Latest news with #DirtyHarry
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Clint Eastwood Says Hollywood Has Too Many Sequels: Where Is the Next ‘Casablanca'?
UPDATE: In a statement to Deadline on Monday, June 2, Clint Eastwood disputed ever giving the interview with the Austrian newspaper Kurier and called the comments in it 'entirely phony.' 'A couple of items about me have recently shown up in the news,' Eastwood told Deadline. 'I thought I would set the record straight. I can confirm I've turned 95. I can also confirm that I never gave an interview to an Austrian publication called Kurier, or any other writer in recent weeks, and that the interview is entirely phony.' More from IndieWire What Can Wes Anderson's Platform Openings Tell Us About How 'The Phoenician Scheme' Will Do at the Box Office? From 4chan to A24: Why Kane Parsons Is the New Cinderella Story ORIGINAL STORY: Clint Eastwood wants Hollywood to only greenlight original films instead of relying on sequels and franchise installments. The auteur, who yes, did have his own franchise with five 'Dirty Harry' films, clarified that after directing features for decades, he now sees the value in standalone works instead. The 'Juror #2' director told Austrian newspaper Kurier, as translated by Reuters, that Hollywood has to exit the 'era of remakes and franchises' to usher in new classics. 'I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like 'Casablanca' in small bungalows on the studio lot, when everyone had a new idea,' Eastwood said. 'We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home.' Eastwood credited the studio system for inspiring his directing career, which began in 1971 with 'Play Misty for Me,' in which he also starred. His enduring legacy will continue so long as he can still make movies, the Oscar winner assured. 'As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year,' Eastwood said, 'and that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile.' He added that he has no plans to retire and will still be working 'for a long time yet,' saying, 'There's no reason why a man can't get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them.' Eastwood previously told The Metrograph that he doesn't reflect on past films too much. 'If I'm happy with it, that's it. As far as if anybody else has a different feeling about it, well that's theirs. I'm sure I've had disappointments. If I did, I wouldn't dwell on them,' he said, adding of his film legacy as a whole, 'That would be up to them, to the audiences, to answer. Up to the people on the outside. I just kind of go along. I consider this, again, emotional. It comes upon you. You have a story, you make a movie of it. You have to just go for it. If you think too much about how it happened you might ruin it. I go back and look at films I've made, and I could easily ask, 'Why the heck did I make this?' I don't remember! It might have been a long time ago…' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Hindustan Times
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Clint Eastwood, 95, says ‘will work as long as I can'; opens up about Hollywood's good old days
Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood, 95, is still doing what he loves most: making movies. In a talk with an Austrian newspaper Kurier, Clint said he doesn't like how Hollywood has changed. He misses the old days, when people came up with fresh ideas instead of just making remakes and sequels. Eastwood said, 'There's no reason why a man can't get better with age.' He added, 'And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them.' He continued, 'I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea,' he said. 'We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home." Clint also said he loves learning new things, and that's what keeps him going. He concluded by saying, 'As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year. And that's why I will work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile." Clint Eastwood's movie career goes way back. He started in the 1950s, but it was the 1960s that made him a star — especially in Westerns. Remember The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? That was Clint. Dirty Harry? That was him too. And later, he surprised everyone by becoming a great director — winning Oscars for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Also Read: Clint Eastwood at 95 on film-making: do something new, or stay home
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
As Clint Eastwood turns 95, is the America that made him slipping away?
America has changed a lot since 1930, but Clint Eastwood hasn't. Or so it would seem. The cinema legend, who turns 95 on Saturday, May 31, was born in San Francisco, raised in the East Bay and spent most of his life as a resident of Monterey County. He was always an outsider in Hollywood — he had to go to Europe to find his breakthrough as a film star — and cultivated an aura of rugged individualism as an action antihero, including his iconic roles as the Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's ' Spaghetti Westerns ' in the 1960s and San Francisco cop 'Dirty Harry' Callahan in five movies. He's the kind of man who built America, one school of thought goes; the kind of guy you could count on to fight valiantly in the Civil War, or tame the western frontier, like he did in his movies. He doesn't have time for your bull—, and when he stares at you with that Clint Squint, he's daring you to 'make my day.' He's a man of law and order, upholding American values. 'Dirty Harry' (1971), produced by Eastwood and directed by Don Siegel, was the conservative antidote to the hippie, free love ideals of 'Easy Rider' (1969) as Hollywood was remaking itself during a remarkable decade of cinematic change. But what if we're looking at Eastwood the wrong way? What if, in his own way, Eastwood has been questioning America all along? We all know Eastwood is conservative, aligning with the party that claims to be defenders of traditional American values. Although he has said he's a registered Libertarian, he has supported mostly Republican politicians, including most presidential candidates (remember his anti-Obama talking-to-the-empty-chair moment at the 2012 Republican National Convention?), and ran as a Republican in becoming mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in the 1980s. Yet he is liberal on most social issues, including abortion, same-sex marriage and, surprisingly, gun control — ironic for a guy whose most famous character openly bragged about his .44 Magnum, 'the most powerful hand gun on Earth, which can you blow your head clean off.' He has supported Democratic politicians in the past, including late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former California governor Gray Davis, and broke from President Donald Trump during his first term. But while he might have liked Feinstein off-screen, he hated most of the San Francisco mayors he dealt with as Dirty Harry. The Civil War-set 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' (1976), which Eastwood starred in and directed, can be read as a diatribe against the military industrial complex, a theme echoed in his espionage thriller 'Firefox' (1982). Government corruption and incompetence are at the heart of 'In the Line of Fire' (1993), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and 'Absolute Power' (1997), directed by Eastwood. Indeed, many of Eastwood's movies, both as star and director, have questioned the system itself. Like most artists, however, Eastwood's films are also concerned with the human condition. He won Oscars for best picture and director for the revenge western 'Unforgiven' (1992) and 'Million Dollar Baby' (2004), both moving emotional experiences. He has some surprising films on his resume, too. Who would have thought that as a much younger man he would sensitively explore a May-December romance in 1973's underrated 'Breezy,' starring William Holden? Or that he would explore the jazz legend Charlie Parker in 1988's 'Bird,' starring Forest Whitaker? (Eastwood once said America's two greatest artistic inventions were jazz and the western movie genre.) And then there is 1995's 'The Bridges of Madison County,' one of the great modern weepy romances in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep. As he's aged, Eastwood's films have deepened with a sense of changing times and of characters who are isolated or lost, at least temporarily. In ' Gran Torino ' (2008), he channels his own tough-guy persona to portray a hardened conservative white guy's journey to embracing immigration. While reconnecting with his daughter (Amy Adams) in ' Trouble With the Curve ' (2012), he's an aging baseball scout traversing the small town trappings of a sport and an America he no longer recognizes. In 'The Mule' (2019), he's an elderly man forced to turn to drug running during tough economic times. In retrospect, Eastwood's heroes and antiheroes alike have valued one undisputed ideology: competence. Perhaps the system isn't really corrupt, it's just run by buffoons. The line between societal order and anarchy is a thin one manned by the capable — Dirty Harry vs. the mayor and the San Francisco political machine, for example. But increasingly, Eastwood's competent heroes are working quietly, and unspectacularly, in the shadows until history demands they reveal themselves in a series of heartfelt ripped-from-the headlines stories. His films have celebrated the heroism of Iraq War hero Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper in 2014's ' American Sniper '), East Bay commercial pilot Sully Sullenberger (Tom Hanks in 2016's ' Sully '), the soldiers who foiled a terrorist plot (2018's 'The 15:17 to Paris') and the unlikely misfit who saved lives during the Atlanta Olympics (Paul Walter Hauser in 2019's 'Richard Jewell'). All the while, Eastwood's box-office drawing power remains vibrant with his films reliably turning a profit. 'American Sniper' made a half-billion dollars, while 'Sully' and 'The Mule' each took in about four times its budget. It's a notable feat in an ever-changing Hollywood theatrical and streaming model that often struggles to identify what an audience wants. Take last year's courtroom thriller ' Juror No. 2,' said to be Eastwood's last film as director. Even with an unprecedented record as an A-list director and star stretching back for more than nearly 60 years, his longtime studio, Warner Bros., made the film available in just a few theaters without much of an advertising push. Now, it's a streaming hit on Max since its debut there in December.
The Advertiser
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Secret of Clint Eastwood's success: do something new
Hollywood star Clint Eastwood urged fellow filmmakers to come up with new ideas as he approaches his 95th birthday this weekend, observing in a newspaper interview that the movie business is now full of remakes and franchises. Oscar-winning director Eastwood told Austrian newspaper Kurier he planned to keep working, saying that he was still in good physical shape and hopeful that no one would have to worry about him in that regard "for a long time yet". Eastwood's most recent film, legal drama Juror#2, came out in the United States in 2024 and the newspaper said he was currently in the pre-production phase for another movie. The star of movies such as Dirty Harry and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and director of dozens of films including Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, was asked for his view on the current state of the film industry, "I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea," according to the German text of the interview published on Friday. "We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home," added Eastwood, who will turn 95 on Saturday. Asked where he got his energy from, Eastwood said: "There's no reason why a man can't get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them." Eastwood, who made World War II thriller Where Eagles Dare in Austria with Welsh actor Richard Burton in the late 1960s, told the paper the secret to his success was that he had always tried something new as a director and an actor. "As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year," he said. "And that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile." Hollywood star Clint Eastwood urged fellow filmmakers to come up with new ideas as he approaches his 95th birthday this weekend, observing in a newspaper interview that the movie business is now full of remakes and franchises. Oscar-winning director Eastwood told Austrian newspaper Kurier he planned to keep working, saying that he was still in good physical shape and hopeful that no one would have to worry about him in that regard "for a long time yet". Eastwood's most recent film, legal drama Juror#2, came out in the United States in 2024 and the newspaper said he was currently in the pre-production phase for another movie. The star of movies such as Dirty Harry and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and director of dozens of films including Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, was asked for his view on the current state of the film industry, "I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea," according to the German text of the interview published on Friday. "We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home," added Eastwood, who will turn 95 on Saturday. Asked where he got his energy from, Eastwood said: "There's no reason why a man can't get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them." Eastwood, who made World War II thriller Where Eagles Dare in Austria with Welsh actor Richard Burton in the late 1960s, told the paper the secret to his success was that he had always tried something new as a director and an actor. "As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year," he said. "And that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile." Hollywood star Clint Eastwood urged fellow filmmakers to come up with new ideas as he approaches his 95th birthday this weekend, observing in a newspaper interview that the movie business is now full of remakes and franchises. Oscar-winning director Eastwood told Austrian newspaper Kurier he planned to keep working, saying that he was still in good physical shape and hopeful that no one would have to worry about him in that regard "for a long time yet". Eastwood's most recent film, legal drama Juror#2, came out in the United States in 2024 and the newspaper said he was currently in the pre-production phase for another movie. The star of movies such as Dirty Harry and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and director of dozens of films including Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, was asked for his view on the current state of the film industry, "I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea," according to the German text of the interview published on Friday. "We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home," added Eastwood, who will turn 95 on Saturday. Asked where he got his energy from, Eastwood said: "There's no reason why a man can't get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them." Eastwood, who made World War II thriller Where Eagles Dare in Austria with Welsh actor Richard Burton in the late 1960s, told the paper the secret to his success was that he had always tried something new as a director and an actor. "As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year," he said. "And that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile." Hollywood star Clint Eastwood urged fellow filmmakers to come up with new ideas as he approaches his 95th birthday this weekend, observing in a newspaper interview that the movie business is now full of remakes and franchises. Oscar-winning director Eastwood told Austrian newspaper Kurier he planned to keep working, saying that he was still in good physical shape and hopeful that no one would have to worry about him in that regard "for a long time yet". Eastwood's most recent film, legal drama Juror#2, came out in the United States in 2024 and the newspaper said he was currently in the pre-production phase for another movie. The star of movies such as Dirty Harry and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and director of dozens of films including Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, was asked for his view on the current state of the film industry, "I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea," according to the German text of the interview published on Friday. "We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home," added Eastwood, who will turn 95 on Saturday. Asked where he got his energy from, Eastwood said: "There's no reason why a man can't get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them." Eastwood, who made World War II thriller Where Eagles Dare in Austria with Welsh actor Richard Burton in the late 1960s, told the paper the secret to his success was that he had always tried something new as a director and an actor. "As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year," he said. "And that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile."
West Australian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Secret of Clint Eastwood's success: do something new
Hollywood star Clint Eastwood urged fellow filmmakers to come up with new ideas as he approaches his 95th birthday this weekend, observing in a newspaper interview that the movie business is now full of remakes and franchises. Oscar-winning director Eastwood told Austrian newspaper Kurier he planned to keep working, saying that he was still in good physical shape and hopeful that no one would have to worry about him in that regard "for a long time yet". Eastwood's most recent film, legal drama Juror#2, came out in the United States in 2024 and the newspaper said he was currently in the pre-production phase for another movie. The star of movies such as Dirty Harry and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and director of dozens of films including Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, was asked for his view on the current state of the film industry, "I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea," according to the German text of the interview published on Friday. "We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home," added Eastwood, who will turn 95 on Saturday. Asked where he got his energy from, Eastwood said: "There's no reason why a man can't get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them." Eastwood, who made World War II thriller Where Eagles Dare in Austria with Welsh actor Richard Burton in the late 1960s, told the paper the secret to his success was that he had always tried something new as a director and an actor. "As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year," he said. "And that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile."
