Tuesday 31 May 2016

Happy 86th Birthday

Yes, it’s that time again. May 31st of course signifies a very special day. So on behalf of all the loyal fans from around the globe - The Clint Eastwood Archive would like to wish you a very happy 86th Birthday. Beers to you Amigo – for all the good times. Long may they continue to enthral us. 

Friday 13 May 2016

Clint takes a shine to Fritz Lang's Metropolis robot

From my collection of cuttings, Dateline 1985 Clint meets Fritz Lang's Robot from Metropolis - Clint was in Paris during a retrospective of his work and was honoured by the French Government with a chevalier Des Arts et lettres decoration. Shortly after he visited the UK attending a Guardian Lecture and appearing on LWT (London Weekend Television) for an interview with Michael Aspel on Aspel & Co.

Heartbreak Ridge Rare Advertising for UK Warner Home Video

I was going through some of my 80's material this morning, when I came across this, which was part of the advertising campaign from Warner Bros. for the Heartbreak Ridge Home video release. The date on the reverse states 'Available from 30th October' Also in the same envelope was the promo version of the big case WHV sleeve - which were so popular with fans at the time. Found quite a few advertising pieces, so thought I would post a few here. Is it almost 30 years! 

   

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Peter Hanley’s book on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly AVAILABLE NOW

I had the pleasure of an email this morning from Dr. Peter Hanley to inform me that his long anticipated 'bible' on Sergio Leone’s epic film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is now available.


This project has been a massive undertaking by Peter, a dedicated journey which has been nothing short of miraculous.  Sergio Leone’s monumental film will be celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. The aim of this book project is essentially to document this classic film in the greatest detail. Highlights will include over 20 interviews with cast and crew, more than 200 rare behind-the-scenes stills, as well as detailed analysis of the historical background (including numerous historical comparison photos, maps etc), documentation of all shooting locations, lobby cards, posters, and more.  
An extensive volume of information has been gained by the generous input of cast and crew, with the following being interviewed on one or more occasions:
Eli Wallach (“the Ugly”), Ennio Morricone (music), Bruno Battisti D’Amario (guitar), Carla Leone (wife of Sergio Leone), Luciano Vincenzoni (script writer), Alan Van Cleef (son of Lee Van Cleef), Eugenio Alabiso (editor), Chelo Alonso (actress; Steven’s wife), Aldo Sanbrell (actor; member of Angel Eyes’ gang), Frank Braña (actor in opening scene), Elisabetta Simi (wife of Carlo Simi, art director), Fabrizio Gianni (assistant director), Giancarlo Santi (assistant director), Tonino Delli Colli (director of photography), Franco Di Giacomo (camera operator), Sergio Salvati (assistant camera operator), Alberto Lardani (son of Iginio Lardani, titles designer), Vittorio De Sisti (sound engineer), Domingo Contreras (extra), Eros Bacciucchi (special effects), Giovanni Corridori (special effects), Silvana Bacci (actress in deleted scene), Ricardo Palacios (actor in deleted scene) – The list is endless.
The book is lavished with numerous stills, including over 200 behind-the-scenes stills, most of which have been scanned from original negatives and not previously published. The format of the hardback covered book is 26.5 x 30 cm, which allows much space for large format photos (on high-quality, coated 135 g/m2 paper). Each still is accompanied by a detailed legend.  An extensive collection of country-of-origin (Italian) lobby cards and posters are dispersed throughout the book.  
In collaboration with expert Ulrich Angersbach, a detailed description of deleted scenes is provided in the book. The legendary cut “Socorro” scene is reconstructed with the help of stills and interviews with actors involved in this sequence. In addition, a synopsis of the original Italian script for the complete film will be provided, and differences between the script and film will be elucidated. One of the characteristics of a Sergio Leone film, especially The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, is attention to detail. Historical details of the Civil War period were closely studied and reproduced on the wide screen, albeit with embellishments. Numerous examples of this attention to detail will be presented throughout the book. In particular, many examples of the “appearances” of details gleaned from historical Civil War photos are presented throughout the book.
As Peter pointed out ‘The GBU-book is available at "Amazon.de" (link below) and is shipped/distributed worldwide. We will endeavour to list the book at other Amazon marketplaces, such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.es etc, but, in all cases, the book will be shipped from an Amazon distribution centre in Leipzig, Germany.’

I will be reviewing Peter’s 420 page book for The Clint Eastwood Archive, and very proud to be associated with such an incredible project. 


To order this beautiful publication click here or click directly on book cover at the top of the Archive's sidebar 

Hang ‘em High: The unreleased soundtrack

The story of Hang ‘em High's unreleased Soundtrack:
The CD Acetate of Dominic Frontiere’s soundtrack with dialogue


During the process of releasing a CD, the music is mastered and sequenced (sometimes many times) before it’s sent to the factory to be manufactured and released.  During these processes all parties involved contribute their feedback after the first “test CD” is reviewed.  Then the recording may be changed and / or adjusted, so you never know what differences may be on these test pressings. 
This item is what collectors call a CD Acetate or Test Pressing, which is essentially a glorified term for what is ultimately a CD-R - although as explained above, this is well in advance of a wide release and may be different from the final version.
In the case of the Rykodisc Hang ‘em High Soundtrack CD, it was planned to be part of the first wave of MGM Soundtrack releases until legal concerns with Clint Eastwood caused its delay and finally, cancellation. One of the central issues with the proposed Hang ‘em High soundtrack was the inclusion of dialogue, (which this version does include). Before it was cancelled, a lot of work went into the mastering, so there were many iterations, with this one being from 8/1/97.
As the story goes, there were a lot of people unhappy about dialogue being included on the original Rykodisc release.  I spoke to the person who was responsible for making the deal with MGM (the Senior VP of A&R and Special Projects at Rykodisc) and was responsible for producing the first wave of releases with Andrea Troolin. These acetates appeared from Northeastern Digital, the mastering house that did most of the Rykodisc work from Bowie to the sale to Chris Blackwell in the late 90's. When these acetates were produced there were 2 copies for internal label approval and somewhere between 3 to 5 copies for MGM approval. These acetate discs were struck from the original two-track album masters. Initially, they were not in good shape and one of the reasons why it was remastered many times. There was an eventual breakthrough later ‘when Gato Barbiere asked MGM to allow us to add more stuff to Last Tango in Paris, and MGM realized there was an upside to doing them right.’  

However, MGM still had concerns and were not exactly clear regarding their rights beyond the soundtrack albums that had been initially issued. They were also concerned about certain repercussions, which I won’t elaborate on.  In any case, ‘MGM cancelled the release at the last minute’ because they feared (of those repercussions). ‘We had cut all the dialogue off, the master and artwork was mocked up and approved’ but the CD release never got to see the light of day.

On purchasing this test disc, I of course did a little research which in turn did substantiate a great deal of this story. By coincidence, I’m fortunate enough to have in my collection an official MGM / Rycodisc 2 CD promo called ‘Sneak Preview’. This was issued to promote the first wave of CD soundtracks back in 1997 and ties in with the date on the test disc (a couple of tracks from Hang ‘em high was also featured on the promo). Furthermore, the fold out insert inside the MGM promo features Hang ‘em High (among many others) as forthcoming releases along with their assigned catalogue numbers. Hang ‘em High is listed there as Rykodisc RCD10703 - the number which corresponds with the hand written inscription to the front of the acetate and printed on the spine.  
It’s an interesting little story which does suggest a certain amount of provenance. The Hang ‘em High soundtrack has of course seen many releases, the best of which I would recommend La La Land’s studio-endorsed CD (LLLCD 1053) which was a limited edition of just 3000 copies. The CD was paired up with Dominic Frontiere’s soaring score for The Aviator starring Christopher Reeve and Rosanna Arquette. Whilst it has been out of print for some considerable time now, it can no doubt still be found through the usual channels and auction sites - although be prepared to pay a handsome price for it. 

Friday 6 May 2016

Screenwriter David Webb Peoples and the Unforgiven Script

In order to provide this post, I’ve combined material from two main pieces (FilmCraft Screenwriting: Interview with David Webb Peoples by Tim Grierson) and (Q&A with David Webb Peoples: A Reluctant Hollywood Hero by Elaine Dutka of the LA Times). It’s a fascinating insight and an interesting account of how Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winning film Unforgiven came to be made and its long journey from script to screen.

'Unforgiven' is one of the great masterpieces of all time. He [David] believes that having Clint Eastwood was the only way they could get the movie made, but I believe that the real star of 'Unforgiven' is David Webb Peoples. You could say that he wrote the best film in two genres. The best sci-fi film I’ve ever seen is 'Blade Runner', and possibly the best and most literate Western was 'Unforgiven’ - James Dalessandro

Starting his career as an editor, David Webb Peoples began writing screenplays in the 1970s, producing a series of scripts that eventually brought him to the attention of director Tony Scott. Through Scott’s encouragement, Peoples became involved with Blade Runner (1982), the seminal science-fiction film directed by Scott’s brother Ridley. However, one of Peoples’ greatest successes came more than 15 years after he first conceived the idea: Director Clint Eastwood optioned his script of The Cut-Whore Killings, eventually turning it into his Best Picture winning Unforgiven (1992), which netted Peoples a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination.

I started getting into movies in my late teens, but I didn’t think about movies as writing. In fact, movies at that time made me think contemptuously of writers. I thought the creative world was about images. I didn’t have much respect for the written word. I was sort of a young brat and liked movies from Europe. Somehow, I didn’t think people wrote those scripts—I thought those images just collected themselves. I was very naïve.

Instead of writing, I became a film editor, which was manipulating images. I was mostly editing documentaries, and in documentaries you are more of a storyteller as an editor than you are if you’re editing a feature. In a feature, the writer and the director are telling the story, and the editor is putting it together, which is not to diminish in any way the editor’s role, because the editor makes it magic. But the actual storytelling is often more on the shoulders of an editor in documentary films. 

I wrote The Cut-Whore Killings, which became Unforgiven, around 1976. I’ve always been drawn to what are called the revisionist Westerns instead of the big John Ford movies. I like things like The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) and The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), which I consider a masterpiece. But I was also influenced by Taxi Driver (1976), which I thought was an amazing movie. Paul Schrader just opened up the world with that movie. When I first started writing, I didn’t want to have anybody get killed in any script I wrote because I was just so put off by the unreality. When people get killed in the movies, it’s like in James Bond, which is perfectly legitimate because James Bond is James Bond, and that’s the reality they set up. But even in other movies, you kill 10 people and then you go have breakfast - it’s as if it didn’t have any impact whatsoever. But all of a sudden I see Taxi Driver and people are getting killed, and the characters maintained how they would be in real life. But at the same time, it’s an entertaining movie, and that was always important to me - I wanted to write things that were entertaining. I didn’t want to write obscure art pictures with little lessons in them—I wanted to write entertainment. Taxi Driver opened up what entertainment could be. It said, “Yeah, you can write this kind of stuff and it’ll be entertaining.”


My wife Janet Peoples and I began writing together around 1995 as a practical consideration. We've written good stuff, but it doesn't get made, and we've also written uncredited stuff on other pictures. But the bottom line is, we have a pile of scripts that are just not in sync with the times. We haven’t had a lot of success because we tend to write a lot like the 1970s and early 1980s films we loved. Those movies were what inspired Janet and myself to be writers. Here was a time when you could pull out all the stops and write something that was entertaining, that would dazzle people, that would be enormously successful, and that you could feel good about. It was a very exciting time, and it’s hard getting those pictures made now. Clint Eastwood still does really strong, wonderful character movies, but he’s not going to do everything you write.

I'm not eager to see the movies that I've written, and I don’t think Janet necessarily is either. It’s not that we've never seen any of them, but if you write a really good script, that is in itself an accomplishment. That was something I picked up from William Goldman: I’ve never met him, but he has always been one of my mentors. He was able to make the script itself a finished thing—you could read it and see the movie. That’s what Janet and I are doing, and when other people make the movie, good for them. That’s great, but the part that we did is on paper. It’s an enormous thrill to see Unforgiven and to see the performances—the magic those actors put into those parts is a pleasure to see. But I didn’t do that. That’s what they did.”

Excerpt from FilmCraft: Screenwriting edited by Tim Grierson © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group. All Rights Reserved.

Try as he might, Berkeley-based screenwriter David Webb Peoples can't distance himself from the Hollywood scene. With three high-profile films on the screen simultaneously, he's been besieged with calls from the press asking him to discuss his work--and from industry types offering him more.

His revisionist Western "Unforgiven" is being mentioned as a probable Oscar contender. A recently discovered "director's cut" of the 1982 cult favourite "Blade Runner," has just been reissued. And his dark comedy "Hero," directed by Stephen Frears, opened last Friday.

Question: "Hero," like "Unforgiven" and "Blade Runner," takes place in a world of moral ambiguity. Heroes and villains are presented as flip sides of the same coin.

Answer: I've never succeeded in writing "good guys" and "bad guys"--and, believe me, I've tried. A lot of entertainment revolves around them. As politicians have discovered, if you can devise a bad guy, people will listen. Others are far ahead of me when it comes to moral ambiguity, though. "Silkwood" was a hell of a script. Karen wasn't a saint. She didn't pet dogs and wasn't easily sympathetic but, thanks to the screenwriter, you respect what's good about her. Same goes for Paul Schrader's Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver."



Q: "Hero," ironically, comes on the heels of "Unforgiven," which you wrote back in 1976. Why did it take so long getting that project off the ground?

A: Francis Ford Coppola optioned it in '84. He took it around, but couldn't get financing. Clint picked up the option in 1985 and said he was making it "next year" a couple of times. The year before last, my wife was at the Telluride Film Festival and Clint walked on stage. He was overwhelmed by the scenery, he told the audience, and figured it was probably time to make his Western. I was thrilled.

Q: Ever wonder what "Unforgiven" would have looked like had Coppola been at the helm?

A: Francis would have done it brilliantly as he does everything else, but it's hard to imagine anyone making it as straightforwardly and uncompromisingly as Clint. No studio would have made it that way--dark, moody. With a lot of voices, things generally end up becoming blander and more accessible. "Unforgiven" was Clint Eastwood saying "This is what I'm going to do . . . get out of my way."

Q: You never set foot on the set and had no one to "protect" your words. Yet the script that was shot is said to be virtually unchanged from the original.

A: That's true. I didn't meet Clint in person until he invited me to see the movie at Warner Bros. But he and I were enough in sync that he didn't feel it necessary to ask for rewrites. One of the stars, Francis Fisher, told me that this was the first time she saw a shooting script that was entirely in white. Most of them are multi-coloured, full of blue and red pages or whatever representing various changes
in the screenplay.

Q: Westerns are said to be out of favour--and this one wasn't a shoot-em-up tailored for a mass audience. Were you surprised with the response?

A: I was surprised--and happy for Clint, who is long overdue in getting respect he deserves. Though he's perceived as a commercial icon, he's made bold and terrific movies.

From October 5th, 1992 -Elaine Dutka - LA Times Staff Writer - All Rights Reserved.

Eastwood on the script:
I bought the “Unforgiven” script in 1980 and put it in a drawer and said I’ll do this someday its good material and I’ll rewrite it. And I took it from the drawer ten years later and called up the writer and said I had a couple of ideas and wanted to rewrite some of it, and he was fine with that. I told him I might call him because I wanted him to approve my changes. So I went to work and the more I tooled with it, the more I realized   I was killing it with improvements. So I went back to him and said that I had been working on these ideas and I really felt I was wrecking it, so I was just going to go with it the way it was.   
Frances Fisher who plays Strawberry Alice in Unforgiven said "that was the first time I saw a shooting script that was entirely in white. Most of them are multi-coloured, full of blue and red pages or whatever representing various changes in the screenplay."
As an interesting footnote, Richard Schickel's book Clint Eastwood stated that the star's rapt interest appalled his then story editor (and Josey Wales screenwriter) Sonia Chernius. She said of the script - "We would have been far better off not to have accepted trash like this piece of inferior work," she stated in a memo. "I can't think of one good thing to say about it. Except maybe, get rid of it FAST."

Eastwood interviewed # 09 Why He Usually Goes for the First or Second Take

From the book "Film Craft: Directing," Screen International editor Mike Goodridge’s compiled interviews with 16 of the world's biggest directors…Below is an excerpt from the book: the main text of Goodridge's edited interview with Clint Eastwood, in which Eastwood shares his early experiences gaining perspectives on directing as an actor on "Rawhide" to agreeing to direct "J. Edgar."  He explains what makes a good actor and why he usually ends up using the first or second take of a shot.

Over the years when I was an actor, I became interested in working with actors and found different atmospheres that I liked with different directors that made acting more compatible. The sets didn't have to be nerve-wracking or bell-ringing or booby-trapped as it was with some. I started developing my own theories on it and incorporated all my experience into them. A lifetime in movies is the same as a lifetime in any profession: you are constantly a student. Every film is different and has different obstacles to overcome and that’s what makes it interesting. That’s why I continue to do it and enjoy the challenges of it. As long as you remain open to new ideas and developing your own philosophies as you go, it’s a very enjoyable process.

I took from everyone I worked with of course—from Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, and all the directors on the TV series “Rawhide” (1959–66). You see different people approaching things differently and you can tell when they have a certain amount of knowledge or when they’re faking it. Subconsciously I think you take from everybody. Sometimes when I am doing a scene, I try to think how so-and-so did it in that 1936 film. Or you remember seeing some effect as a kid and try to get the same effect. As an American kid growing up, watching Howard Hawks or John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder, you watched their work and it was amazing how they created certain excitement in their films.
When I did “Rawhide,” we had a lot of old-time directors who had stopped doing movies—people like Stuart Heisler and Laszlo Benedek. I had also done three weeks on a movie with William Wellman, and watched everything he did—how he approached things, how people responded to him, how he liked the sets, the atmosphere. I found out what he liked actors to do and what he didn't like.
For me, it’s very important to have a comfortable and calm environment on set. It’s important that the actors are submerging themselves into the character to the greatest degree and the best way to do that is to give them full confidence and ensure they don’t feel like they’re riding a ship that’s on the brink of disaster.

Sometimes I rehearse with the actors, sometimes I don’t. Most actors have a pretty good idea coming to it, because it’s what attracted them to the role. Some are extremely instinctive and grasp the character right on. A great example of that would be Gene Hackman in “Unforgiven.” He had the character so perfect right out of the box on every shot, every sequence, and he really didn't have to do anything different—he was amazing. Sometimes when I'm rehearsing for a camera move, the performance is so good that I just turn the camera on, not wanting to lose it. I've seen it happen in the past that actors come out really good at the start and then all of a sudden, they start killing it with improvements.
Sometimes there are actors who can drift in and jump in and out more easily. As a director, you have one relationship with them. Others need to stay in character and you have another relationship with them. I remember when we were doing “Rawhide” on soundstages, people would use megaphones to get everybody quiet and the more people yelled “Quiet,” the louder the extras would yell, nothing was quiet. I realized that actors need a little bit of time to think, not feel pressured about the whole thing, because not all of them are extroverted people who can’t wait to clown around in front of a camera. They want to stay there and get into a role, and I want to keep them there as long as they want to be there.
I have a reputation for always going with the first or second take. Of course, I don’t always get it in one or two takes. It’s more that I want to get the feeling that we’re moving. You have to keep the crew and the production going at a business- like pace so they get the feeling they are part of something that’s actually moving forward.

The cast and crew feel like they are going somewhere when they go to work each day and feel like they are accomplishing something and not just doing the same scene each day. I like to do whole sequences in one day, so everyone has the feeling that all the parts are there and, besides, it helps for editing purposes. It’s my job to make sure that the set and atmosphere that everyone is working in is comfortable. That’s the way to get the best out of people. Sometimes I don’t change a good script at all.  I bought the “Unforgiven” script in 1980 and put it in a drawer and said I’ll do this someday it’s good material and I’ll rewrite it. And I took it from the drawer ten years later and called up the writer and said I had a couple of ideas and wanted to rewrite some of it, and he was fine with that. I told him I might call him because I wanted him to approve my changes. So I went to work and the more I tooled with it, the more I realized   I was killing it with improvements. So I went back to him and said that I had been working on these ideas and I really felt I was wrecking it, so I was just going to go with it the way it was. So I did. Of course, you make improvements along the way, but generally when you start intellectualizing it, you can take the spirit out of it.

On other occasions, you get a script where the idea is terrific, but the execution isn't quite right or doesn't suit the actors that you’re hiring, so you adapt it and add things to it. I've made changes to everything I've done, but with some of them   it’s a minor knick-knack here and there, and on others you rework it entirely from the start.

During shooting, I have certain objectives, but I am never locked into things. In other words, when I am going on a location, I don’t say it has to be this way because this is the way we looked at it two months ago so this is the way it has to be.  I'm always flexible, I always improvise. If we looked at the location in the fall and the sun in the summer makes it a different place, I change it. If an actor is left-handed instead of right-handed, I ask them to come in whichever direction is more natural to them. I am using simplistic analysis here, but there is no rule that has to be stuck to rigidly.
Likewise, I am flexible with the script during production. Sometimes I get an idea in one scene that will stimulate something else. Or I’d like to see the actors do that, or maybe this character would do that.

I always like to feel I am doing something different on every picture. If I'm not, if I feel like I am doing something reminiscent of a lot of things I've done before, it would cause me anxiety that   I was repeating myself. That’s why after “Unforgiven,” I thought that was a perfect time for me to stop doing the western. Not for anybody else, but I would hate to be doing the same genre continually. That’s why I left Italy, because after doing three movies with Sergio Leone I felt I had done as much as I could with that character and I thought it was time for me to go home and get other ideas.

When I did "Bird," it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me. But whether it’s a drama or an action film, the story content is everything to me. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes not, and that is in the eye of the beholder. You definitely have to step up to the bat and try to hit the ball out of the park. If you don’t, you should at least try to be innovative, and hopefully the audience will respond to that.
I always think about the audience. When you are thinking about telling the story, you are thinking about how you want the story to be as interesting as it possibly can be for the audience—otherwise it will never take on the life it’s supposed to have out there with the audience.
It’s hard to be a judge of that. You can’t start thinking about it too much because a lot of wonderful movies haven’t done any business   and a lot of not-so-wonderful movies have done tremendous business. All you can do is use yourself as the audience; ask yourself if you were going to the theatre how would you like to see this. What about this actor in that part? In every element of the film, there’s always that thing an audience is going to see and judge, like or dislike. Of course, once you have committed yourself to doing it on a film, that’s it. If the audience likes it, that’s great; if it doesn't, go back to the drawing board for the next feature.

I can work quite fast. If the next project is there and it’s good and it’s something that’s been brewing for a while, I can move onto it. If it’s not there, then I won’t. For example, when I was doing post-production and editing on “Mystic River,” I read “Million Dollar Baby.” I had read the book it came from some years earlier and liked the script and I thought “Well, I’ll do this.” And they asked when I wanted to do it and I said “well, right away.” We ended up getting Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank, and we just went ahead and started doing it. One went right behind the other, but it doesn't always happen like that. Sometimes you have to wait for a while for a very good script to come and I don’t make films just to be working. I might have done that when I was younger, but now it has to be something that I have a certain feeling for.

I am never looking for anything specific. With “J. Edgar,” I read the script and found it interesting and said I would like to do it. It’s not like I was longing to do something on J. Edgar Hoover, although I had grown up on J. Edgar Hoover as a little boy. Everyone knew about him as the head of the FBI and I was always kind of curious about it. And, of course, he was an odd character who people were curious about, so it was interesting to explore a little bit. I don’t always shoot a lot of coverage. 

I try to shoot just what I want to see and sometimes it doesn't work out that way, because when you get into editing, you realize maybe there’s something wrong or there’s a redundancy to one scene as it fits in the puzzle and you forego it. It’s the final moulding process, like working with a piece of clay and you can break a film in editing by doing it improperly or enhance it with good editing.

My relationship with Warner Bros. helps me.  As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language, then hopefully it’s a success. You can always look at it like it’s a crapshoot. Either way, it’s a lot of good people working hard to tell a story. It’s really a little army, or a platoon, and you’re going out into the field and trying to make something. You’re only as good as your weakest link and I try to get everybody to contribute imaginatively. If somebody has an idea, I don’t care what department they are in, I listen to it because people come up with good ideas. And because directors have so much to do, you can stymie yourself by not paying attention to what’s around you.

Filmcraft: Directing by Michael Goodridge is available on Kindle or Paperback here 
Press here for the complete Eastwood Interviewed Index

Monday 2 May 2016

Clint's 'Sully' filmed almost entirely on IMAX

Alex Billington, April 21, 2016, Source: Variety

Step aide Christopher Nolan, its Clint Eastwood who is stepping up and making a movie shot entirely with IMAX cameras. Following the success of American Sniper, Eastwood is now working on his next film Sully, about airplane pilot Captain Sully as played by Tom Hanks, and apparently he's shooting most of the film using IMAX cameras. Variety reports that IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond has confirmed that Eastwood loves the cameras and in fact it may be the first film that will be released fully IMAX after being made entirely with IMAX "technology". Eastwood's longtime cinematographer Tom Stern shot the film on ARRI ALEXA 65 & XT. Not many other details are known yet, but the film has already finished shooting.

Richard Gelfond
"Clint decided to try it and he just loves the cameras," IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond tells Variety. "It will be the first film released where virtually the entire movie was made with the technology."

That's the quote from the Variety article, and there's not much more to it. The film tells the story of Chesley Sullenberger, aka "Sully", who became a hero after gliding his commercial airplane along the water into the Hudson River in 2009, saving all of his 155 passengers. Sully is directed by Eastwood, from a script written by Todd Komarnicki, based on the autobiography Highest Duty. The film stars Tom Hanks, Anna Gunn, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Holt McCallany, Jamey Sheridan, and Jerry Ferrara. Warner Bros is planning to release Sully in theaters starting on September 9th, 2016. We're still waiting to see a trailer and we're still waiting to see if WB pushes the IMAX angle in their marketing.