The only Clint Eastwood movie he compared to a James Bond film: “I did it for peanuts”
As an actor, Clint Eastwood has always preferred to build an iconic character from the ground up instead of playing a role that’s already popular and well-known, which worked out pretty well for him, even if he did decline the chance to embody two stone-cold pop culture monoliths.
During the arduous casting process to find the ideal candidate to headline Richard Donner’s Superman, Eastwood was viewed as a potential ‘Man of Steel’. It would have been odd to see Dirty Harry parading around in spandex with his underpants on the outside, but he realised it wasn’t the best use of his talents.
With the James Bond franchise in a state of flux following Sean Connery’s stopgap return in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, Cubby Broccoli was prepared to break with tradition and cast an American as 007. Eastwood was among those considered, but he didn’t want to follow Connery’s footsteps and shoulder the burden of putting a jarring twist on a British staple.
In general, Eastwood didn’t concern himself with spies. He made several films with espionage elements, including Firefox, The Eiger Sanction, Absolute Power, and In the Line of Fire, but he never headlined a picture in which he was cast as a secret agent armed to the teeth with an array of gadgets to prevent a scenery-chewing villain from achieving world domination.
By his own admission, he did make one film that sought to channel the spirit of 007, not that it’s obvious from the outside looking in. He wasn’t paid much to do it; it was his first major leading role in a motion picture, and Akira Kurosawa sued it for ripping off Yojimbo, but Eastwood nonetheless named cinema’s foremost operative as a direct inspiration on A Fistful of Dollars and the ‘Man with No Name’.
“I did it for peanuts, less than I get for Rawhide,” he told the Associated Press of turning his back on Stateside television in favour of shooting a western in Spain for an Italian director. “I just liked the script. It’s so far out that I guess you could call it a James Bond western. I’m supposed to be the hero, but there’s only a thin line between me and the heavy.”
The most obvious question is what exactly he means. Nobody will watch A Fistful of Dollars and conjure up thoughts of Connery in Dr No, Goldfinger, and From Russia with Love, but maybe he’s talking about the fantastical aspect. It’s a western, but one that’s treated as more of a fable than a straightforward period piece. Then again, maybe he’s on about something else entirely, even if it’s hard to guess what.
Is A Fistful of Dollars a spiritual companion to the Bond films of the early 1960s? According to Eastwood, yes, although any direct correlations are as tenuous as it gets.
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