic acting, I think, by Costner. I'll also say just quickly that it's got to be the best movie that ends dramatically with a character getting like kneed in the balls as a comeuppance for what they do. And again, it's like the crowd pleasing part of Clint is indivisible from sometimes the more refined sensibilities, but there's stuff in perfect world in the FBI truck with, you know, Clint and Laura Dern and Bradley Whitford. That's, you know, it's not a question of being good or bad.

It's broad, you know, it's broad. It's audience friendly, like almost to a fault, but you know, again, it's,

it's, it's, it's part of the poetry of, of the movie. And some of the critics who I really admire think that, you admire think that that's really one of the best Eastwood movies. When you get down to cases, this is one of the best made movies that he has. I wouldn't disagree. I agree with you.

I love it. And it did have that I was 13 when I first saw this feeling. And this was, as I recall, a frequent HBO rerun. If you had HBO growing up, you could catch this at any given time. But I will say quite a few of his movies, especially from this era on, are available on HBO Max. And it's kind of awesome to be able to dial up any Clint Eastwood movie from Unforgiven on.

I'm not sure when the Warner's agreement starts with him, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, a huge swath of them are available. He does have like a 10 movie run with Universal, but he's made almost all of his movies with Warner Brothers. My number five officially is High Plains Drifter, but I want to talk about High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider together. High Plains Drifter comes right in the middle of what I think is probably his best period of films, that sort of early to mid seventies time, which, you know, effectively kicks off

with him directing play misty for me and then in the same year appearing as harry callahan and dirty harry and then he goes on to make a handful of westerns consecutively one of which is high planes drifter in which he just plays the stranger a man who comes to town and essentially seeks vengeance on on villainous figures in the town on behalf of the townspeople. And the way that he does so is by dishing out extraordinarily orchestrated

violence on all of these people. And on the one hand, this is a fairly rote movie since we've seen a lot of movies like this. On the other hand, it invented a lot of this kind of filmmaking and he returns to this ghostly persona over and over again. The thing I like about it is it's the first film that Clint has directed where you can see a person who is fascinated by the sort of mega image. There's a sequence near the end of this movie in which the town essentially paints the entire town red literally in an attempt to kind of draw out the villains of the film and create this final showdown. And it is one of

the coolest things you could ever see in a movie. It's this amazing, visually striking image that shows that Clint is trying to do something that is a little bit bigger than just iterate on his rawhide persona, that he's fascinated by the motifs of movie making and and capitalizing on everything that's come before him and it's also just you know in very dumbed down terms just like a badass action movie in which clint shoots the bad guys and so it gives you both of those sensations it gives you the spiritual but it also gives you the pure action movie star thing that happens in the aftermath of dirty harrier that Adam was talking about. So a great movie, I think one of his best directed films. And Pale Rider, which comes in the mid 80s, which Chris mentioned earlier, is an unofficial kind of sequel to this movie in which a very

similar figure comes to a very similar kind of town, in this case, a gold mining town in the late 1800s and plays, I guess a priest he's identified as a preacher. He's a priest, but like Michael Moriarty plays like a cuck minor. Who's like the girl he really likes really is into Clint Eastwood. Once again, a woman loves Clint Eastwood in that film. But he,

you know, he goes back and forth to this kind of this ghostly visage over and over again but he um it's those are both beautiful movies and they're paired together you should watch them together writers i think bruce certes shot that and is a gorgeous like kind of mccabe and mrs miller-esque kind of portrait of like a copper plated west it's all mud all mist all scott like gray skies it's it's beautiful to look at so adam your number four was a perfect world so why don't we go to chris's number four what do you got car so i tried to have a mix of my top five of films that clint directed and films that he simply acted in

i find actually to i quite enjoy clint used to put in movies that other people direct i do find him to be like a very very very enjoyable screen presence, obviously, but like who's malleable and, you know, and is able to work in other ways. And so I really love Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which is a film that he made with Michael Cimino. It's co-stars Jeff Bridges and is this kind of like, I would almost say that this is the closest thing

that Clint Eastwood would ever be in that you could say like was kind of Maliki. I would say it's just a really wondrous, kind of observant, kind of comic crime caper about Clint Eastwood's character as an expert bank robber posing as a preacher, again. And it takes place in the Great Plains, more than the American West, but is utterly gorgeous movie to look at. It also features Jeffrey Lewis and George Kennedy and is just a really, really, really great example of the kind of genre movies that were coming out of like the new Hollywood at that time. So I would highly recommend this. And it's a really, really great performance. And of all of the kind of old Clint with young whippersnapper foil, Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges is about as good as it gets. Oscar nominated for his work in this movie, Jeff Bridges.

Great, great movie. If you haven't seen it, it was recently reissued on Blu-ray. You should track that down. I believe it is available on HBO Max right now, is it not? It is, yeah. Okay, that's a great one. So my number four, I kind of want to talk in tandem with your number two, Adam, if you're interested in kind of moving it up quickly, because we've mentioned Don Siegel a couple of times. Really, I think both a signature collaborator and a mentor in a big way

for Eastwood, somebody who he really looked up to, who I think helped him unlock his star persona, who taught him about the mechanics and the efficiency of action filmmaking. My number four is Escape from Alcatraz, which I think is not unlike Cry Macho, very well could be a silent film and feels as indebted to Bresson as it does to American prison movies, American prison movies, but is also just the pinnacle of lean, efficient movie star charisma and propulsive storytelling. What you see on the label is what you get in the movie. It is a movie about escaping from Alcatraz, the most locked down prison in the world. And it's captivating. And Clint probably has fewer than a hundred lines of dialogue in the whole movie, but he captivating. And Clint probably has fewer than 100 lines of dialogue

in the whole movie. But he's at the center of every frame and he is at the center of every piece of action. And Siegel directs it. Siegel, you know, terrific filmmaker. I'll let Adam talk about him a little bit more in depth. But I agree with you, Chris. I love watching Clint in movies, even if he hasn't directed them. And even if it's not even necessarily a riff on his persona, you know, this is a movie about a man who's locked down and is trying to get free. And that's really ultimately all that the story is about. It's about what prison does to people, how they form communities, but ultimately that they all just want to get out and be free. So Escape from Alcatraz, one of the most honestly rewatchable and enjoyable, soothing action movies ever made.

Adam, what are your number two pairings? Well, it just got me thinking that most of Eastwood's movies are titled for what they're about. There's not a lot of metaphorical titles in there. 1517 to Paris is about the 1517 to Paris, Richard Jewell, and so on. No space for metaphor in Clint's universe. It's amazing to me, my number two, and you saw me call an audible there in the doc, so you responded to that very nicely. I mean, I had Dirty Harry there, and I was like,

well, how can you also not have The Beguiled, especially since I wrote about it for Ringer? And those aren't just two movies directed by Don Siegel. They're directed by Don Siegel in the same year. I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But Ian, this is a.44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world,

and would blow your head clean off. You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk? And if Dirty Harry is all about Eastwood's potency, as exemplified by that big gun you know that he points at everybody do you feel lucky uh you know make my day gun i mean the beguiled is about him being castrated you know he's sort of systematically splayed out cut up his his his legs

cut off you know it's a man in a hot house of women and again the narcissism of every woman in the civil war era wants to jump clint which fair enough, gets leveraged against his humiliation, his complete humiliation and comeuppance and defeat. I mean, it's a movie where he really never kind of has the upper hand. And the whole film in The Beguiled is kind of the spectacle of his you know of his abasement and that's why when coppola remade it she sophia coppola remakes the beguiled with a lot of smarts and a lot of hindsight and a lot of skill and a clear subversive agenda and colin farrell's a great actor in some ways a more resourceful actor than eastwood but it doesn't work it only works if it's clint on the table you know even before it's like late clint in 1971, a movie where Dirty Harry gets taken apart and killed by a bunch of women is pretty amazing. Even as a pairing with Play Misty for me in the same year, there's also a woman who wants to cut Clint Eastwood up.

And in terms of Segal's filmmaking, the guy is just a pro. There's a reason that Eastwood co-dedicated Unforgiven to him and Sergio Leone. Segal is simple where Leone is florid. Segal is left to right where Leone is all about detours and lungers and whatever else. But he taught Quint a lot. He used him as a star, but as well as any filmmaker did. And while I'm pretty sure everyone listening to this podcast has seen Dirty Harry, if you haven't seen The Beguiled, I don't know what service it's on, but it's amazing. And you should watch it now.

Great film. I like the Coppola remake as well, actually. It's a little bit of a subversion of the story, but not too much. Chris, why don't you give us your number three, which is also in the 90s canon? Yeah. And it's probably, I mean, along with Unforgiven, my real introduction to Clint Eastwood was in The Line of Fire, which is directed by Wolfgang Peterson, and I think is the best acting Eastwood's ever done. I know maybe it's kind of silly, and maybe I'm giving Malkovich way too much credit in my mind, but when I last watched this movie, I was rather blown away by the gentleness of Eastwood's performance. This is a broken down Secret Service agent who failed to protect John F. Kennedy Jr. when he was assassinated and has sort of been living with those ghosts, speaking of a theme that of this character of eastwood's character just playing piano or

recounting what it was like the day that kennedy was killed um that are among the best performances he's given and i would also say that the romance between him and renee russo in this movie is far more i don't know i wouldn't say appropriate, but like charming, I guess, and has like some real kind of screwball comedy aspects to it, as opposed to, man, these chicks just want me, you know, like it's so hard being like desired by every woman on the frontier. It is actually just like a sort of amusing workplace romance. And then the scenes, mostly on the phone between Eastwood and Malkovich are absolutely flammable.

Frank, you of all people, I want you to understand. Why should I understand? Because we both used to think that this country was a very special place. You don't know what I used to think. Oh, but you know about me?

Do you have any idea what I've done for God and country? Some pretty fucking horrible things they're so good so uh i would i would say that and you know his his sort of account of making in the line of fire and just not understanding why there was so much yelling on the set and everybody was doing things differently i don't i don't think he made and this may have been the last movie he ever made for another person i'm not sure sure where he just performed it that he didn't direct. I believe you're forgetting the trouble with the curve, Chris.

That's right. I forgot the trouble with the curve. Robert Lorenz's film? Yeah. But yeah, In the Line of Fire. I just think it's a great, great performance by him. Classic movie where Clint is basically setting picks for the supporting actor who is really going for it. And Malkovich is

so captivating. That president is coming home from California in a box. He's so great. Clint has only been nominated for two Acting Academy Awards. He's never won. He was nominated for Unforgiven. I think he was also nominated for Million Dollar Baby. But he's not really thought of that way as an acting powerhouse. You know, he's thought of as a presence. He's thought of more like McQueen than he is like Dustin Hoffman. And so, but I think you're right. I think this is a great example of him as a great actor.

Okay, my number three, we don't have to belabor it. It's the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is an opportunity, Chris, for you to talk about your number two as well, since it's also a Leone film. A few dollars more. I mean, I honestly take your pick. I prefer those two to A Fistful of Dollars, which is still awesome. But let me tell you something. If you can wrap your head around the dubbing, nothing else around about these movies has aged a second. They are just sicko

fucking filmmaking. Yeah, they're just total masterpieces. I don't have an interesting insight into them that most people have not shared over the last 60 years or so i did re-watch all three in the early stages of the pandemic and they were they were a warm bath those were the rope around their neck and the people who have the job of doing the cutting listen the neck at the end of the rope is mine i run the risks so the next time I want more than half you may run the risks my friend but I do the cutting

reminded me of a time when I was 19 and felt like I could still discover something new and feel alive I honestly went for a few dollars more just because of Kinski Kinski is great in that one Adam you're you in on the men with no name trilogy how can one not be

right i mean it's almost uh that they they almost exist not outside of or above criticism because they're endlessly deconstructible in terms of the moment and the influences that went into making them in the production circumstances and how they migrated like these are really really important movies but you're very hard pressed to find someone who watched those watches those. It goes, nah, one of my favorite insights.

And if you do, you could, and if you do, you got to say, what's wrong with you? Yes. Yes. Uh,

one of my favorite insights, Clint is sparing in his insights about the filmmaking experiences, but he, when he started to make those films with Leone, he said to the filmmaker, you have to shoot closeupsups. I come from the world of television. We thrive on close-ups. And Leone thought about it and said, okay, I'm not only going to close up, I'm going to close up as close as I can get, which is where you get those iconic shots of the eyes and the eyes kind of moving back and forth and back and forth in the showdown sequences and these kind of triumvirate moments in the movie. And it's a small choice. It's not a big choice, but it's one that becomes like burned into the history of, of world cinema. Those movies are also just a lot of fun. So if you haven't seen them, check them out. Slightly a different kind of a film for number three for you, Adam, what's your number three?

My number three is the Bridges of Madison County. And I'm going to keep this very short. This is a question I ask both of you, anyone who's listening, which is, are you made of stone? Are you made of stone? Can you not just see Clint looking at Meryl, looking at Bridges, looking at Meryl again and not say... Just snapping some pics, man. Just snapping some pictures.

I think that it is an extraordinary act of transubstantiation from a pretty acknowledgedly lousy book into a really deceptively poetic and beautiful movie. It's actually one of the movies that as an Eastwood skeptic, and I have been sitting here

talking with you guys about him for an hour or so as a somewhat skeptic or as an Eastwood ambivalent, I know a lot about him without loving him. You're not a power user of Eastwood Emperor King Reddit? No. But you know what? That's one of the movies that convinces me and I would hope would sort of convince others because that's a movie made by somebody with a shameless popular instinct like that knows no shame but that realizes that poetry and beauty and love can also be somewhat shameless there's more accomplished and artistic movies on this list except not really because a gorgeous movie and it's one of the movies that not to open

a whole other can of worms one of the movies where I think Meryl Streep is actually good instead of good in quotes. I think she's really good in Bridges of Madison County. I think they're beautiful together. And I like it a lot. This movie is great. I think we could slide Mystic River into this conversation by just being like,

I also still really like Mystic River a lot. And at the time, I thought Mystic River was mind-blowing. And he was the awards guy for a minute there. He was the awards season maestro. Yeah. Another example of him playing opposite someone who was going for it and getting a lot of the accolades. But I love that sequence in Bridges of Madison County where Clint goes and picks flowers for her. And he comes up on the bridge and he gives her the flowers and she laughs at him because he's just picked poisonous flowers and she kind of like she bursts and he bursts and there's like a moment of joy that you don't usually see from clint eastwood in this movie that is very special um okay moving quickly through the final stages of our list i picked magnum force for number two i just want to say

i think it's actually fascinating to watch him be consistently self-reflexive in his movies. Magnum Force is the sequel to Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry is, of course, the more iconic and probably superior movie. But Magnum Force is when the robot becomes sentient and he's making a movie about police brutality after the outcry about Dirty Harry and the concept of police brutality and vigilante justice, Clint reads the trades. He knows what

the conversation is. And Magnum Force is a brilliantly made action movie made by a fairly unheralded director named Ted Post. Is it like Deadpool about Pauline Kael?

Absolutely. The guy, he is online but not online. Yeah. And, you know, features like a series of rogue cops played by Robert Urich and Tim Matheson and a couple of other very memorable figures.

But it also features Clint in this crisis of confidence about what it means to be a police officer and what it means to be loyal to the badge versus being loyal to himself. Really good action movie if you have not seen it. So that's all of our five through twos. Let's just save a couple of minutes for our number one. We share a number one here, as we often do when we talk about Clint, because this is simply

one of the greatest films ever made. Chris, what is our number one? It's Unforgiven. I'm happy that we all had the number one together, that we had a unanimous choice. I almost picked The Rookie. It was close. I almost picked the rookie. It was close.

I got to say, I rewatched it again last night. Save it for the Charlie Sheen top five. What would be number one there? The chase? I love the chase. Quality flick. Major League Two?

But you'll notice, many minutes ago, we started with Unforgiven because we said, this is from whence the victory elapsed around the late third of his career or half his career sort of originate, you know,

can we say oft imitated, not quite duplicated even by him? Yeah. The, the absolute dynamic contained force of this movie, um, not a nineties Oscar winner. That's aged badly.

Maybe the nineties Oscar winner that's aged close to the best. If we go by the idea that often bad movies win best picture, Unforgiven refutes that, and it's a very good one they managed to win. Without question. I think, you know, combination of that commentary on that persona, the analysis of aging,

the sort of like depth of depravity, I think in the character at the center of the movie, that is so interesting to watch him unpack all of that. But then also, you know, this is a movie that has Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman and Richard Harris. Yeah. It's got basically four points of a compass pulling.

Like it's, it's, it feels elemental of how good the acting is in this movie. And I feel bad for the kid in it because it's like, dude, this is like the first time I've ever seen is in this movie. And I feel bad for the kid in it because it's like, dude, this is like the first time I've ever seen you in a movie and these are the guys you're up against.

But the callow quality he has works because he hasn't seen some shit and they have. Yeah, it's very true. It's almost like a commentary on that specifically. Well, yeah, it's funny with Hackman too because you can't say enough good things

about Gene Hackman and people don't talk about Gene Hackman enough anymore because he has truly pulled himself out of the race. The reverse Clint. The reverse Clint. But I had read two things. One was that around that time, he was supposed

to do Silence of the Lambs, and then didn't want to do it because he found the script too violent. And that he had to be convinced to play this character by Eastwood, because again, that character's pretty violent. And I love Ackman's performance because I don't think he plays him necessarily as the villain of the film he plays someone who feels he has a responsibility in his role to be a villain and who absolutely

gets off on public displays of violence and degradation but in his heart of hearts he doesn't think he's necessarily a bad guy it's not like who he's playing in the quick and the dead yeah which is like the b-movie riff on that character from Unforgiven, where he's just like the worst person in the world. I mean, Hackman unlocks something about that character's, his own relationship to this town and to his job and to outlawry and about how no one really has a moral compass that points true north. And Eastwood, I'm sorry.

I mean, William Money as a hero doesn't quite work it works beautifully by not working in the movie is what i'm saying but the way that he spends a whole movie kind of criticizing righteous violence and then kind of gives it to you uh not hypocritical like powerful as as hell i was going to say that i remember very distinctly like the growing up and like you know movies would be on the house a lot and i would see like maybe i'd watch rio bravo on tv with my dad doing somebody would get hit with a stool you know and my dad would be like just so you know that's not what happens when a man gets hit with a stool in the head you know and i don't always kind of like take it or leave it but then

i remember watching hackman beat up richard harris in this movie and being like, this is what violence is. This is what these guys are actually, these characters would actually be doing. This is the effect of this kind of behavior and the way it grapples with the fallout from violence is really like, it's pretty extraordinary. It's pretty extraordinary to watch now even now. Yeah. I think it's just simply one of the greatest to watch now even even now yeah yeah i think it's just simply one of the greatest movies ever made i was thinking about um that concept of silent movie making around cry macho this movie is not quite that because there is a lot of there's there's some speech making in this movie that is wonderful david webb peoples wrote the screenplay

that had been on the shelf basically for 10 years, people waiting to make it. But that opening shot of him digging his wife's grave when the sort of the, you know, the preface of the film rolls is classical, beautiful, gorgeous movie making. And it sets in motion kind of who this character is and the grief that is powering him through this whole movie. And it's not overdetermined. It's not overstated. There's something minimal and clear and driving about that character, William Money character. Just an amazing movie. Hard movie to put into new terms because it's been analyzed and picked over. But I agree that you're right, Adam. It has not aged poorly. It has aged very well as we look at movies like Cry Macho and The Mule and all these other riffs on the Clint persona. Any lingering thoughts on Clint? You guys happy with how we

analyzed this very important man in movie history? Yeah. I mean, I thought it was interesting that we skipped over some of the movies that have been noted by the Academy, for instance, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby. We obviously talked about Million Dollar Baby on the 04 movie draft, Sean. But yeah, I mean, what an incredible filmography almost it's almost hard to wrap your arms around because there are so many distinct phases there's returns to relevance over and over again so just just an incredible career you know i asked myself did we did we talk enough about 1517 to paris did we it's going to haunt me for the rest of i'm going to go have some, some gelato and I'm going to, I'm going to think about it.

No, I think this was a, I think we, we, we, we, we, we did our best,

you know, we are continually striving to do our best here on the big picture. Adam, thank you so much, Chris Ryan. Thank you. Thanks for our producer, Bobby Wagner,

his work on this episode next week on the big picture, Amanda and I will discuss a different kind of performance than the Clint Eastwood performance. We're watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a movie in which Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield transform into the infamous televangelist Tammy Faye and Jim Baker. And we'll talk a little bit about actor transformations. We'll see you then. Thank you.