The “piece of shit” movie Clint Eastwood threatened to shut down: “It was all about him”
He’s one of the most gifted men in Hollywood, and the hit rate Clint Eastwood has on the movies he has starred, directed and produced is incredibly high.
He might be famed for being an enjoyably stoic character in the majority of his pictures, but there must be a beaming smile when the veteran star looks back at the filmography he has been attached to. However, there are a few glaring errors.
The less said about Every Which Way But Loose, the better, but by and large Eastwood has delivered wha his audiences wanted when he was directly involved in the production, either as an actor or director. However, when he let his production company Malpaso become the primary backer for his wife, Sondra Locke’s directorial debut, he made a serious mistake.
Ratboy is not the kind of picture that drives millions of ticket sales at the box office. Based on the premise that a window dresser forces a “rat boy” to come out of hiding at the dump to become a public figure while making some cash on the side, the movie seemed destined for failure right at the start. Add to this some truly awful acting and an unwelcome set of prosthetics, and you have a movie which, at the very best, becomes more of a morbid curiosity than any kind of success.
It would seem that Eastwood was incredibly attuned to this and tried to shut down the 1986 production at the very start. The Malpaso offices had been abuzz with the conception of the movie and feared that Eastwood was going to be disappointed with what was going on. But, according to Patrick McGilligan’s Clint: The Life and Legend, Locke apparently confirmed “Clint loved the changes.”
“I’ve never seen him so fucking mad”.
Fritz Manes on Clint Eastwood
But Fritz Manes would confirm another state of affairs shortly after: “Clint comes in the door about noontime because he never came in early and he was purple … He takes this thing and he throws it so hard it almost broke the window behind me.” A bullish man with no name entering the room, incandescent with rage, is not exactly the glowing endorsement Locke had suggested.
Manes recalled: “He said, ‘I’m closing this thing down. How could you let her do this?’ I said, ‘I thought you knew.’ He said, ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about this piece of shit anymore. I’m going out and telling Warners to shut the production down.'” For the cinema-going world, it might have been the best foot forward that he had.
However, perhaps because of the investment already in place, or simply because he fell foul of his wife’s charms, Locke would get the production over the line. Gaining her first feature film directing credit, and winning a Razzie Award for ‘Worst Actress’ at the same time, Locke believes it was her integrity that helped to convince Eastwood to stay the course.
“Clint sort of warmed to my desire to direct because I think he enjoyed the idea that he was going to be a mentor,” Locke told McGilligan. “It was all about him, and as long as it was about him, it was acceptable. He thought I was going to have the same point of view as he would have. I would be a little carbon copy. Then it became very apparent that he and I were quite different animals when it came to artistic choices. And he hated everything I wanted to do on the script.”
Whether it was Eastwood who relented or Warner Bros who refused to kill the production is hard to know. What isn’t hard to know, or understand in fact, is that Eastwood truly hated Ratboy, just as much of the public did.
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