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Required Viewing 06: The Eiger Sanction · The Kulturecast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: We're in Wayne Media. We're in Wayne Media.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: One of our agents has been killed by two men.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: We want you to sanction them. Clint Eastwood. Assignment, the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Iger Sanction. The Iger Sanction, the international bestseller, now a taut,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: suspenseful film of espionage, romantic intrigue, and planned assassination on
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Switzerland's deadly Iger Mountain. Co-starring George Kennedy.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Why the hell didn't he polish you off? Doesn't bother
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: you a bit that you've blown my cover, does it?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: And now Montaigne is either hurt or he's dead.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I knew that being death.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: It's planned that way.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Three men hold his lifeline. One is the assassin he's
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: been sanctioned to kill. Clint Eastwood in The Iger Sanction,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: rated R.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Required Viewing. I am one
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: of your hosts, Chris Stashew, and I'm joined by my
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: good friend all the way from West Texas. He is
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: a professor of media and communications over at the University
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: of Texas Tech. Your friend and mine, the professor, Dr.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: David D.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Perlmutter.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: How are you doing today, sir?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Howdy, Chris.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Is it a good day to go climb a mountain?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yes. If I could find one, I would definitely do it.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: We do have mountains. You just have to drive a
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: little bit to get there.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: That's right. I was going to say, with what you
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: and I talked about early on in our podcasting days
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: of this year, talking about movies that have to do
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: with mountains or people climbing mountains, I think is rather apropos, given...
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Earlier this year, you and I covered an unusual and
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: compelling force. Is that what it's called?
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Unknown compelling force.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Unknown compelling force, yeah. So I was going to say,
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: we did a little mountain climbing movies earlier this year.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: We did a documentary anyways about the Dyatlov Pass incident.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: And then I ended up going down a little bit
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: of a kind of a rabbit hole of like K2
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: and Everest. And I ended up watching some Everest movies
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: and ended up reading some more stuff about that after
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: literally after we did that, uh, that podcast. And so
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: when we were just talking, uh, about, uh, you know,
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: a week ago and I was like, Oh, we should
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: do the Iger sanction of all things. I, uh, Not
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: that I ever get any pushback from you, but I
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: was more just like, yeah, let's do that. I don't
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: think it was front of the mind, but it definitely
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: wasn't something of like, oh, well, this is questionable as
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: to why we would talk about this movie. So on
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: this episode of the CultureCast, we are going to be
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: taking a step back in time to 1975 to take
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: a look at The Eiger Sanction, which is directed by
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood. So the film The Eiger Sanction is directed
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: by Clint Eastwood on a script by Hal Dresner, Warren B. Murphy,
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: and Rod Whitaker. It is based on the book of
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: the same name by the author... The one named author,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: pen name Trevanian, who was known as Rodney William Whitaker.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: The film is an adaptation of the book. The book
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: is the book in the I guess the book and
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: the film share the similar plot, which is a academic
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: who kills people on the side so that he can
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: afford paintings is comes out of retirement for one last
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: one last assassination attempt where he has to go and
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: climb the Eiger North Face and and kill the people
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: he's climbing the Eiger North Face with. I think it's
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: as technically impressive a film as you can do in
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: 1975 for a whole host of reasons, but it is
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: also a Clint Eastwood film from 1975 where he stars
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: in it, so it's also got that going for it
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: as well. Dr. Perlmutter, I am so infinitely curious because
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: I know that you are a lover of Switzerland and
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: especially of mountains. So when Eiger Sanction came across your plate,
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: I am so very curious to know, what did you
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: think about doing it now? And had you seen this
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: film before?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, I had seen this film. I saw this film
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: when I was very young and I was in Switzerland.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: It got, as you might imagine, there's not a huge
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: number of films that are at least partly made in Switzerland.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And they did use locations, including the actual Eiger Mountain,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: which it's not the A special effect. You can actually
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: go to Switzerland and look at it. And then if
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: you really want to try, you can climb it. It
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: is a very, very difficult climb. And people have been killed, including,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: as we'll talk about in the shooting of this movie,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: one person died. So it is a real dangerous mountain.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: It's one of the prides of Switzerland. So I remember...
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: it got a big opening. Like, oh boy, Clint Eastwood,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: American movie star, doing film in Switzerland and then coming
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: out in Switzerland. If you just imagine, it's not quite
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the equivalent because Switzerland is a real country with a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: real flag and everything real. A proud country, a very
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: successful country, but it doesn't get a lot of attention Hollywood-wise.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: So it was a big deal. And as you might imagine,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: because winter sports in Central Europe are part of their identity,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: When you watch the Winter Olympics, you'll notice that the Swiss,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: whether it's luge or skiing, the Austrians, the southern Germans,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: this is their hope. Their dream for Olympic gold is
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the winter events in Just like you might have young
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: kids in the United States growing up thinking about playing
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: baseball or football professionally. A lot of kids in Central
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Europe with those mountains all around us dream of like,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to win an Olympic gold. And so the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: mountain climbing is just in the blood, not necessarily always
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the climbing part, but like being near mountains, visiting mountains, climbing.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And so there was a sort of a cultural affinity
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  Speaker 1: and having a big star like Clint Eastwood. It was
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: very impressive to us that he did a lot of
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: his own work. I mean, it's pretty complicated. If you
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: want to read the backstory of the film, they, they
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: had a lot of spell skilled professionals there and they did,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: obviously they weren't going to, the studio wasn't going to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: let Clint Eastwood do everything by himself of a very
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: dangerous mountain. So, but he, did quite a bit. And
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the movie, I think, was well-received by, you know, 10-year-old me.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I thought, like, hey, neat, mountain climbing, Clint Eastwood, pretty girls,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: you know, which was a very, very important aspect of
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: growing up at that point. And excitement, and it had
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: sort of all the elements a 10-year-old boy could want
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: from a film. And we'll talk about what I'm looking
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: at now many years later, but it was, we discussed
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: recently that the movie timeline, uh, with, uh, your dad, Mark.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And we said like, Hey, it's, it's okay. It passes
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: by a couple hours and you're entertained. I think this
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: film is entertaining. The plot, although there are some issues
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: with like the original book was supposed to be a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: parody and a satire of the super spy genre, uh,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: And I think Clint Eastwood mostly played this straight, although
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: there are some moments of sort of silliness. But overall, like,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: This is a very good example of a well-done Hollywood
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: movie in the good old days where you didn't immediately
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: jump to CGI for everything that looked difficult.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: That, I think, for me, is definitely the thing about
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: this movie that is... I wouldn't say the important part,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: but I do think it speaks to the willingness of
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: someone like Clint Eastwood... to go out of his way
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: to make a film like this, which is to say, like,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: he did not have to do any of the climbing.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: He did not have to do a lot of what
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: he did for this movie. And he did it, and
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I know why he did it as well as you do,
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: because in 1975, this is the way you made films.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: If you wanted to make a film about the Eiger,
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: about the Eiger-sanctioned book, you went to Switzerland and shot
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: on the real mountain. I mean, you already alluded to it.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: There's no way to do this any at the time.
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  Speaker 3: There's no other way to do this unless you literally
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: just cut away to, I think Clint Eastwood called them
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: paper mache mountain. I mean, you know, you could cut
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: away to mountains that don't matter and try to convince
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: us that, you know, oh, well, you know, Clint Eastwood
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: and these three other men are climbing up this mountain and, oh,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: you know, the cutaway shots, those close up shots, it
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: sure looks like they're not on the mountain, but Like
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: you already alluded to, Professor, we can forgive it because,
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: you know, it's entertaining. And that's not good enough for
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood, seemingly. What Clint Eastwood wanted as a director
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: was to film a film that is as true to
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: what the book is doing in terms of the plot.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: And that's the funny part. I... have a hard time
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: understanding the tone of the movie, given I can 100%
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: understand the tone of the book. Because the movie and
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: the premise does sound like a gag in comparison to
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: James Bond. I mean, what's funny is... and I kid
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: you not, this book comes out in 1972. 1981, we
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: get Raiders of the Lost Ark, which tell me that
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: the beginning of this movie doesn't remind you of Raiders
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: of the Lost Ark with this professor in front of
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: the class and all these female students are really taken
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: by him and they're trying to you know, be, you know,
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: seemingly be intimate with him or at least imply intimacy
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: with him. All I could think when this movie opened was, oh,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: so this is kind of like Indiana Jones then. Like
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: he's kind of like a, he's a dashing and daring,
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: you know, world trotting professor. And it's so funny because
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: I know that Trevanian, one of his ideas behind the
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: satire was making this guy a professor, but also a
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: retired government agent. Isn't that wild? And it's like, I
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: guess you can play it as parody. But five years later,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: you're going to have a director playing it straight because
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Indiana Jones is played straight as straight as this is played.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: I guess it's never a gag that he's a professor
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: in Indiana Jones. And I don't think that it's I see.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: That's what I don't know. I don't know if it's
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: a gag that he's a professor in this movie or not.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: It does feel like it. The least believable thing that
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood is in this movie is is a professor
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: in academia. I believe that he could be a mountain climber.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: I believe that he could be a government assassin. But
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: I don't believe that he is a professor at a
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: school somewhere, an art professor. I just, I don't know.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: That part is kind of the leap too far because, again,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood doesn't strike me as an academic out of hand.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, even with Indiana Jones, they got Harrison Ford
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: to look slightly bookish. They had him, oh, he's got
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: glasses and he's got the tweed on. Clint Eastwood in
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: his glasses and jacket at the beginning of the movie,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: he just looked looks like Dirty Harry with a jacket on.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: He literally just looks like Dirty Harry with a jacket on.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: And that's the thing. I see where Trevanian was coming
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: from with the idea of like, well, it's going to
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: be a professor and that's going to be funny and
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: it's going to be satirical. But Clint Eastwood plays it straight.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: And so it loses so much of what could have
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: been this kind of weird juxtaposition of kind of the
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: serious with the absurd and But because it's Clint Eastwood
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: and I don't know if that man has a sense
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: of humor about certain things, it's played completely straight. I mean,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: played shockingly straight. And the only amount of humor we
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: get is Clint Eastwood kind of wryly doing like one-liners, essentially.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Essentially one-liners. But even then, he seems kind of like,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: I'm going to have to grit my teeth and say
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: these dumb lines. That is Clint Eastwood. That's what I
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: think of. I always think of Jim Carrey... doing that
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood, where it's just like, I'm so annoyed by
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: all the stupidity of these movies. And it's like, yeah,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood just strikes me as like a very serious guy,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: which makes sense why this role is not the jokey,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: satirical kind of take that Trevanian is putting forward in
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: the book. But I do think, all of that aside,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood's choice for tone for the movie works. Only
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: because he's the star, though. If it had been anybody else,
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: it would have been like, the tone of this does
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: not make any sense. Because like you said, it's so
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: far-fetched and high concept that you know you're sitting there
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: and Clint Eastwood's like well I know this like this
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: is silly because you know Clint Eastwood thought this was
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: silly which is why he's playing it straight and I
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: mean this movie has an albino a former an ex-nazi
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: albino who now works for the US government who's having
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: people call like calling people in to do like sanctions
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: aka assassinations like it's it's not a serious movie it's
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: a very silly movie like it is a silly film
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: and yet Clint Eastwood playing it like shockingly straight. But again,
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: if you know Clint Eastwood, that's not a surprise. It's
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: just even with something like this, he's like, I don't
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: I don't want to do this any other way than serious.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: It's like, OK, Clint, fine. But you do know there
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: is an albino Nazi in this movie, right?
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Like, OK, all right. Yeah, I I think you're right
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: there that it works because Eastwood does not try to
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: adapt himself for the story. I mean, basically he's Clint Eastwood.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And let's, one of the definitions of a movie star,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: and I say that with a rising intonation, like a star,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a star.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: Capital S star.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: And a capital R. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: somebody that almost any circumstances they're in on the screen,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: you're happy to spend time with, right? So, you know,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: you did an entire series on Sean Connery and we've
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: talked about Michael Caine and Jaws 4. And there are
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: certain actors. I put Michael Caine, Sean Connery in that classification.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I certainly put Clint Eastwood.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: I would say that. I would say that they're in there. Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Clint Eastwood probably in terms of like consistent quality
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: among some duds in terms of films. Clint Eastwood outranks
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: both of them. But they were people who, yeah, I
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: could have watched Sean Connery read the phone book. And
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: that was like a joke in the 70s and 80s
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and 90s that Sean Connery would open on Broadway and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: just take out the phone book. I have to explain
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: to your younger listeners, this was a book where everybody
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: was doxxed. Everybody's phone number and address appeared in it
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and some advertising. And Sean Connery, or Michael Caine, or
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood could have opened on Broadway and just said,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you know, Tom Abercrombie, 371 Mortimer Lane, you know, and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: just kept going, and people probably would have sat there
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: for two hours. And so I grew up with Clint Eastwood.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: He was always in that list of, like, from my consciousness,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: there was such a thing as a movie star. He
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: was one of those figures who just appeared, conquered every genre,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that he was in, especially, of course, his cop movies
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and westerns and was willing to do a lot of things.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And he's there being himself. Crazy things happen around him.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Silly things happen around he has a sense of humor
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: about himself. Like, I mean, I, I, my 10, 10
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: year old me appreciated some of the, the quote unquote
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: jokes in this movie. And frankly, looking back somewhat misogynistic
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: things like 10 year old me wasn't doing that kind
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: of analysis at that time, but like he just sits
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: through it and he's like this steady ship, you know,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: going through the storm toss sea. And sometimes there's like a,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: paper mache monster Godzilla coming out of the water and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes there's actual like pirates and he just keeps on
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: keeping on and just sails through it yeah you talked
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: about that one scene there where what we would now
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: call an MCU villain you know like in red light
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a blood transfusion going on speaking in a very super
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: villain tone. And he's the boss of the good guys, right?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Who's representing the United States government. And there's this complicated mission,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: which I don't think I've completely understood the mission. But
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: then there's a reveal, which is actually not an unclever reveal,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: although it was sort of derivative from a lot of
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: previous spy movies, like The Spy Who Came In From
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: The Cold, where you find out that the mission... was
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: actually not the mission and so on. By my 1970s,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: you sort of expected a spy movie that there would
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: be a twist, that whatever mission they started out on
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: wasn't actually the mission. But Clint Eastwood is just this
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: steady rock or the steady ship, whatever metaphor you want
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: to employ, that makes it interesting because you want to
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: find out what's going to happen to him. You know
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: he's not going to drop off the mountain and die.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And Jack Cassidy, who played the leering Dylan probably as
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: good or better than anyone. He was on Columbo five times,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I think it was. Bro, you took.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: The words out of my mouth. That first Columbo episode
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: that Steven Spielberg directed with him in it, I was just.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Like, man.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Jack Cassidy is the best choice for a 1975 villain
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: at this point in time. It's like, who can you
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: have as this kind of really irritating villain self-righteous villain
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: jack cassidy perfect choice.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Sophisticated sniggering uh you know uh living the high life
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: uh you you sort of forgive him i mean a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: little bit you know no matter how much evil he
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: does evil with such panache and charm that you almost
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: say like oh okay i'll give you a pass on
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: these murders you know just don't do it again or
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: something like that like that and We should also mention
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Score by John Williams, right? So this is, like all
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood productions, this is an A-list production. Again, great
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: stunt work, great photography. The movie still looks fantastic in
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: terms of, I mean, I was watching it on a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: streaming service, but I thought the color and everything popped
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: out and the mountains were beautiful. Everything was there. It's
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: just that it was originally written as... a parody, and
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: it shows. And you put it, Russ, if you'd stuck
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: almost anybody else in that role, it would have just
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: collapsed like a house of cards. But Clint, you know,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: like Samson or something, kept the temple up just long
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: enough for us to see the end of the movie.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Well, and that's I think that's the thing that's really interesting, because,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: you know, Trevanian would write another book that I think
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: the the other books intention is much more obvious when
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: the name of the book is The Lou Sanction. For
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: those of you that are American and don't know what
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: the Lou is, the Lou is the toilet. So I
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't think that Trevanian's original book even
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: sounds like a parody compared to his second book which
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: is like oh well this is much more clearly a
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: parody like this this this movie i think you know
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: in a lot of ways i think it shares the
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: title with the book i think it shares the plot
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: with the book but yeah when you have someone who
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: is as specific in their tone and purpose as a
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood and his willingness and ability to kind of
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: do his own thing, as it were. It is very
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: interesting to me that his wanting to make this movie
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: a serious thing, it shows. And I guess it's what
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: is the thinking, I guess, that you can't make a
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: jokey movie where you climb a mountain at the same time.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: It has to be serious. because we're climbing a mountain.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, I get that. I actually understand that
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: sentiment of like, what we're doing, if we make a
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: parody of this, it will somehow diminish what we're making.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: And I'm not saying that that's what Clint Eastwood thought,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: but Clint Eastwood seems like an old-timey, old-school customer. He
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: doesn't seem like a very... I don't know, seems like
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: the kind of guy who unironically will talk to an
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: empty chair. Seems like the kind of guy who doesn't
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: have a sense of humor. It's not that he doesn't
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: have a sense of humor about himself, but I don't
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: know if he has a sense of humor about the
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: acting practice that he is engaged in. And when he's
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: talking to a Nazi that's an albino in a room
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: that's red-lit, all I can think to myself is, does
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood not realize that this is supposed to be
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: funny and kind of weird and... Like he's playing it straight.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: And I think that for me, you know, as we
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: kind of open this episode, like that's the thing for
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: me that's so odd because I remember when I watched
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: this movie for the first time when I was in
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: my teens. I didn't get the sense that Clint Eastwood was,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: I guess, I didn't get the sense that the book
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: was so different from the movie and that the book
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: being so different for the movie, it's like, it's such
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: a choice to make it so tonally different. And I
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: didn't realize that the first time I watched it. And
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: so watching it now with that in mind, with the
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: understanding that it is so different than the book, It
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: cracks me up because, again, like there are so many
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: movies that come out that are kind of poor adaptations
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: of books. I mean, we just talked about Timeline and
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: that movie suffers in a lot of ways from being
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: a lesser adaptation of a, you know, it's a fine book,
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: but it's not, you know, it's not the book that's,
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: you know, moving the needle for the gross of humanity.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: And everybody is like, wait, do you remember where you
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: were when you read Timeline? And not saying Iger sanctions
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: that way either, but it's interesting to see a director
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: really reject the tone of the source material because of
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: whatever reason. In this movie, I get it. My assumption
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: with Clint Eastwood is Clint Eastwood just is a serious guy.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: And so he's just, like you said, he's always going
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: to play himself. If you know anything about Clint Eastwood
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: in a movie, it's going to be Clint Eastwood in
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: a movie. It's like Kevin Costner. They're movie stars. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: there's a difference between actors and movie stars. Not all
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: actors are movie stars. But all movie stars, I think...
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: are attempting to be actors in some capacity. And that's
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: the thing. We don't really have actors like Clint Eastwood
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: anymore that are well-known for acting. And the ones that
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: are out there, like a Tom Cruise, I would say,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: is probably a good example. Actors like that, I mean,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: it's just they're not they're not they don't come they
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: don't come along every day. I remember reading an article
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago that was like Tom Cruise,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: the last of the movie stars. And it's like, yeah,
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, kind of. I don't know if there are
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: actors working right now that have as much immediate pop
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: culture notoriety or visibility like a Tom Cruise. But Clint
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Eastwood in 1975 was a Tom Cruise equivalent. He is
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the huge actor at the time who can do pretty
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: much anything he wants in terms of directing or acting.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Because again, to go back to the Clint Eastwood of
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: it all, this film comes out in 1975. At this point,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood had been acting for 10 years already. More
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: than that, 15 years. So Clint Eastwood's a known quantity
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: in the industry on top of everything else. He started
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: working at 54. This movie comes out in 1975. He's
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: 20 years into his acting career by the time.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: That this movie comes out. This is why we are
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: saying this is required viewing, is that this is a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: great opportunity to ask questions. We often talk about the direction,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: how film was directed, and whether the director placed an
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: imprint on a film. We might watch a Sidney Pollack
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: movie and Sidney Pollack was a real great journeyman director,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: but you couldn't really see necessarily a signature, like this
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: is a Sidney Pollack movie, whereas Stanley Kubrick, you inferred
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: off or saw directly, like, yeah, this is by Stanley Kubrick,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: and then there's other famous directors out there, David Fincher
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: or Wes Anderson or something like that, where you can
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: really see, yeah, this has got to be one of those. Well,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: we've talked about acting, but of course... Most of the time,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: unless it's a cameo by Alfred Hitchcock or somebody, we
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: don't really see the director, but the actor is up
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: there on the screen. And that has to, as I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: tell my students, that has to reward the engagement. Like
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: you have to want to spend two hours basically with
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: him in every scene. There's very, very few moments that
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: he is not on the screen, right? There's no 20-minute
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: cutaway of people at the Pentagon talking about, I don't know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: this guy, he's sort of unreliable, and he was a
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: rogue and a maverick, and should we be sending him
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: on this mission? It's basically, you're seeing Clint Eastwood's face
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: cut to a mountain, cut to somebody talking to Clint Eastwood,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: cut to somebody trying to kill Clint Eastwood, and then
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: back to Clint Eastwood's face, right? And Clint Eastwood's face
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and the mountain have some similarities, you know, that steadiness.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, he built, if you go back to the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: 1950s and wagon train, as I recall, right, was that? Yeah,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: it's Rawhide, which I have watched episodes. It's very interesting.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I was reading this story, and then about him, I
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: read a biography of him, and then I watched some
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: interviews from the Rawhide days. And very early in his career,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: people noted something about him which was not typical of actors,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: was that he wouldn't just say his lines and then
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: go to his trailer or his room or to the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: catering he would hang around and watch the guys set
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: up the next scene like the cinematographer and the lighting
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: people and he'd ask questions like you know what are
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: you doing there and okay i see you so you
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: want to you want to get some some flicker off
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: that window i see okay and so he was really
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: interested apparently very young very early and i don't know
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: whether this was part of a systematic or like a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: quest in his part. Like one day I shall be
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a director, Academy Award-winning director or something like that. But
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: he just seemed like he loved film and making films
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and wanted to learn as much as he could. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: of course it paid off because he had, I mean,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: he's still around with us, of course, but he had
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: this amazing, probably almost unique career in the amount of
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: work that he's done behind the camera, as well as
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: in front of the camera. And sometimes he's shooting himself
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: and sometimes he's not even in the film. But I
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: think that's the point about how rare it is. You
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: see today people who are in movies, but they're not
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the movie. And there was this generation of stars, Cary
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Grant and John Wayne and Hedy Lamarr. You go down
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the list of the great Hollywood stars of the classic
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Hollywood systems of the 30s and 40s. And then Clint
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Eastwood was the second generation, right? I mean, actually third,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: if you count like silent film stars. And because he started,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: didn't start his movie career until I believe the 60s.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: But He was still of that generation where the audience
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: just wanted to spend time with this person and found
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: them intrinsically fascinating. The smart one, and I think Clint Eastwood,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: his whole career was a smart one. I'm not saying
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Sean Connery and Michael Caine were dumb ones. They famously
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: admitted they took the paycheck, but Clint Eastwood seemed to
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: always be aware of of what film would work with
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: him that he didn't want to be in a movie
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: that would embarrass his himself. He seemed to, I don't
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: know if he'd phrase it that way, but I think
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: he knew his own limitations as an actor. And so
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: he didn't say like, I've always wanted to do Shakespeare
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: in the park, you know, like, like some actors who
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: become tight cast too. So I just, he's a great example,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: 360 of somebody who has navigated his own career pretty
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: brilliantly and, as well as navigated the audience that he
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: brought along and new audiences for generations.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: It's very rare that you get to talk about an
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: actor who has been working as long as Eastwood because
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: there aren't a lot of actors still around that have
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: been working as long as he has. I mean, a
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: lot of his contemporaries have passed away. A lot of
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: them have passed away. And so he's kind of the
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: last of a... He's the last of a certain kind
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: of actor who, like you said, they worry about something
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: else on top of all the things that they already
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: worry about in terms of what the movie they're making
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: is about and how they're going to be received and
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: what is the movie that they're making going to do
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: to their career and how is it going to affect them.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: And it's just taking a direct involvement factor in your
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: career is... I guess I don't know. I guess my
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: perception of things now is that people don't do that anymore.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: But they do. It's just different. It's very different. And
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: it looks different. And what's funny is Clint Eastwood kind
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: of set that mold for... all right, I'm going to
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: be an actor. I'm going to do the actor thing. Okay,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: I'm going to do a directing. I'm going to do
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: the directing thing and be good at it. I'm going
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: to be kind of involved in things exterior to acting
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: and I'm relatively decent at that. I mean, you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood has kind of been directly involved in like
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: political things as well and he's a rather well-known in
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: terms of that sphere as well like Clint Eastwood I
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: think is one of those well-rounded actors who has kind
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: of checked every box as it were in terms of
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: what what is he doing and what can he be
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: doing and is he going to navigate and take advantage
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: of every opportunity within the opportunities that he's being given
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: and And that is the case. I mean, you know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: we always talk about, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger in terms
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: of being a actor turned politician who was able to
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: kind of do that and do that. I mean, again,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: your political views may vary, but successfully in terms of
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: actually getting elected and people voting for him. Clint Eastwood,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: same thing. I mean, maybe not to the extent of
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: being the governor. But Clint Eastwood was the mayor of
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Carmel-by-the-Sea for two years. So he was, again, he's just,
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: it's weird. Clint Eastwood just is a different cat. I
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: would say that maybe the last contemporary of his that
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: existed in our kind of world was maybe Paul Newman.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: It's just the actors like this don't come along anymore,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: and they don't really exist the way that they used to.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: And a movie like this, I think, is a prime
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: example of that because It is on the page, not
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: a serious undertaking, not a serious endeavor other than the
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: climbing of the Eiger of it, which is funny to
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: me that this is a book that is meant to
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: be a lark, and yet it contains some of the
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: most complicated filmography and imagery around mountain climbing that one
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: would expect of actors if the film... if the book
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: is adapted into a film. And that's the other thing.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, when you write a book, especially like a
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: entertaining piece of fiction, there is a good possibility that
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: it gets adapted. So Trevanian sitting there writing the book going, well,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: can you imagine if somebody adapts this into a film?
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, if the right person does it, it's
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: going to be a massive undertaking. And that's the other thing.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: All of what we see on screen is such a
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: massive undertaking for a film that, for quote, all intents
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: and purposes, is a parody of James Bond. Like, you know,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: normally parodies don't go to these lengths to do these
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: kinds of things. You know, they tend to stay inside
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: of a very narrow lane because to do something like
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: this is expensive. It's a lot of work. People literally
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: died and were horribly injured in the shooting of the film. Like, Normally,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: if you're doing a parody film, you just kind of
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: are putting in very low effort, if any effort at all.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: And this movie, again, because it's played straight, there's none
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: of that kind of, oh, well, Clint Eastwood's in on
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the joke too. It's like Clint Eastwood is like, this
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: is not a joke. I refuse to have this be
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: taken as a joke. Take this seriously. And it's like, okay,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: I will take it seriously because you're taking it seriously.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: But the premise of this movie is so kind of
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: goofy and out there. The setup for this movie is
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: so kind of goofy and out there. that the only
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: reason I take it seriously is because of Clint Eastwood.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be taking this seriously otherwise. It's just what
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: the film is is so kind of intentionally angled as
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: such a clear send-up or parody of James Bond that
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: the best thing about this film for me is that
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood was the one who was involved. because it
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: makes it feel like an actual spy movie, as opposed
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: to this kind of like, well, there's a lark. This
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: is a little bit of kind of like a needling
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: of the James Bond movies. Because there are those kind
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: of things that seem like they would be needling a
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: James Bond movie if you were to take a step back.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: But again, in the hands of Clint Eastwood, he is
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: not engaged or interested in really doing any of that
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: other than his kind of one-liners that he almost kind
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: of grumbles through and is kind of seemingly frustrated that
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: he even has to deliver to begin with. Not saying
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood's not a fun guy, but when you hear
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: him talk about acting, he talks about acting the way
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: his contemporaries who grew up in the United Kingdom, who
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: were being trained as actors, were acting as a profession
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: over there, the way that it kind of was sort
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: of in the United States. But in terms of this
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: is where acting kind of came from, this is where
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: Shakespeare's from. Clint Eastwood reminds me more of his contemporaries
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: from across the pond than he does with a lot
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: of his contemporaries that were working stateside in terms of
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: taking this seriously as a job.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to articulate something that I think I'll
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: bring up again from our discussion of several mountain movies,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and that is this idea, culturally, that in Central Europe,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: you did not have a frontier to conquer. There's the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: famous idea about America being culturally defined by the Western
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: expansion and the conquest. The conquest not only of people
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: who were there already, but this... often forbidding land, deserts
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and plains and high mountains, my mountain passes and snowstorms and,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: you know, rock hot summers. And you, you come to
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: some places like West Texas where you go like, man, I,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I, a friend of yours tells you where
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: my air conditioning that is out in August. And you're,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about like, wow, you know, somebody has to
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: do without air conditioning for a day. And then of course,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, that wasn't even, uh, But in
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Central Europe, conquest was vertical. And so part of the
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: great manhood quest was the idea of conquering a mountain.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: The Eiger is a character in this movie, but I
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: think one critique, and this is, this is a question
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: for somebody who's making a movie that has an ultra
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: specific setting, which locally has cultural, not just value, but
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: like has something to add. And I, I think this
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: comes out more in the book and it comes out
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: more if you're European than if you're American. And I,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: it's this, I guess if I had a negative criticism
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: is that I wish there had been like one or
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: two minutes more about how the Eiger, especially the north
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: face of the Eiger, is very, very dangerous. It's this
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: sort of unique, flat rock. When you think of a mountain,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: you tend to think of like a pyramid, you know.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: But we're talking about a very, very flat rock face.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: It's often hidden from the sun, so it's colder. A
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of very skilled climbers have
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: died climbing the Eiger. It's known as a pretty dangerous mountain. Again,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you can go up
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: to a tourist lodge and have your, you know, your
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: melted cheese and your beer and look at it. But
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: so it's not like you have to travel to Tibet
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: to challenge it, but like it is a very dangerous mountain.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: And it is so important within the culture, this idea
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: of like defeating, proving yourself by defeating the mountains. And
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I know that Eastwood must have known about that. I
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: think he made a decision. I think the studio made
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the decision and he made the decision. The team, we
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily say that he made every decision to just like, well,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: that would be too complicated to add too much about that.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: It's a mountain. It's dangerous. People have died. We're just
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: going to say mountain. We're not going to like go
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: off on the specialness of mountaineering. this mountain but i
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: think it could have been in there just like when
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: we've discussed with some other films where they cut some
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: things out where it might have added a little bit
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: of flavor to it and and you see how in
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the choices a filmmaker makes you can see how it
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: can be overdone right you can imagine a scene where
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: somebody says well wait a minute you know professor hemlock
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: you're talking about climbing the eiger the mountain of death
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: oh so many people have died there and And you
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: can see how that would be off and silly if
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: they emphasized it too much, right? And so I don't
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: necessarily have a solution because I'm not making the remake
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: of The Eiger sanctioned, but it is the kind of
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: choice that you have as a filmmaker when your hero
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: faces some sort of great threat, and it might be
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: a monster or it might be a mountain. Like, how
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: much do you build up the threat Or you just
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: let it be seen as a threat.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: And that's the part that I find so amusing about
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: the movie is we do have at the center of
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: this movie Clint Eastwood training with George Kennedy, of all people,
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: to climb the Eiger. And it's very funny because, like
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: you said, that should be enough. If you see just
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: shots of the Eiger and imagery of the Eiger, it
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: is a stunning scene. mountain and it and the face
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: that they're climbing is for all intents and purposes i
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: mean it's a sheer vertical cliff face i mean it's
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: a cliff it is a vertical mountain face and that
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: is not for the faint of heart because i've never
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: even i've i've done mountain climbing but i've not done
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: that i have not done free climbing i've never done
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: anything that it's well if if this goes you're gone
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: it's like i've never done any mountain climbing that has
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: that level of stakes and that's Like you just talked about,
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: there are so many things in mountain climbing that are
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: unbelievably dangerous. And I, you know, having spent, you know,
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: earlier this year after we did that episode together, I
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: like I said, I sat and watched some mountain climbing stuff.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: I read some books. I want to say, well, I
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: read John. I read John Krakauer's Into Thin Air. And
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: then I read. read a couple other things. I think
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: I read something about K2 and then one or two
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: other things. And it's just like... What you are being
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: asked to do in this movie is already so dangerous
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: as a film crew that it is wild to me
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: that we don't have more of the mountain. But I
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: also think that there's just enough of the mountain because,
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: you know, we do have a one of the crew
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: members on the film dies. During the production of the film,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood almost suspends the filming of the film, but
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: ends up continuing and completing it because he's convinced by
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: the other mountain climbers who. And again, that's the other thing.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: Mountain climbing is a very dangerous sport, but it doesn't
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: have to be a fatal sport. It's just by definition,
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: what you're doing is danger, but it doesn't have to be. Well,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: you go up the mountain and, you know, something bad
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: happens and you die. Plenty of bad things happen on
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: mountains all the time and people survive because they're well-prepared.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: You have to be, especially to do something like climbing
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: a mountain phase. And that's where, you know, half of
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: this movie comes from is just Clint Eastwood preparing to
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: climb the mountain. And, you know, they they spend an
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: hour of the two hour movie building up to the
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: point where Clint Eastwood is finally on the Eiger with
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: the rest of the climbers. And, you know, it feels
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: well earned because we have had this whole kind of
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: set up with George Kennedy and them in Monument Valley,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: which I think, you know, we haven't even mentioned that.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Talk about shooting Monument Valley for a film that doesn't
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: use Monument Valley for anything. It is, I mean, for,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: you know, to go to the John Ford of it
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: all with the Monument Valley being so well shot by
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: John Ford and kind of being such a part of
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: his filmmaking kind of canvas. And then in this movie,
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: they're like, well, we are going to Switzerland, but, you know,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: we can shoot Monument Valley and have him training in
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Monument Valley and doing all these things in Monument Valley.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, so you're just trying to make this
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: film extra hard then? Because, I mean, again, you know,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: we talk about him climbing the Eiger, but Eastwood also
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: climbed the Lost Arrow Spire, which is... When you see
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: those shots of him and George Kennedy climbing, it is...
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: It's obvious that it's Clint Eastwood. George Kennedy, not so
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: much obvious. But Clint Eastwood did all of his own
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: climbing at every point in this movie. And it shows.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: It really, really, really shows. And I think that having
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: them shooting in these real places helps kind of get
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: across the idea of like, this is a serious thing.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: These places that they're going are not just, you know, Oh,
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: we're not just going to go train in a gym somewhere.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: They're in monument Valley. Like they're, you know, they're training
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: on location and it is just, I don't know. It's
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: such a different way of making films. It's this is the, it's,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: they're not rushing. I mean, we don't get enough Iger
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: because we're setting up for the Iger is what this
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: feels like. And because we have Jack Cassidy's character that
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: is occupying what would be the first half of this movie. Anyway, uh,
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: But it is funny that this kind of parody film
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: ends up being a serious endeavor because we have an
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: actor who's like, I want to shoot all my own climbing.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: It's like, oh, OK, Clint, just making this harder for everybody.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: which is, again, the results that the film yields, I
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: think are worthwhile. But I do have, and I was
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: curious your thoughts on this because this is the first
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: time we've done something like this. Watching a film where
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: someone directly involved in the making of the film died
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: is an unusual thing. A lot of the time when
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: we're talking about that, it's not something where they're going
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: and climbing a mountain. It's often like, a stunt gone
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: awry or a genuine accident. But in this film, it's like,
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: of course someone died while they were filming this movie.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: They were filming on the north face of a mountain
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: in Eastern, in Europe. Like, of course someone died. Like,
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: I'm not surprised just looking at where they shot the
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: movie and the movie itself, not surprised. But I do
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: have somewhat mixed feelings about a movie where someone dies
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: in the making.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so many interesting questions here that I really
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: want to call out Mr. Eastwood and see if he
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: answers and just say, hey, we got a couple of
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: questions here. We're in the middle of a podcast because
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: I found and we're getting into sort of metaphor here.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: But I found this interesting statement, even though, yeah, it's
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit disjointed, a little bit uneven toned. serious
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and silly, but I liked this parallel between the impersonality,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the coldness, the uncaringness of nature. Mountain climbing is a
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: sport where no matter how good you are, you can
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: be the world's best mountain climber. You can have conquered
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Everest and K2 and something can slip, you know, a
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: rope can fray and you will die climbing, you know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: 50 feet in your backyard. I mean, so the people
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: who engage in mountain climbing know that, and to segue
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to this line that Clint Eastwood makes to, I hate
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: to even say her name here, but his girlfriend. Oh, yes.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: The athlete titled Jemima Brown.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yikes. Well, I think they thought, well...
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I guess they thought that was funny.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: They more or less explain the joke on screen. They're like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: this is why this is funny. And it's like, yeah,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: I get it. But that's where the parody and satire
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: of the book pokes through into the movie. And you're like, oh,
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: so if it had been that, it totally would not
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: have worked at all.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, anyway, so he says to her that he
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: quit the assassination business as opposed to the professor business
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: because of mathematics, right? And so people who are climbers
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: know that, yeah, it's math. Like the more you climb,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the more chance, let's just say, you know, there's a
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: 1% chance you will die climbing any mountain. It doesn't matter.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Obviously that 1% may go up to like 5% if
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: you climb. 10% if you go up Everest. But there's
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: a 1% chance. Well, odds don't work that way or
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: people would be rich playing roulette. But the fact is
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: that if you climb 100 times, then you're playing that
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: rolling those dice 100 times. And, you know, maybe it's
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: more likely you're going to get that one, that, that,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: You know, we are die roll and you're going to
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: die at no fault of your own. You were you
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: were doing the exact same things that when you succeeded.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: So that impersonality of nature, nature doesn't care. The mountain
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: is still there. The mountain doesn't weep. Nature doesn't care.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: It's like looking in the eyes of a tiger or
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: your house cat. You know, you look at your beautiful.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: We both share a love of cats and we both
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: have a cat. And I have held up my delightful
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: little house cat, and I've looked into those eyes, and
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I see the hunter-killer that is still there, that we
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: have not bred out of cats. If you look at
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: wild cats that have almost the same DNA as our
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: house cat, we really haven't done that much to cats
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: as opposed to dogs. If you go to the vet,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: you see this almost a circus of like tiny little
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Weimaraners and huge Great Danes and things like that. Cats,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: you know, most people, most cats are within 10, 15
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: pounds of each other there, except for the, you know,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the big cats. But the point is that nature doesn't care.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: And then, to me, it's an interesting parallel, and one
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: that if you're listening, and even at 10 years old,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I sort of got it, they make this point about
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the government bureaucracy of assassination doesn't care. It doesn't care
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: about its agents. And at the end of the day,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: it really doesn't care about its enemies. It's a machine.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: And the machine tries to achieve its goals. And if
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: somebody dies, well, that's just part of nature or the machine.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: So I did think that that was interesting. Like, like if,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: if the movie made a statement and, and Clint Eastwood,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: I think another good thing about his direction or his,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the roles that he picked for himself was that often
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: he would, there might be a message in the movie,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: but he rarely slammed it home with a hammer. And
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: sometimes he, He would even question himself the message. But
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I thought that that was just well done. You know,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: the parallel between the impersonality, the coldness of nature and
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: of modern, the bureaucracy of at that time, it wasn't
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: even mentioned, by the way, but it was the Cold War, right?
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Where there was no anger.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: There was just bureaucrats playing against other bureaucrats. And we'd
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: seen that before in like a movie we should do sometime,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: John le Carré' s that book, The Spy Who Came In
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: From the Cold, sort of famous spy movie. In fact,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: there are plot points and characters that are straight out
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of Jean Le Carre here. In fact, I think that
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: was part of what Trebanian was sort of parodying. But
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: it is a very thought... To say that this film
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: has some thoughtful elements can show, again, in terms of
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: required viewing, that even in something that is essentially a
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: vehicle for a star... is an action thriller adventure. You
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: can have these moments that make people think.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: We talked about Three Days of the Condor recently, and
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: we talked about, you know, the Max von Sydow character
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: at the end of the film just being like, All right. Well,
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: my my my sanction, as it were, is not with
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: you anymore. It was it's with him. And the sanction
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: that he had with me is now null and void
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: because he is gone. So there you go. And that
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: matter of factness is reflected in this movie where, you know,
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: talk about Jack Cassidy a little bit, who is for
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: all of the misogyny of which there is plenty. I
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: will say, as someone who is bisexual myself, I do
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: find the portrayal of Jack Cassidy's character to be very
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: of a time and of a place. and of a stare.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: It's very much a stereotype. Like the character that Jack
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Cassidy is playing is a stereotype. I won't repeat the
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: name of his dog on this podcast, but just know
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: that his dog is a slur for gay people, which
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: is just absurd in, in, in 1975. But again, it
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: goes back to that. This is a parody and Jack
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Cassidy's character that he is playing is is on the
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: page meant to be a parody of these kinds of
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: characters the character that is a a assassin or an
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: agent as well that does a really poor job at
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: hiding the fact that he's an agent and honestly just
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: can't shut up about the fact that he's an agent
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: and i love that there is a character like that
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: in this film But what's funny is because this film
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: is not a parody, that character almost makes no sense
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: in this film whatsoever. He stands out like a stereotype
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: as opposed to a cog in the working machine that
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: is this kind of send-up of spy movies. But because
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: he is, again, almost from a different movie, it seems
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: more like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, where it's like,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: this is just a really classless and lazy stereotype. In
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: this movie, that's not the case because the book is
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: a parody. But it is very funny that Jack Cassidy's
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: character interacting with Clint Eastwood is like from another movie entirely.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: But because it's Jack Cassidy, it kind of works. It
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: still works in spite of that. But this is what
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: happens when you adapt a book that is so tonally
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: different and turn it into a movie, but you don't
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: necessarily readdress all the tonal choices and changes that you've made.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: and how they work against and with one another. Because
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood in those scenes with Jack Cassidy, it's like
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: it's from another movie entirely. It's from what the book
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: is more like than what the movie ends up being
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: in terms of tone.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: We're focusing on actors here. And I do want to
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: mention that, again, I'm sure we have an audience that
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: varies in terms of age, but there were actors. And
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: today I would put someone like Paul Giamatti in that
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: classification where In the classical era, for me, growing up 60s, 70s,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: but watching films from the 40s and 50s in the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: same way that, say, somebody in the 2020s today would
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: watch films from the 2000s, there was Jack Cassidy, George Sanders,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: and Claude Rains. And there's a wonderful line in a
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: song by the Kinks. And it's interesting how it's inserted
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: into a rock song, but they say, George Sanders, you
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: could have covered him with garbage, but he still would
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: have starred. And there were these actors who just had this...
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they played leading men. I mean, George Sanders did
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: play King Richard the Lionhearted, and he was in Children
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: of the Damned as the lead there. But mostly, they
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: played a secondary but incredibly supportive character. So like Claude
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Rains plays the French police inspector... in Casablanca. And I
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: think everyone agrees that the film works on so many
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: different levels, but if you pull out the French police inspector,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: it falls apart. You couldn't even imagine that movie without
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: that role. So Jack Cassidy is, It was a good
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: example of something that maybe I don't see this as
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: much in films anymore, where you have this actor who
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: is just so fascinating. And that's why they brought him
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: back on Columbo. And by the way, you know, obviously,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: we haven't done the show about Columbo. I haven't done
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: anything about Columbo with you. But like some at least
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: a couple of other places, I've talked about how when
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: you were when we were watching as kids, Columbo, I
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: had to have somebody explain to me that Jack Cassidy
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: didn't go to trial, get off and then come back,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: change his name and then kill somebody again. And Columbo
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: kept trying to get convict him, you know, I hope,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: I hope this time it'll stick, you know, that's right.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: But he was so popular and it was completely acceptable
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: in television at that time that you'd have somebody come
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: back and play a completely different role, uh, Nobody felt
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: it was weird, but this is a long, circuitous way
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of saying, you're right, they're in two different movies, but
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: I can see why he was cast. He sort of
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: brightens things up for a couple of minutes. He makes
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: a great villain, and he's so anti-Quint Eastwood in every way.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: He's the 100% Eastwood. diametrically opposed just him and having
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: his dog there with him and just sitting there and
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: just making such a big scene of everything is just
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: so diametrically opposed to Clint Eastwood as the person or
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood's character in the film either way right.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: So my last point on this just please I want
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: to hear your opinion but Now, here's another choice you
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: have as a filmmaker, right? You have Clint Eastwood. It's
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood. Like, in his physical prime, late 60s through mid-70s,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: he's always playing a tough guy. He's playing the fastest draw.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: He's playing the police detective who can punch the hardest
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: and outdraw, too. And now he's going to play a
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: mountain climber. And, of course, he's a genius art collector, professor. everything,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: and he's an amazing assassin, and he's an amazing mountain climber.
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: Is there a term for a male Mary Sue? He's
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: just good at everything.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Of course, James Bond, that's what was being parodied, right?
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: That James Bond could throw off his tuxedo and then
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: jump out of a helicopter firing his Walter PPK. But
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: when you're, you're, you're just, you're thinking you're Cleanswood. Okay.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: And you're thinking like, I, I need a villain that
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: is my equivalent. Now you can do a couple of things.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I it's funny. I've only watched a little bit. I
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: think I watched the first season of the Jack Reacher
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: television series, which is very successful. And they cast an
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: actor who is incredibly physically imposing to play Jack Reacher,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: which I've never read the books, but like he, the,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: character of Jack Reacher has been described in the books
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: by people who I know who read the books as
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: a sort of one-man gang. He's not Tom Cruise. He's
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: supposed to be a big guy who can take on
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: 12 other people and clean the bar full of them.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: When you have a choice, who's going to be the
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: nemesis of somebody who already is as tough as Clint
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Eastwood or as tough as Jack Reacher? You can go
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: up and out and You can say, okay, we'll find
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: somebody twice as big, right? Or you can have somebody
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: who is challenging and evil, but in a completely different way.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And I think that that works here. Jack Cassidy as
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: a nemesis, that because he's so radically, physically, tonally, mannerismally
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: different than Clint Eastwood, it's a successful solution to How
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: do you find a villain to match your incredible hero?
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: It reminds me a lot of the difference between Pierce
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: Brosnan and Jonathan Price in Tomorrow Never Dies or Matthew
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: Amalric and Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace, where it's
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: like you have a small, less imposing guy opposite a
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: physically imposing or serious stone-faced guy, and just having the
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: dichotomy between those two work. Because no, maybe he's not
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: a physical threat. Henry Silva's not a physical threat to
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Steven Seagal, as we all know, having seen plenty of
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: Steven Seagal films. And the moment Seagal gets his hands
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: on him, he's going to just kill him immediately, which
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: is literally what happens in a lot of those Seagal movies.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, I remember, what is it, Out for Justice,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: or the one with William Sadler, where it's like, this
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: guy's not a physical threat. The moment Seagal gets his
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: hands on him, he's going to rip him apart. And
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: there's like this small gentleman's agreement in this film that
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: that doesn't happen until Jack Cassidy kind of breaks it
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: and hires George Kennedy's daughter, question mark, to murder Clint Eastwood.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: after they're intimate together because that's the other thing Clint
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: Eastwood no I mean again the parody of James Bond
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: is right there every woman in this film is making
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: eyes at Clint Eastwood you know the they always talk
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: about like the male gaze in films and you know
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: the kind of luring male gaze Clint Eastwood the female
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: gaze I mean he's a good looking guy there are
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: shots of him climbing a from a low angle where
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: his his butt in jeans is full on in the
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: screen for everybody to see. I mean, Clint Eastwood's a
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: good looking guy. And so you have an actor who
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: is good looking, is serious opposite. And I'm not saying
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Jack Cassidy is not good looking, but Jack Cassidy looks
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: like he's out of central casting. And then they give
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: him what I would say is a very weak mustache.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: And he looks definitely like he's out of central casting
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: but that kind of interplay between the two you know
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: i'm i'm a student of professional wrestling i'm a fan
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: of professional wrestling everybody who's opposite john cena doesn't have
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: to be brock lesnar they can be you know the
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: kind of skeevy heel who wins by cheating or doing
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: something underhanded or doing something you know I'm going to
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: have somebody come in and take the pin for me,
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: or I'm going to operate within the rules, but kind
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: of breaking the rules somehow. That translates into film, and
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: not every villain needs to be, you know, to go
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: back to the Indiana Jones comparison. not every villain in
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: Indiana Jones is the giant hulking bald Nazi that he
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: fights outside of the one, the, the, the Una wing
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: plane in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Uh, the, the
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: actor who plays Belloc in, in, in Raiders of the
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: Lost Ark is smaller than Harrison Ford. Like he's a
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: small guy, but again, like, That's that's that's kind of
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: stymied by the fact that he has a massive Nazi
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: army with him. But not every villain in these films
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: needs to be a physical threat. And I think it's
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: smart to leave the villain in this film, not a
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: physical threat to Clint Eastwood, because, again, it doesn't make
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: your character. character or hero look strong if we have
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: all these threats to his physicality and he's not a
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: big guy. Clint Eastwood is not this like massive, hulking,
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: Chris Evans, The Rock style actor, Jason Momoa style actor.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure who I would compare Clint Eastwood to
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: now for people who are trying to look for a
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: comparative to Clint Eastwood because he's just so kind of
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: specific in what he was doing that again like you
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: can have someone like Jack Cassidy opposite him and it
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: work but again like it's it's hard to take someone
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: seriously in these movies because they're never really given a
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: lot of opportunity to be anything other than a mild
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: inconvenience to Clint Eastwood we never think for a second
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood is actually in danger like you said and
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: that's intentional because that's not why we're watching a lot
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: of these movies right We're watching a lot of these
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: movies because they're a, they're a, I want to be
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: him and women, women want to be with him and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: I want to be like him. And that wasn't just
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: the case with James Bond in cinema in the sixties
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: and seventies. There were actors in American cinema like Clint Eastwood,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: like Paul Newman. That's like, I, or Robert Redford, who
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: we just talked about with three days of the condor. And,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: you know, Carl Maymer talked about it. He's like, there were,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: you know, for as much as, uh, what is a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: Bo Derek? Uh, the Farrah Fawcett poster, right? For as
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: many boys that had that Farrah Fawcett poster on their
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: door or on their wall, there were just as many
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: adult women who were like Clint Eastwood. Oh my God.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Like he really gets my like engine revving. And I
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: see why. Like, he is just when he's on screen,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: there's not anybody else that looks like him. And the
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: energy that he brings is so singular that it's like, OK, like,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: just put the camera on this guy and he knows
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: what to do. And that's just not as much of
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: a thing as it used to be.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been discussion. I don't know how far this
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: goes back, this idea of. And I'm sure that it
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: really went back to like the earliest pantomime of the
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Paleolithic ancestors, maybe acting out a hunt or something. through
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the plays, tragedies, and comedies of the Greeks and the Romans,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: the physicality of an actor being a factor in their acting.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: I've mentioned before sort of like my belief that there
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: are perfectly terrific actors, and they tend to be ones
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: who spend their lives doing television, where it's basically they're
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: really good with their face and their voice, and they
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: they're just a very good actor. And then there are
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: other actors where you get more of a sense of
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: movement and sort of torso. And then there's some actors where, man, their,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: their shins are doing a fantastic acting job here. and,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: today we certainly have we have to i can make
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: a list and i'm sure you can make a list
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of a lot of really terrific actors who are working
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: today and i don't think it's true that in 1940
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: they had all great actors and today we have lesser
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: actors if especially if you watch some of the higher
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: end british you know period dramas that are coming out
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: today you'll see yep you know the 14th uh imperial
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: horseman from the left is doing a really good job
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: acting that that's great but we really seem to have
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: a shortage of these physical total presence actors like lynn
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: eastwood that just first light up the screen like they
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: enter and like all eyes male female whatever whatever your
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: interests immediately go to them second whatever they're saying even
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: if it's a very small amount of dialogue and, and,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: you know, famously for Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti Westerns, he,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: he threw out a lot of dialogue, you know, wanted
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: to have as little dialogue as possible because he knew.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: that that character wasn't going to be somebody who's fast
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: talking and, you know, talking his way out of trouble.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: He'll just say a few things.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: And it was in response to his time on Rawhide
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: where a lot of the mystique was taken away from
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: his character because he just talked all the time.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, that's true of a
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: lot of actors. But we do seem to have trouble
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: finding people who have that enormous physical presence that just
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: mesmerizes you. And part of it is I did see
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: this movie and it, you know, it's a mountain climbing movie.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: So it, it, it, at least in my memory, being
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: on a giant, theater screen i remember going like oh
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: wow that's that's the eiger and that's physically imposing that's
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: amazing like that is this incredible mountain and i had
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: seen it in real life and like walk up to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: it i hadn't climbed it but i'd walked up to
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: it you can't walk up to it and look look
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: again and then Again, it's hard to describe. And I think,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: you know, you have a 100-inch screen at home and
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: you're watching on streaming or something like that. It's not
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: completely out of your realm of the senses there. But
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: the cut to Clint Eastwood's face, you would see the
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: similarity in the effect it had on you emotionally and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: in terms of your intimacy with what's going on on
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: the screen. So this was a good choice. for him
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to do as a movie I mean again part of
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: his smart career choices and I hate to say like
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: you know Michael Caine has made that you know a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: lot of bad career choices and Sean Connery made a
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: lot of bad career choices but and Michael Caine has
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: a good sense of humor about this I think Sean
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Connery had some of it too but Clint Eastwood is
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: also a role model in terms of required viewing and
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: like In managing his own career and in thinking, like,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I fit into this role and that I can add
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: something to this role. It's not just a passing vehicle
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: and I'll just earn a quick buck. I don't think
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: I just I don't know him personally. But like I said,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: I wrote one biography and I saw some interviews, but
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: I just get a sense that he cares about his
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: art the way. You'd think most actors would, but in
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, you know, I can understand
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: you take a paycheck and move on to Jaws 5.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: And, you know, you mentioned it with mountain climbing, right?
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: Like the more the more mountains you climb, it's not
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: that the likelihood that you die or something bad happens.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: It's not the percentage goes up, but just the more
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: times you engage with it, the higher percentage chance you
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: have of that thing happening. And I think that Clint
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: Eastwood is one of those actors who didn't act in
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: every single thing that came down the pipeline. that came
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: across his table, that went to his agent. And I
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: think him being so discerning in what he chose to do,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: you know, allows you to kind of have a certain
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: feeling about your career that other people like a Nicolas
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: Cage or, you know, even a Jack Cassidy just kind of,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: you know, there are actors that are working act and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: that's what they do is they work and they act
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: for a living. And I'm not saying Clint Eastwood wasn't
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: a working act, but he's a different kind of working act.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: He got so famous and had so much notoriety and
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: early success. that he didn't have to take every, you know,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: stereotypical or tropey, you know, bit part. You know, it's
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: very funny, you know, Jack Cassidy almost, you know, my
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: typecast is a term that they use Talk about now and,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: you know, people don't want to be typecast as a villain.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: But here you have Jack Cassidy playing a villain all
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: the time and many of the things that he's in.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: And he was clearly OK with doing it because there
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: are actors that are just OK with playing. You know,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: somebody's got to play the police chief. Somebody's got to
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: play a cop. Somebody's got to play another cop. Hell,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: somebody might even have to play a Nazi or a
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: Western Eastern or European cop. or German character. And there
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: are actors that that was their entire career. They made
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: an entire career off of just playing the same kind
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: of character in the same kinds of movies or TV shows.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: And it's not that they were weren't complaining about it,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: but that was, you know, acting was a profession. And
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood, I think, was able to be had the
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: luxury and privilege of being discerning with his career. And
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: I think that there are plenty of people that are
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: discerning with their career that can't back it up. I
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: think Clint Eastwood can obviously back it up, which helps.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: But the more opportunities you make that with you make,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: you know, making movies, the more chances you have to
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: make a bad movie or be in a bad movie
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: or put in a bad performance. And when you're Clint
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: Eastwood and you don't do every single movie that anybody
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: offered to you, you kind of avoid some of the duds. And,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: you know, at some point you are Clint Eastwood. So
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: you can just say, well, I'm Clint Eastwood and I
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: don't want to do this. And that's I mean, not
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: wanting to do it for that reason as any actor
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: is fine. But it's more, I guess, acceptable and understandable
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: if you're someone of Clint Eastwood's caliber. His his name
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: and notoriety dictates a little bit more than just, you know,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: Joe Schmo coming off the street.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to tell now what is one of
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: my few actual Hollywood stories about that. Because one of
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: my points of admiration for Clint Eastwood is that he
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: accepted that there are limitations on what he could play.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: And also, he realized that he shouldn't even try to play.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: play some role. So if you could imagine somebody said, hey, Clint,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: let's just throw everything out the window. You play the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Jack Cassidy role, and we want you snickering and giggling
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: and laughing and making wild motions. And we're going to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: cast Jack Cassidy as the intelligent but lethal, sophisticated kid.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: He would have said, no, you're crazy. Now let's go
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: back to the script, right?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: So here's my one Hollywood story for this. So I
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: did spend some years in Los Angeles. I had a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: lot to learn, but I learned a lot. And I
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: made friends with this wonderful man, now passed away, may
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: blessed be his name, High Averbeck, who started out very
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: early in Hollywood, Dick Van Dyke show directing. many episodes
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: of MASH. And I met him in the mid to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: late 80s, and we became friends. And I love to
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: hear him tell stories about mostly television. He did direct
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: this movie, I Love You, Alice B. Tolkis, which was
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: sort of a forgotten classic.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: But which we could do sometime there. But anyway, he
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: told me this story where a particular Hollywood character actor
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: who had been on television a number of times and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: was known as the guy who you would always cast
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: as the pompous bureaucrat, the pompous mayor, the pompous corporation
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: president who was sort of a blowhard. And that's who
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: you'd call to play that role. And he told me
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: the story that that guy who he was friends with
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: tell them once, you know, I am so tired of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: playing the same role all the time. Like I'm making
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: good money. You know, I, I, they call me once
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a week to play this role, movie television, but I
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: want to break out. I want to do something completely different.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: And so high says, okay, you know, I've got an
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: episode of X shooting in three weeks. I'll tell you what,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: there's a role of a guy who's a bold rebel
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: and he's a maverick and he's, you know, fighting the system.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: It's a small role, but like, give it a shot.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: And so the guy says, thank you so much. This
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: is going to be my opportunity to prove. So the
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: day of shooting comes along. This guy shows up. He's
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: dressed right. You know, he's in jeans or something. He's
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: looking Al Pacino-ish, you know, 70s, right? And he starts acting.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: And well, of course, he's acting exactly like the pompous bureaucrat,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: even though he's playing the bold counterculture rebel. And high says, okay, cut, cut, cut.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: You know, he goes up to him and says, look,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: you know, you asked me for this. You do understand
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to change here. You're going to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: have to act completely differently. You're gonna have to be
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: the opposite of what you've, you've done. You said you
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: wanted to break out. I understand. So they do like
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: 30 takes. And, and, and, and I love, loves this guy.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: He doesn't have any negative, but like the show must
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: go on, right? You can't just spend time shooting the
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: same scene over and over again. So he goes up
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: to me and says, you know, uh, tomorrow we're shooting
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: the pompous bureaucratic police chief. And I haven't cast that yet.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Do you want to play him? The guy says, yes,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: I very much want to play him. Yeah. And so,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a stereotype in Hollywood, like people don't
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: want to be typecast. But the fact is that a
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: lot of people made a very good living over many
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: decades just accepting that they were going to play a
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: certain role. And not everybody is as talented in the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: dimensionality of their acting to change. And I think Clint
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: Eastwood was very, very smart in saying, I can do
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: these roles, but those other ones there, I can't and
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to even try.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: And it's not to say that, you know, a Tom
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: Cruise type actor can't go and do something else. You know,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: we're recording this on the on the precipice of Digger, Alexander, Alexander,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Alejandro Inarratu's latest film that has been getting kind of
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: mixed reviews. And it has a Tom Cruise performance in
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: it that is seemingly very divisive. But at the same time,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: I looked at it and I thought to myself, I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: haven't seen Tom Cruise do anything that interesting since he
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: was in Tropic Thunder doing something very similar where it's
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: hard to tell that it's him. And he's not trafficking
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: in him being him on screen. He's trying to not
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: look like him. I mean, obviously, it's kind of hard
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: to hide it when you're advertising Tom Cruise's in your movie,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: unlike Tropic Thunder, which kind of got away with it because, again,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: it didn't traffic in Tom Cruise as much. But yeah,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: you know, there is something to be said for just
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: being good at what you do, being an expert, being adept,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: being good at what you do. I mean, we talked about,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: you know, people having... a set of skills and being
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: able to use those skills and use those skills well.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: I think Clint Eastwood is one of those actors. He
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: is a beyond competent actor. He makes acting look easy
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: because he is an immensely skilled and immensely competent actor.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: And yes, to your point, he did have somewhat of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: a limited range, but he did all kinds of stuff.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: Bridges of Madison County. Professor, don't forget, he was able
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: to be in those kinds of movies, too. Much later
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: in life.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: In movies, right? But we agree he didn't play a
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: radically different persona.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: No, and I think that that's to your point, though.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, to your point, he's in
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: that primarily because people would never have expected him to
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: work in that kind of movie. But to be fair,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: that role in that movie is also tailor-made for someone
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: like him. I mean, it's a role that he is not...
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: They would never have cast Clint Eastwood to be part
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: of the Stonewall Riot, okay? They would never have had
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood be like, the lead character in a film
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: about the Stonewall riots or stuff like that. Like he's just,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: that's not who he is. That's not the actor he is.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: That's not the roles he portrays. I agree 100%. Clint
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: Eastwood knew his, I wouldn't say knew his lane and
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: knew how to stay in it, but he knew what
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: kind of car to drive and he knew how fast
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: to drive it. And there are plenty of actors who
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: try to do 8 million different things and aren't able to.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: I think of Jim Carrey, like, I don't know if
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: Jim Carrey's really ever been able to get out of
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: the world of comedic acting. He tried. He really tried.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: But he was not successful. Adam Sandler was rather successful
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: at getting outside of his world of comedic acting. I mean,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: comedic actors have this problem where they can't do anything
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: else other than comedy. And their kind of typecast is like, oh,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: you're going to be the funny fat guy in this movie.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: And can't ever be taken seriously. And I think that
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: that's unfair because some of the best horror movies that
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: I've seen in the last 10 years were directed by
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: comedy writers who were, you know, Jordan Peele, Get Out, Nope, Us.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: all fantastic horror movies written by a comedy, you know,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: a comedian, a sketch comedy writer. Like it's the lane,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: sticking in one's lane normally tends to be the case,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: but there are plenty of people that are proving otherwise,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: I guess. Not every Bruce Willis as Bruno is a failure.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: You know, Donald Glover is a, multifaceted actor he is
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: able to direct he's able to write he's able to
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: music Clint Eastwood you know pretty famously was huge into
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: jazz and bebop music and I mean obviously he directed
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: the the film about bird with Forrest Whitaker but Clint
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Eastwood probably would say that he's a bit of a
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: frustrated musician at heart because you know as successful as
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: he is as a as an actor and a director
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: he's He probably never got the fame and success he
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: wanted as a musician. And it's like, well, Clint, you know,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: it's like Michael Jordan playing baseball. Like, I wish I
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: could be as good at one thing as you are
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: at that thing, but you want to do something else. And,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm I am good at podcasting and I'm
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: good at other things, too. But like, this is the
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: thing that I excel at. And I am not considering
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: myself as good at podcasting as Clint Eastwood is at acting.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: But There are just some things I know I cannot do.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: Don't ask me to do, don't ask me to be
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: your math guy. Don't ask me to be your, you know,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: the guy doing the long equations in the back. Like
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: that's not what I'm best suited for. And sometimes specialization
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: is important. Specialization is just as important as having someone
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: who's a generalist. And Clint Eastwood, I think, you know,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: for as much as we're talking about, like he knew
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: what to do and he knew his lane and stuff.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: He's also an immensely successful director. So Clint Eastwood, I
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: think in terms of being successful at the career of
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: being in acting and filmmaking, Clint Eastwood is a success
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: all the way as a director and an actor. And
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: that is That's a rarity in and of itself, because
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: being good at acting does not mean you're going to
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: be a good director at all. And it really doesn't
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: mean that you're going to have an eye for directing.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: And it doesn't mean that you're going to have an
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: eye for directing so much so that you win Academy
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: Awards and win Oscars. And, you know, and what's even
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: funnier is Clint Eastwood as an actor, the longevity of
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: his career is primarily based on the fact that he
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: was able to continue directing. Because as we both know,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: in Hollywood, After a certain age, actors of a certain
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: age are just not used as much as they, you know,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: as much as they were when they were younger. Clint
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: Eastwood kind of breaks that mold because he is Clint
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: Eastwood and there is no one else like him. But
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: at the same time, his ability to be a really
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: successful director, I think, helped extend the length of the
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: tail on his career. Because he was directing movies up until, what,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: two years ago? Three years ago? It's 2026. It's like
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: 96 years old. It's like, Clint, go home. Relax. What
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: else do you have to prove at this point? It's like, nothing.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: You just love, you love the craft so much that
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: that's why you're doing it. And that is readily apparent
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: to me in a film like Eiger Sanction, where it's like,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: you know what? He loves the craft of filmmaking and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: acting so much that he wants it to be as
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: good as possible, even if this is effectively, on the
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: face of it, a lark.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my wrap-up, is that this is a lark.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: It's got these moments of silliness. It's got these moments
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: of what today, and probably in 1975, we should have
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: labeled as cringe. and oh gosh did you really have
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: to have her say that and have her do that
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: we haven't mentioned some of the just embarrassing.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: Moments where we didn't mention it for a good reason.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah you know you you it i mean i was
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: 10 years old so that's that was my defense but
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: like uh when i was re-watching this movie i for
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: a couple of scenes i just looked over who I
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: was watching it with, and I had a look of
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: apology on my face. But the point was, this was fun, exciting,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: thriller at a time where, yeah, and we have the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: evidence in the mortality of one of the people who
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: worked on this mountain climbing part, stunts of the film,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: that this was real film by people who loved making movies,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: loved entertaining audiences, loved doing their best at what they did,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: and It's always going to work when you have that
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: kind of combination of formula, even if it's a little
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: creaky around the edges.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I think Eiger Sanction, if you wanted
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: to play it straight again, I don't think that there's
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: any like need to readapt it, but maybe do something
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: else where it is a, you know, I don't think
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: we've had a good mountain climbing movie in some time.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: It's been a minute since Cliffhanger. Since the last time
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: we had actors venturing into the mountains, into real mountains
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: to do real things. I mean, again, you know, those
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: those adaptations of the John Krakauer books, maybe not so much. But,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: you know, Eiger Sanction, I think, also stands alone as
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: just a impressive piece of filmmaking, like you said, for
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: a whole host of because Clint Eastwood is such a
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: good actor and so dedicated to his craft. that even
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: a film that could be a lark or is a
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: lark in a lot of other hands or other people's
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: kind of thoughts and ideas of why they wanted to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: do this or how they wanted to approach it Clint
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: Eastwood says, you know what? No, I'm going to do
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: it straight. We're going to do it serious. We're going
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: to do it in a way that is just it
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: is a James Bond. I mean, I don't know how
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: else to put this, but like, you know, we kind
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: of danced around it this entire episode. This about is
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: about as close as Clint Eastwood is ever going to
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: get to being in a James Bond movie. And you
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: know what? I know they always talked about, well, James
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: Bond has to be British and there's no way James
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Bond could ever be an American. I think James Brolin
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: was as close as they ever got. But I would
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: make a case that if you had been casting James
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: Bond at a certain time in film history, Clint Eastwood's
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: name would have come up a couple times in conversation.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: And watching him in Eiger Sanction doing a, quote, send-up, unquote,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: of James Bond, I think it's very smart... that he
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: is just like, you know what? No, I just want
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: to do James Bond. Let me do James Bond. And
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: even though, like you said, it's creaky around the edges,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: I think this is one of the more fun films
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: I've watched in quite some time. I have not had
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: such fun with a movie in a long time. Yes,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: there are parts of it that have not aged well.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: And there are parts of James Bond, you know, to
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: speak to the James Bond of it all, There are
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: parts of James Bond that have not aged well either.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: James Bond is a little less misogynistic than Clint Eastwood
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: is in this movie, which is crazy because James Bond
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: is pretty misogynistic. But, you know, in this movie, Clint
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: Eastwood is sexually harassing his students, literally, at the beginning
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: of the film. Now they play it for laughs and
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: they go a different direction with it, but still what
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: he's doing, not okay. And, you know, like you said,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: taking that out of it, it's still a great movie.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: Even with it in there, it doesn't get in the
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: way of things. This is a, you know, it's not
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: a movie that gets discussed all the time in Eastwood's filmography.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of other movies. You mentioned the
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: Man With No Name trilogy, Bridges of Madison County. Like
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: there's a letters from Iwo Jima, a film that I
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: know you want to cover at some point. There's a
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: lot of film that Clint Eastwood has made and he
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: has had a very he has had a varied career.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: And I am so, you know, kind of lucky that
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: we are able to enjoy his career now. And as
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: he's kind of done with with directing, we're able to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: look at everything that he's made because. he has made
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: a varied amount of things. And there's probably a podcast
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: out there or an idea out there of someone to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: watch all the films of Clint Eastwood, either directed or
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: starred in. Because again, he has really spanned the gamut
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: of things. And I have not talked about him a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: whole lot on my show. He is kind of a
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: blind spot, as it were, on my own show. But
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: anytime I get to watch him in a film, I'm
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: really grateful because he is a fantastic actor in a
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: way that, you know, that mold... The mold of Clint
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: Eastwood was broken when they made him, clearly. But, you know,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: like Dr. Perlmutter mentioned, there's plenty of other Clint Eastwood
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: things out there that aren't him climbing mountains to talk about.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: And we probably will talk about some of them in
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: the future because yeah, there's a lot. But until we
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: talk about maybe one of those films, either for required
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: viewing or the culture cast, you can find this show
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: over at weirdingwaymedia.com where all the shows that I work
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: on can be found. And yeah, all the shows that
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: everybody that I work with can be found. You can
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: find Projection Booth, Midnight Viewing, Movie Meltdown, Filmentaries, Feminine Critique,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: 80s TV ladies. All that can be found at weirdingwaymedia.com.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: So head on over there, do your due diligence, listen
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: to as much or as little as you want, but
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: listen to something. And like, rate, and review it on
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: iTunes and then Spotify in that order, because that's the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: order that helps. And yeah, as always, we'll catch you
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: on the next episode.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you.