The industry-shaking incident Clint Eastwood will always regret: “The worst moment of my life”
Apart from that time he decided talking to an empty chair was a good idea, Clint Eastwood has managed to navigate seven decades in Hollywood without creating too much controversy.
Sure, some of the real-life inspirations behind Richard Jewell called him out for twisting the facts, and Dirty Harry was regularly accused of being a pro-fascist picture when it was first released, but for the most part, the legendary actor and director has quietly gone about his business without ruffling too many feathers.
That’s Eastwood in a nutshell, both on-camera and off: he turns up, does the work with the minimum of fuss, and goes home. It’s an approach that’s elevated him to iconic status, although one of his most popular films stands out for placing him at the two extremes of his career.
Ask most of his fans, and even the man himself, to name their favourite Clint Eastwood flick, and The Outlaw Josey Wales comes up more often than not. There’s an argument to be made that it’s his best ever, and the only reason it turned out as good as it did was because he staged a coup.
Eastwood was initially brought on as the leading man and producer through his Malpaso company, but when director Philip Kaufman wasn’t helming the picture to his liking, the star had him removed from the production and stepped into the breach himself, causing an industry-wide uproar in the process.
The Outlaw Josey Wales was slapped with a $60,000 fine for booting Kaufman and replacing him with Eastwood, which also saw the Directors Guild of America introduce a new law, which has been permanently enshrined in industry folklore as ‘The Eastwood Rule’, that prohibits an actor or producer from firing a director and promoting themselves to the job job.
When reflecting on the incident, Eastwood reserved plenty of praise for Kaufman while admitting his remorse. “He did marvellous work on the script,” he told Film Comment. “It was just a matter of how the shooting was going down, so I just took it over and re-shot stuff. I hated it; it was the worst moment of my life. I’ve never fired anybody. It was just a disagreement.”
With the benefit of hindsight, the four-time Academy Award winner realises he should have been directing from the start. “It was my fault,” he acknowledged. “I should have prepared and done it myself, but after Eiger [Sanction], I was kind of weak, mentally, and wanted to get somebody else to do it.”
Talk about a bad case of mixed emotions: Eastwood has always celebrated The Outlaw Josey Wales as one of his finest achievements on either side of the camera, but the circumstances surrounding Kaufman’s departure remain the worst moment of his personal and professional life, bar none.
Although nobody knows how the film would have turned out had he not overthrown the director, it’s hard to argue with the results after he did, considering Eastwood assumed control and delivered one of the greatest westerns ever made.
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