last man standing

Clint Eastwood flirts with the big 8-0 directing and acting as protagonist in movies. Should he manage to get the top performance from Angelina Jolie in Changeling, Gran Torino will possibly be his last movie as an actor. And he comes up with the statement in the best toug guy style: Nowadays we have a generation of sissies
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In 2003 Clint Eastwood was promoting the movie East River , a drama that gave Sean Penn an Oscar as best actor. Arriving to the ample penthouse suite in new York’s Essex House hotel, he set down in an armchair close to the window, drapping his left leg on the armchair and started to massage his leftleg on the arm of the chair and started to massage his knee over the khaki trousers. “My knee is troubling me this week”, explained the director, having just arrived after a stroll in Central Park. “Sometimes I must to spend time with my leg in a upward position”. It was an unexpected, albeit short introductionto gerontology professed by Eastwood, considering that soon after he changed the subject to themes as diversifies as Shakespearian tragedy and Brazilian musician Laurindo Almeida’s work, of which he is an admirer.

Five years later, Clint Eastwood is in the lobby of a five stars hotel on Park Avenue. He is wearing the same style high waisted khaki trousers and the same kind of dark blue tennis shoes. His knee seems to no longer trouble him, has he sits gallantly waiting for Angelina jolie, the star of his new movie. Eastwood is 78 now and his face bears the reminder of the blue eyed movie star with the minimalist expression: earnest and always straight to the point.

Since 2000, when he turned 70, he directed nine movies that rendered him an excellent crop: 13 indications to the Oscar and seven awards conquered by Eastwood himself or by actors such Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank and Sean Penn. While most moviemakers his age are in autumn of their carrers, eastwood goes on displaying more stamina – and ideas – than many of his colleagues at 25. In this creative-geriatric category, he only seems  to be second behind the Portuguese Manoel de Oliveira, who is making films at the age of a hundred.

Without diminishing his anabolic rhythm, last year Eastwood produced and directed not only one, but two films wich conquered acclaim from critics and from the public. In Changeling he directed Angelina Jolie in the role of a telephone operator whose son has disappeared and to whom the corrupt Los Angeles police in the 30’s presents an impostor saying to be her son. When she tells them that the boy is not her son, they create a public campaign to discredit her. In Gran Torino, Clint offers fans a bonus: he’s the protagonist in the movie, a Korean War veteran, grumpy and prejudiced Asian and Latins who live in his neighbors in the outskirts of Detroit. When one of his neighbors, a Korean teenager, tries to vintage car, a Gran Torino, Eastwood sets out to form a reluctant friendship with the boy, with surprising consequences.

With a career of over 50 years, Eastwood continues making films for different reasons.
In Changelling part of the action takes place in the 30’s, when the United States had one of their most terrible crises in the economy. The director has his own private ideas about the cause of another furious recession, this time reaching countries worldwide
People are becoming more and more enslaved by plastic cards and don’t pay attention to the limits of their possibilities. And Wall Street and the American politicians, by their turn, are scared to put a break on this unbridled economy. In Gran Torino Eastwood meant to point out the fact that United States are full of macho-man who act as cry babies. Nowadays we have a generation of sissies, he says. Everybody is used to question: ‘How dowe deal with this issue psychologically?’. In the past if a guy bothered you, you punched him in the stomach and that was it.

Eastwood also cultivates some idiosyncratic positions at work. Contrary to the majority of directors I worked with, who like to make some takes, to the point of sucking out all of my emotions and turn them tottaly non-spontaneous, Clint is adept to an economy of takes, so the output of the actors is more organic and more original, reveals Angelina. And Clint explains his method: I like to capture the actors’ expressions at a stage when they are are still working in their mind the emotions of the characters, Making too many takes you end up missing out on the this cool thing which is the immediate reflex.
…
Eastwood is working on a new project to be filmed shortly,
about South-African Leader Nelson Mandella, with Morgan Freeman as protagonist. As a director there is no sign he is considering retirement any moment soon. Angelina Jolie complements: It’s absurd that anybody can be so cool and toug as Clint. He’ is one of these heroes you want to meet someday and then keep them always close. After all, this is a guy who one day fell into shark infested waters and survived. And Angelina isn’t saying this just methaphorically.

(text by Marcelo Bernardes, NY, in TAM airways magazine, February 2009, nr 14)