Clint Eastwood

Description

Through extensive, exclusive interviews with Eastwood (and the friends and colleagues of a lifetime), Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel has penetrated a complex character who has always been understood too quickly, too superficially. Schickel pierces Eastwood's monumental reserve to reveal the anger and the shyness, the shrewdness and frankness, the humor and powerful will that have helped make him what he is today. of photos.

First Sentence

What an American was Clint Eastwood," Norman Mailer wrote as he worked his way toward the peroration of a 1983 Sunday supplement article on him-as usual for Mailer on these occasions, a blend of interview and meditation on his own and his subject's celebrity.

Description

On the basis of deeply probing conversations with the actor-director, conducted over a three-year period, and interviews with friends, colleagues and family members, Schickel gives us the most candid and close-up portrait of Eastwood we have ever had. We see the boy, Clint, regularly changing homes and schools as his family struggles to overcome the hardships of the Depression. We watch a restless West Coast adolescent obsessed with cars and jazz turn into an angry young man going through years of frustration and rejection as he tries to establish himself as an actor. After Eastwood achieves star status in the television series Rawhide, we witness him making the daring choices that propel him first to international stardom - the decision to make a spaghetti western (Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars) - and then to superstardom as the controversial Dirty Harry. We trace, too, the emergence of Eastwood the director, from modest beginnings (Play Misty for Me) through increasingly complex and ambitious films such as The Outlaw Josey Wales and Bronco Billy to the Oscar-winning success of Unforgiven. And finally Eastwood becomes not only one of the most admired figures in his profession, but an American icon. Here is the essential Eastwood, caught in action as he directs and stars in some of his most important movies, reflecting on what is unquestionably a remarkable career. Here is Eastwood describing his feelings about his own work, about his unwillingness to settle for the roles he knows he can play and his desire to challenge himself; about films and filmmakers, directors, actors and actresses; about his family; about what he has accomplished and what he hopes to accomplish.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Clint Eastwood: a biographyKnopf1996-01-01
• Clint EastwoodPaperbackArrow Books Ltd1997-07-03
• Clint EastwoodArrow Books Ltd1997-07-03
• Clint EastwoodPaperbackVintage1997-10-21
• Clint EastwoodHardcoverRandom House Value Publishing1998-12-15
• Clint EastwoodHardcoverRandom House Value Publishing1999-06-07