The movie that brought Clint Eastwood’s career full circle: “I would have felt terrible if it were a huge turkey”
Having been around the block and back more times than most of his peers from any generation, and having conquered cinema on two fronts, the only surprise about Clint Eastwood finally experiencing a full-circle moment was that it took him almost 40 years to get there.
From his humble beginnings as a background actor in B-movies in the 1950s to his current status as arguably the industry’s foremost living legend, the four-time Academy Award-winning actor and filmmaker has been everywhere, seen everything, and gotten every single t-shirt to match.
And yet, he had to wait a while to find himself back on ground he’d been unfamiliar with since the early 1970s. When Eastwood was trying to get his directorial debut, Play Misty for Me, off the ground, he faced opposition from the studios, who were unwilling to foot the bill for a story they deemed as less than palatable for a wide audience.
It was an inexpensive psychological thriller, and his name would guarantee at least a few butts in seats, but that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t only him being a first-time director that made them anxious; it was also the fact that he was playing a regular guy. Everyone wanted to cast him as a rugged hero in a crowd-pleasing genre film, so to sweeten the deal, Eastwood agreed to a significant drop in his upfront salary. Instead, he would be paid a percentage of the profits, should Play Misty for Me be a success.
It was, after recouping its budget more than times over in the United States alone, and one of modern cinema’s greatest directorial careers had been launched. Fast forward three decades and change, and nobody could doubt his credentials. Not only had he won his first two Oscars for Unforgiven, but he’d helmed another two dozen pictures.
However, the combination of Eastwood, Oscar-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, and Laurence Fishburne didn’t come cheap, making Warner Bros trepidatious about Mystic River. Throw in a $30 million budget, which wasn’t massive but still fairly costly by the filmmaker’s standards, and much hand-wringing ensued.
The icon was right back at square one, explaining that to ensure he got the people he wanted to work on the film, the only person who forewent any of their salary was him. “In the end, they said we will give you so much money and pay you a percentage,” he told Deseret. “I had to laugh. I told my agent I was right back to where I was 36 years ago, when I did Play Misty for Me. I’m more than 70 years old, and I’m still out there selling.”
You’d have thought that after all the money, acclaim, and adulation he’d brought the studio over the years, Warner Bros would be the one place where Eastwood could write a blank cheque and make whatever movie he wanted, however he wanted to make it, which wasn’t the case.
“I don’t blame them,” he acknowledged. “And I didn’t want to talk them into anything, because I would have felt terrible if it were a huge turkey.” In the end, his Dennis Lehane adaptation made over $150 million and won two Oscars from six nominations, so the bean-counters had nothing to worry about.
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