Of battles won & lost

I was apprehensive about interviewing Clint Eastwood. Not because of his iconic status, or his reputation for being taciturn, but because I did not like his latest film, American Sniper, a biographical film set in the Iraq war. Based on the autobiography of US Navy Seal Chris Kyle, the story follows the military marksman played by Bradley Cooper.

Given the film was the reason for our meeting, I felt a bit awkward. The good news was the 84-year-old director seemed happy enough. The bad news was the running order: I was last to go in a long morning of interviews he was giving — time for him to get tired and scratchy and for me to dwell on my small social dilemma. It was nearing 2 pm when I got the nod indicating my turn had come.

The strong image

He looked good: a slow walk and slight stoop being the only obvious outward signs of old age. And his good mood was intact.

“Hello Will,” he said with a broad, warm smile. “Nice to see you. Are we standing or sitting?”

“Sitting,” I say. And soon he is talking about American Sniper.
“I’m not a guy who is fond of the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I am sympathetic to veterans,” he says.

“People who are forced to go and do the job, whatever the morality aspects are.”
Overly sympathetic, I suggest, to one veteran in particular: Chris Kyle, whose true story the film is based upon. Why not show at least some compassion for those on the other side? Wasn’t he being rather jingoistic?

He was straight back at me. Not aggressively though, or defensively, but thoughtfully. He said that whenever you’re in a war you have the conflict of one side against the other. And conflict (without paying attention to all the myriad subtleties) is the basis of drama, and that’s the business he’s in. Which, he explained, was why he’s been interested in exploring the nature of human violence for six decades.

“Conflicts keep people wondering. And as long as people wonder maybe they’ll go to movies based on that,” he said. That thought seemed to sum up the man. He’s not a tough guy, or a hot head, or — for that matter — a man of few words.

Quite the opposite, he is a storyteller. That’s what drives him. He said he wasn’t “smart enough” to come up with his own scripts and plots, but when he spotted them — maybe in a magazine or in the blurb on the back of a book — he was quite good at telling them.

A natural storyteller

It wasn’t a long conversation, but  it was apparent the alter-ego we have placed on Eastwood is as fictional as Grand Torino. He didn’t play the big-shot, far from it. In fact, one could see how this natural born storyteller could have persuaded himself it might be fun to spoof the Democrats by having a faux conversation with a chair, only for it to backfire spectacularly because he didn’t quite understand how the world wants to see him.

It wants the alter ego, the self-assured tough guy — not the innovative filmmaker and risk-taking artiste.Eastwood is old, for sure — it took him a while to shape his thoughts and he lost his thread on one or two occasions — but he was gracious throughout. He’s promised his family he’s going to take a break and hopes nobody offers him a script he can’t refuse in the meantime while he takes six months off to. “Cool my heels.”