The one thing Clint Eastwood has always hated about directing: “There’s no gratification in that”
With over 50 years of experience and 40 features under his belt as a director, Clint Eastwood has been there, done it, and gotten more than enough filmmaking T-shirts to last a lifetime. And yet, there’s still one part of the job that he hates so much he’ll only do it if he has to.
Given his prolific work-rate behind the camera, which only increased as he got older, seeing as he helmed almost half of his entire output after turning 60 by churning out 17 pictures between 2000 and 2019, even though he made his directorial debut in 1971, there shouldn’t be anything that phases him.
The four-time Academy Award winner is also one of the industry’s most cost-effective filmmakers, which doesn’t mean that he makes them on the cheap. Since he’s Clint Eastwood, he always gets a decent-sized budget to work with, but he won’t spend a penny more than he’s given, or work a day longer than he’s been allocated by the schedule.
In a world where high-profile movies frequently go millions of dollars, if not tens of millions, over budget, and extensive reshoots can shunt release dates back by months, if not years in some cases, the old cliché has rarely been more true; they really don’t make ’em like Eastwood anymore.
However, as committed as he is to his craft, and always has been, the one thing that’s always ground his gears comes before a single frame of footage has been shot. “Least enjoy?” he reflected to The Hollywood Reporter after being asked about his least favourite part of the process.
“I guess going around looking at locations and stuff, there’s no gratification in that,” he offered. “But, you know, there’s great interest because you want to do it right.” It’s typical Eastwood that his biggest problem with making movies comes when he has to mope around and do little apart from cast his eye across some wide-open spaces and deliberate whether or not he wants to shoot there.
Handily, he just gets somebody else to do it for him. When American Sniper was location scouting in Morocco, he didn’t bother to go himself, instead dispatching his trusted confidant, Robert Lorenz, to do the legwork on the other side of the world, “And then I did everything else over here.”
Helpfully, Eastwood did clarify that he “went over there when we filmed it,” not that he needed to explain.
That might also explain why so few of his films have been shot internationally. In some cases, it’s obligatory, like in the case of American Sniper, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Invictus, and The 15:17 to Paris, but the icon’s aversion to traipsing around to find the perfect backdrops to his pictures could be the reason why he only hauls his creaking old arse overseas when he has to.
It’s a minor dissatisfaction, all things considered, but it just goes to show that there are some things that even Clint Eastwood doesn’t like doing for work.
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