Legendary movie star/director Clint Eastwood drops by the NYFF to talk about Angelina, L.A. in the ’20s and whether he’s going to give up acting for good.
Clint Eastwood has been a movie star for almost five decades now, but it’s only been within the last twenty years that he’s also emerged as one of Hollywood’s best mainstream directors. While he’s had his ups (Unforgiven, Letters from Iwo Jima) and his downs (Mystic River, Blood Work), you can generally count on an Eastwood picture to be an impeccably made studio production, at least from a technical standpoint. The 78-year-old actor/director/composer’s latest feature Changeling definitely ranks amongst his stronger efforts. Based on an almost too-incredible-to-be-true story, Changeling follows the efforts of Christine Collins (played by Angelina Jolie), a single mother living in Los Angeles circa 1928, to convince the notoriously corrupt LAPD to find her kidnapped son. After five months of fruitless searching, the police announce that they’ve found the boy and bring Christine down to the train station for a tearful reunion. There’s only one problem: the boy that steps off the train isn’t her son. And when Christine tries to tell the cops they’ve brought home the wrong kid, they belittle her, ridicule her and even have her locked up in an asylum under suspicion of being “mentally unstable.” Eastwood spoke about the film and his career at a press conference following the festival screening of Changeling.
On his first exposure to Christine Collins’ story
“I didn’t know too much about the story before I read the script. L.A. is historically famous for having lots of crazy situations happen, but this one was very unusual. The screenwriter did a very interesting thing: he attached real ’20s newspaper clippings about the story on the back of the script pages. Those clippings really brought the story to life.”
On working with Angelina Jolie
“I didn’t know Angelina very well before making the movie. I had always thought of her as a very interesting actress and a very good actress, but in recent years she’s had so much publicity being on the cover of almost every magazine in the world. A lot of other people appear on lots of magazine covers and it doesn’t mean they’re talented, but in her case, she is really talented. She’s as prepared as any actress I’ve worked with. She came in prepared to attack the character and she was ready to go quickly. When I’m shooting, I like to catch someone before they’ve spoken their dialogue too many times.”
On staying true to the look and feel of ’20s-era Los Angeles
“I was born in 1930 so the vernacular is still fresh in my brain…whatever’s left of it anyway. [Laughs] To do a period film in Los Angeles is difficult because the city has changed so much over the years. At that point in history it was a very centralized city and not a very big one. But we did shoot the entire movie in L.A. and managed to find neighborhoods that were still antique and antiqued them some more.”
On being a composer as well as a director
“Well, the nice thing about the arrangement is that the composer does exactly what the director wants! It makes it simple. When you make a film, you start living with it and I hear certain things and sit down and figure out some sound or melody that I think would go well with a film. I wrote a theme for Unforgiven long before I made the film. It’s not brain surgery. You just kind of feel it along. For Changeling, I wrote the score as we were making the film. Then I’d bring something in while we were editing and fool around with it for awhile.
On his current political leanings
I haven’t been very active in politics recently. I started out as a Republican in 1951. I was a 21-year-old solider in the army and I wanted to vote for Eisenhower. But the Republican party has changed in many ways since then, as the Democrats have. So I’ve drifted towards Libertarian views. Libertarian ideas–leave everybody alone, don’t over-regulate–are appealing to a guy who came up in the ’30s and watched his parents struggle in the Depression. These days you hear politicians promise everything, like they’re on the Oprah show. That has kind of perverted politics. And whatever happens between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama–who knows?
On whether he ever sees himself giving up acting for directing
In my senior years, I’ve enjoyed staying behind the camera and letting younger actors out there run with the ball. It’s a great pleasure these days to watch talent come along at such young ages. It took me forever how to say my own name [on camera]. Since this picture was completed, I’ve done another film in which I performed even though I said I wouldn’t do that anymore. I started saying that a few years ago and then Million Dollar Baby came along and I liked that role. And then this one is called Gran Torino, which we just finished. It’s with Warner Brothers and it’ll probably come out in December.
Changeling screens at the NYFF on Saturday, October 4 and Sunday, October 5. It opens theatrically on October 24.
