What Clint Eastwood told Saul Rubinek before Unforgiven’s Final Scene

probably one of the greatest westerns ever made and ended up winning oscar for best picture uh and your role in that was really interesting because you were the author of a book that was being written about richard harris's character and you were following him along and you're really you know reacting and listening to all this crazy behavior that's happening around you where you know gene hackman is kind of attacking richard harris and you're you know witnessing the you know the climax of the film this huge shootout in the saloon uh so how did you sort of approach that character when you read the script um this was really an amazing script i was working with jack nicholson on a movie called man trouble and jack nicholson said i hear by the grapevine that you're gonna be auditioning for my old pal clint eastwood i said how'd you hear that i said i hear gossip you know and i said uh let me give you a little advice and i said okay when's the last time you auditioned for anything jack he said you think i'm an [ __ ] i said no no no i just think that i could tell you a little bit about auditioning and you could tell me how to be a movie star but i think you know as far as advice is going well no i'll i was just [ __ ] around but i said i'll take any advice you give me he said uh just do more than it's required we'll do more than is required you're gonna put yourself on tape i heard i said yeah you're going to go into that casting office and put yourself on tape i said no i don't want to do they said don't do that make your own take which is now common but in those days in 91 or 90 or whatever it was 91 it wasn't common and um i said i'm going to do it to myself and do that do that so i put myself on tape lit it properly did more than they asked me to do did other scenes that weren't required and some people hate that but i got cast right away and uh i asked him when i met him i got brought out to do a costume fitting and a boot fitting the boots were all made for us i still have those boots and um and i met him for the first time and i said why did i get cast i said your tape stood out i told him the jack nicholson story he said he was right he was right and uh i said uh let me ask you something you're an actor why don't you why you weren't seeing any actors no actors everybody said no no you can't i wanted to see you in person he said no he doesn't see anybody in prison i said clinton what yeah i've read that like even today he just sees people on tape and the first time that he meets an actor is kind of the first day they're on the set so when we were on the set um i remember saying to him listen i've got this idea can i talk to you about sure i said you know it's a great script and everything but my character w w doesn't talk for the first level i'm not i don't want lines but he he doesn't say anything but his attitude that's written there is very nervous and fearful and he's coming to the west for the first time and then eventually you know he comes out on the sidewalk with with english bob and and he's surrounded by deputies and guns and he pees his pants and that's when they ask him what do you do i'm a writer you know letters and such no no i write you know and uh i said i think it's wrong he said what's wrong i don't think my attitude should be nervous i think i should be full of myself i think i should be smug and i think i should feel like i know exactly where i'm going and then and then when i'm you know it'll be kind of a nice surprise you know and he said and you're telling me this because i said because you're the director of the movie and i'm changing what's in the script he said okay so i'll you'll get to know me and you'll find out that first of all you're you're um you're in charge of the department of w.w beauchamp that's your department not mine you're in charge of the character not me you don't need to tell me everything that you want to do unless you're changing dialogue but i'm not you're not changing dialogue anything you want to do with this just do it and i'll be sure to ask you if i don't understand something and he was true to his word and i'll i'll tell you that uh i have never seen actors directed less than i have and unforgiven uh he would say i you know it's up to you but if you want to be lit i would move a little bit to your left you know you know so that's what's interesting about clint eastwood is that um you know especially compared to other directors who are more kind of in your face he casts the right people that he believes he's lucky and then he lets them kind of interpret the script and do their job and by doing that and not be not being so micromanaging it allows you know interesting moments to happen and not just the actors everyone yeah everyone the whole crew you know i mean he uh he had my interpretation of him directing was that many directors that i've worked with have a a t-shirt on and the t-shirt says on the front my vision and on the back it says shall be realized and if clint had a t-shirt on it would say my vision on the front on the back it would say hopefully will be transcended and that's the essence of collaboration don't forget this is a guy whose heart is really as a jazz musician right he's an improviser and a jazz musician that's where he is that's where it's really kind of what he loves and along with movie making and acting but he's a jazz pianist and uh so that element of who he is is in his work um kind of like the way bob dylan likes to record rough stuff you know he likes to record it rough and he likes that kind of reality to happen he never even says action because he hates the fact that as an actor he hated that stress and he doesn't want to give it to anybody else he's just all right go ahead anytime you feel like you want to start it's not the only way to direct and and it's just his way to direct and i'll say i'll say this it works most of the time but don't forget that when we did unforgiven maybe people forgotten this he had had five financial not critical but five financial failures in a row i remember what the movies are with their pink cadillac and titra or white hunter black heart there were a number of them bird there were a number of them that were really interesting films that hadn't made money or much money and so this was a bigger movie and he had more people above the line bigger stars than he normally did usually just him and one other name but this was a number of names so he didn't direct actors and he he let it all loose you know um uh he liked the feeling that things were happening i tell you you know if you were even knowledgeable about film and you went on the unforgiven set and clint was not let's say he wasn't a famous face as he is and you knew a lot about what movie sets were like it would take you 15-20 minutes to figure out who the director was on that set right you couldn't you he was not standing around giving orders he wasn't like an authority figure people didn't see world war ii he was but he just he was an authority figure but a very quiet unassuming uh one a very gentle authority figure and he had that script for almost a decade before he decided he was right for it you know it's an amazing that's a very unusual film i i met david peoples uh years later a few years later after doing it not that many but three years later i was shooting a movie in san francisco and david peeples the author was working or living in berkeley and i i met him for the first time and i said what was this like he said can you imagine i mean i wrote this script in the 70s 78 and then francis ford coppola bought it there were a few pages that were changed it was supposed to be a zoetrope first film first western by coppola but it ended up getting sent as a writing sample to clint who bought it from copeland sat on it for a decade and then i wasn't on the set and then one day i got a call from clint saying do you want to come to a screening of the movie and i said wow and so then david went to l.a and went to i guess went to mel paso and they had a screening room and they you saw the movie he said i was expected to be in an audience i said you weren't it was me and clint and the movie and i said what happened he said i wept man i said why he said because it's not a word was changed you gotta i mean i saw what i wrote in 78. he said you've got to understand that as writers we basically sell our children they're brought up by other people so we can eat you sell your children off one by one i think that's always been uh clint wood's philosophy when he commits to a script he commits to that draft of the script he doesn't go in and make drastic changes he's very like you know this is what i believe in that's why i'm committing to the script well certainly was in this case and i just can't get over how david peoples must have felt watching that when you never see that i mean scripts are rainbow colors by the time you end them because every time there's a change in a line in a movie script it's a different colored paper with a different date on it so you have a script that looks like a rainbow by the time you're done but that script was all white pages when we were done it was all white pages not a word had been changed in that script not a word i must say about the performance in the you know the last scene in the movie when you're in that saloon you look absolutely terrified i mean i don't know how you uh how that where that came from but i mean it's incredible the way it is so concentrated in the moment of the chaos that's happening i don't remember i remember any of that i do remember this here's what i remember out of that scene i remember this hey clint do you ever work with video assist you said not unless they're stunts you know really i mean you're directing and you're acting in it and he goes hey man i've only got two performances so i've got brim down rima funny man and that was a funny line and uh okay so we're doing the scene just the two two of us everybody else is dead and there are only two of us left and he does his close-up and uh he's famous for what he does is he does two takes and then moves on otherwise it's jerking off you know i mean two good takes not just two takes just too good once he gets two good tanks he'll move on at least that's what he operated in unforgiven and i heard from other actors that was cool so he did two good takes and then i and i was nervous because i i said hey he said what i said ask the director for another take oh i said you said you think i can do it better i said yeah okay but if i use that third take and it is better i'm not giving you any credit for it i said okay that's fine so i was nervous because i said that but i did say it and he did and the take that's in there is the third take as i recall but i remember saying i think you could do another take it was a big thing to say you

Channel: Jog Road Productions

Views: 882,148

Keywords: Clint Eastwood (Film Director), Saul Rubinek (Film Actor), Film (Media Genre), Actor (Profession), Unforgiven (Film), Film Director (Profession), Screenwriter (Profession), Morgan Freeman (Film Actor), Geoffrey Freedman, Erica Stein, Jog Road Productions, Road to Cinema, Academy Awards (Award), Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences (Nonprofit Organization), Gene Hackman (Musical Artist)

Id: rWUdlf_vEJ0

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 25 2014