The scene Clint Eastwood deleted from history: “I don’t know what’s happened to it”
Thanks to his reputation as one of the industry’s most economical filmmakers, there’s never a scene in a movie directed by Clint Eastwood that doesn’t need to be there. Including additional footage as bonus features or releasing extended director’s cuts has become increasingly common, but it’s never something the legend has concerned himself with.
Not that anyone expected him to, though. Ever since he first wielded the megaphone on 1971’s Play Misty for Me, Eastwood has been as no-frills as it gets. He’ll rarely shoot more than two takes, and if anyone asks him for another, there’s a distinct possibility he’ll tell them in no uncertain terms that they should have gotten the hang of it by the end of the second.
As cinema has continued to evolve in the six decades since Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy turned him into a star, Eastwood has remained a constant. If he thinks his character has too much dialogue, then he’ll trim it down, safe in the knowledge he can say more with one look than he could in five pages of screenwriting.
If he’s given a budget and a schedule to produce and direct a picture, then he’ll bring it in on time and without spending a penny more than necessary, which is the bare minimum. It’s an approach that exists somewhere between efficiency and ruthlessness, and there’s one sequence from his magnum opus that audiences have never, and will never, be able to see.
Having avoided the Academy Awards for almost 20 years, Eastwood finally got his moment in the sun when Unforgiven won four Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. His farewell to the genre that made him a household name ends with a coda that stops short of spelling out what befell William Munny when he returned from his vengeance-fuelled quest to get rid of Gene Hackman’s ‘Little Bill’.
In the script, Munny returned home to reunite with his children. Eastwood shot it, but once he entered post-production, he decided that he didn’t want to use it. The scene was cast onto the cutting room floor, and nobody’s ever seen or heard from it since. David Webb Peoples remains one of the few who’ve laid eyes upon the sequence the director deleted from history, and he’s got no idea where it ended up.
“I don’t know what’s happened to it,” he admitted. “I don’t know if it’s something Clint would want to re-release or put on a reel or something. Either way, it’s done.” It’s been over 30 years since Unforgiven was released, and if Eastwood hasn’t shown any inclination to unveil any of the deleted scenes, then he won’t do it at all.
That said, it’s a fitting fate, seeing as he’s never been particularly sentimental towards his own work, no matter what it is.
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