“No, we’re good”: when Clint Eastwood laughed in the face of a raging wildfire
As of this writing, Clint Eastwood is 94 years old, and he is currently prepping for the release of his next major directorial effort Juror No. 2. As preposterous as it seems for someone of that age to be still working in Hollywood, it’s not like it’s an isolated occurrence – Eastwood directed and starred in Cry Macho barely three years ago at the age of 91.
The man simply refuses to sanction the idea that age should ever slow him down – and he won’t let Mother Nature do it, either. After all, he once laughed in the face of a raging wildfire, choosing to continue working regardless.
On Saturday, November 9th, 2019, the Warner Brothers Studio Lot in Burbank, California, was evacuated because a wildfire was raging in the Hollywood Hills. By that point, the vicious blaze had razed 34 acres of Barham brush to the ground, and a firefighter suffered injuries to their arm and leg while battling it. Luckily, the injuries weren’t life-threatening. Considering 230 firefighters were assigned to the blaze, though, and the Los Angeles Fire Department released a statement that said the fire was only 15% contained, it was obvious that the situation was very serious.
In total, the wildfires of 2019 caused three fatalities and 22 injuries and seriously damaged or destroyed 732 buildings. 259,823 acres of land were burned, and 7,860 fires were officially recorded. Amazingly, this was somehow less destructive than the wildfire season of 2018, which was the deadliest in the state’s history. That season’s fires claimed 103 lives, with a mind-boggling 24,226 buildings and structures being destroyed. Horrifyingly, the 1,975,086 acres of land that burned accounted for 2% of the entire state of California’s land. Several celebrities, including Gerard Butler, Miley Cyrus, and Neil Young, lost their homes to the out-of-control blazes.
Warner Bros officials must have feared the devastation of a year earlier, so they called for the studio to be evacuated in 2019—but one man refused to play ball. Eastwood’s son Scot, star of The Fate of the Furious and Wrath of Man, posted a picture to Instagram of smoke billowing into the sky behind a soundstage bearing the iconic Warner logo, revealing to the world that his dad simply refused to acknowledge the potential danger.
“This is from a couple hours ago,” Scott wrote. “Security told us to evacuate the studio. But my 89-year-old father said, ‘No, we’re good; there’s work to be done.'”
You see, Eastwood was deep in post-production of his latest directorial opus, Richard Jewell, and he wasn’t about to let the threat of burning to death keep him out of the editing room. Scott revealed that, instead of running away with their tails between their legs like everyone else on the lot, Eastwood and his people decamped to the mixing stage and watched the latest cut of the movie. He concluded with an aphorism his grizzled tough guy dad would always drill into him: “Get back to work and shut up.”
Now, obviously, this is amazing fuel for the fire of the myth of Clint Eastwood – and Scott has always been willing to hype his dad up. However, because the Fire Department issued a statement at the time saying, “There are no structures damaged or imminently threatened,” and didn’t actually order any homes or businesses to be evacuated, it seems clear Warner Bros was just being cautious. Still, why let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?
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