Clint Eastwood

by Richard Schickel

  The rock had struck Knowles on the head. Hoover believes it happened so fast that his partner felt neither pain nor fear. Hoover himself suffered a mild pelvic fracture and severely bruised muscles. The remaining crew, Fargo among them, lowered a rope and pulled Hoover up to the point where the helicopter was making pickups. There was no time, however, to recover Knowles’s body before the light completely failed, and he was left where he had fallen until the following morning.

  A wake was held, and Clint considered canceling the production. The climbers, however, urged him to go on. They knew the risks of their trade, ran them habitually and felt that moviemaking added nothing to them. For his part, Clint came around to the view that aborting the production would render Knowles’s death—not to mention all the hard and dangerous work that had preceded it—meaningless.

  He soon found himself engaged in what remains for him the most frightening stunt he ever attempted. The situation is, literally, a cliff-hanger. He’s dangling on a rope over an abyss, and George Kennedy’s character has the drop on him. Clint is supposed to cut himself free and then fall—more properly seem to fall—some four thousand feet through the air, apparently killing himself (he does not, of course). Clint was, naturally, rigged with hidden ropes so that he would fall only a few feet, disappearing under an overhang, out of the camera’s view. They did the shot first using a dummy that could be seen free-falling toward the pastures below. But they needed a closer shot of Clint heading in the same direction. It would be a fabulous shot, Clint remembers thinking. But, he adds, “I must say, psychologically it was tough.”

  Dangling over an abyss, “I could see this pasture way down below, and I could hear the cowbells ringing, and I thought, Why am I not sitting out there with those cows sunbathing?” He thought too about another irony in his situation—he was hanging from a rope that could easily sustain ten thousand pounds of pressure but that, stretched taut by his weight, could be easily slashed with his knife. Despite his safety line (“I must have tested that rope ten times”), he found himself not entirely eager to cut the rope that was visible in the shot and that was indeed supporting his weight. But finally, willing himself to trust the hidden safety line, he cut himself loose and got for his pains a shot every bit as thrilling as he had hoped it would be. He describes himself as “drawn out,” for several days thereafter, “always coming and sitting downstairs.” Dougal Haston said to Clint, “‘I couldn’t do that.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘It’s against a mountain climber’s nature to cut your own line.’ ”

  It is the climbing sequences of The Eiger Sanction that people remember, precisely because they are so visibly unfaked, and often so beautiful—perhaps the most effective such footage in a fictional film since the silent “mountain films” made by German filmmakers (Leni Riefenstahl among them) in the twenties. When it was released in the spring of 1975, a substantial number of reviewers felt that these passages went a long way toward redeeming a preposterous and totally unfelt narrative.

  There were, naturally, some nastier notices. One of these, by Joy Gould Boyum in The Wall Street Journal, called it a “brutal fantasy,” criticized it for locating its villainy in “homosexuals and physically disabled men” and despised its glorification of what the reviewer called “the All-American warrior hero.” In a way, she had come closer to the point of this curious exercise than anyone; its dangerous making had largely been impelled by the director’s desire to pose a distinctly masculine challenge to his own courage. In that sense, it is the only time this most reasonable filmmaker flirted with something like unreason.

  Clint freely admits this “probably wasn’t the best film I ever made,” but it was a movie on which one man had lost his life and many others, including himself, had risked theirs, and precisely because that was so he wanted a response from the studio that acknowledged this harrowing effort. But once again, the marketing and promotion people registered puzzlement over his work. This is in itself puzzling. After all, The Eiger Sanction was visibly an uncomplicated action-adventure film, with nothing about it that challenged its star’s image or the audience’s expectations. Yet at meetings he found people asking him, “How do you think we ought to do this thing?” and heard himself replying, “I’m here asking you. What do you need? I’ll do it.” He also found himself saying, “not out loud, but to myself, and later to Bob Daley, ‘Well, what we do is we don’t release any films here for a while.’ ”

  That could not have been easier for him at this point. He had fulfilled his Universal contract. Frank Wells had been “making overtures” for Clint to come to Warner Bros. and, most important, Clint had a project in hand in which he believed passionately and that he was not about to let Universal mishandle.

  So early in 1975, some months before The Eiger Sanction went into profitable release, Clint put in a call to Wells. He asked him, half jokingly, if he could guarantee that no tour buses—the studio tour being one of the many petty annoyances one puts up with at Universal—would ever come chugging by his door. Wells laughed and assured him that the studio had no tour and no plans for one. All right, then, how would they like it if Clint moved to the Warners lot? They would, Wells told him, like it very much. “By the way,” Clint remembers saying, “I have this western I’m interested in.…”

  ELEVEN

  A LABOR OF LOVE

  Based on the work of a thoroughly disreputable author, marred in its making by a disharmony unduplicated by other Eastwood productions, the occasion on which Clint entered a relationship that would radically change his personal life, The Outlaw Josey Wales turned out to be, for all of these distractions, the most completely satisfying movie he had yet made—and, as one looks back over his career, one of the best films he ever made. Sweeping in the variety of space and emotion it encompasses, it is explicitly reconciliatory in the message it offered a socially fractured nation and implicitly reconciliatory in the way it blended the manners and morals of the traditional western with those of the revisionist school.

  The film’s basic story came to Clint’s attention in the form of a scrawny, badly printed little novel called The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, bearing the imprint of a publishing firm in Gant, Alabama, that no one had ever heard of. Hundreds of such unsolicited offerings—books, scripts, treatments—poured into the Malpaso office every year, and the normal procedure, as it is everywhere in Hollywood, was to return them unread within twenty-four hours, a quick turnaround being the first line of defense against the meritless plagiarism suits that often follow the release of successful movies. But this volume was accompanied by an ingratiating note from the author, whose name was Forrest Carter. It spoke of Clint’s “kind eyes” (not a phrase normally applied to them) and prayed that they would look in that spirit on his humble offering.

  Something in this plea tweaked Bob Daley’s sympathy, and he resolved to give it a glance. A few weeks later, he found himself with nothing to read over dinner (he was a bachelor between marriages at the time), so he took Carter’s little volume home with him. He found himself completely hooked; he finished the book in one sitting.

  As the movie would later retell the story, Josey Wales is a farmer trying to live peaceably on the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War. But in the pretitle sequence, Northern raiders, Redlegs, burn out his farm and kill his family (his wife is played by Bill Wellman’s daughter, Cissie, his son by Kyle Eastwood). He joins Rebel guerrillas and fights through the war with them. When it is over, Fletcher, the Rebel leader (John Vernon), believing an honorable surrender has been arranged, unknowingly leads them into a massacre by the Redlegs. Josey and a young soldier named Jamie (Sam Bottoms) are the only survivors. Though the latter is seriously wounded, they head for Texas where they understand other Southern sympathizers have taken refuge. Wanted men, war criminals as their enemies see them, they are pursued by Terrill, the obsessed Redleg commander (Bill McKinney) and by the guilt-stricken Fletcher, always trying to temper Terrill’s passions. The young man soon dies, and Josey pro
ceeds alone. A bitter, silent figure in a forbidding landscape, his sole desire now is to avoid further commitments that might lead to further losses and betrayals.

  Fate, however, has a different plan for him. Along his trail waifs and strays keep joining him—among them a sly and funny old Indian (memorably played by Chief Dan George), an Indian woman (Geraldine Keams) who has been cast out by her tribe and rescued by Josey from virtual slavery, an old lady (Paula Trueman) and her granddaughter, Laura Lee (Sondra Locke), whom he saves from the brutal predations of Comancheros, even a snarly but redeemable hound dog. The Locke and Trueman characters are heading for a ranch left to them by their son and brother, and Josey agrees to escort them there. It stands on Indian land and a deadly confrontation with Chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson) and his tribe seems inevitable. But Josey rides out alone to parlay with them. He tells the chief that they are both in their ways outcasts, betrayed by unfeeling government policy, and Ten Bears accepts his proposal of peaceful coexistence. Thereafter, Josey dispatches Terrill, accepts a truce from his former commanding officer and at last settles down to a new life, carving a civilized corner out of the wilderness for himself and his own makeshift tribe.

  It was late by the time Daley finished reading the novel that outlined this tale, but he could not resist calling Clint in Carmel to share his discovery. Normally a rather phlegmatic man, Daley had never reacted to anything with such urgency before, and Clint, who would remember him saying, “God, this has so much soul to it,” was intrigued by his enthusiasm. The next day Sonia Chernus endorsed Daley’s opinion. Now Clint wanted to read it immediately, and it was hand-carried to him by air. The following morning he told Daley to secure the rights for Malpaso.

  It took Daley two days to reach Carter at the Alabama phone number he had given in his covering letter. “He was out in the woods somewhere,” the producer recalls. When they finally connected, Daley found himself wrapped in what seemed to be the toils of folksy innocence, though Forrest Carter was not at all what he appeared to be. That, however, would only be revealed much later. For the moment he was, as Daley informed him, a writer in need of an agent, which he offered to help him find. The writer said that wouldn’t be necessary, and called back a day or two later informing the producer that he had engaged someone in the William Morris Agency’s New York literary department to represent him. Since Clint was a Morris client Daley told him there might be a conflict of interest. Carter said he didn’t care, and, in fact, the agency cut a pretty good deal for him, considering his, and his book’s, lack of status—as Daley recalls, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar payment for the screen rights, with ten thousand dollars more due on commencement of principal photography and a final fifteen thousand dollars to be paid out of net profits if they should accrue. With a firm movie sale in hand, Carter’s agent was also able to secure republication of the book, under a new title (Gone to Texas) by a mainstream mass-market paperback house.

  Chernus asked for, and was granted, a chance to adapt the novel. While she was working on it, Daley got his somewhat-disconcerting first glimpse of Forrest Carter. They had kept in touch as the script proceeded, and one day he told Daley that he was going to be in the neighborhood and would like to drop in and meet him and Clint. The latter was out of town, but Daley assured Carter of a warm welcome. Where are you going to be? he inquired. “Dallas,” came the reply. Geography apparently was not the writer’s strong suit.

  He said he’d be arriving the next day, so Daley told Carter to be on the lookout for Art Ramus, who worked for the company as driver, occasional security man and general factotum. He was a large man, a former basketball player close to six feet, eight inches, in height, not to be missed. Carter, however, was not on the flight, and as Ramus was calling in to report this to Daley the writer rang on the second line saying he’d got drunk with some friends the night before, been thrown in jail and missed his plane. He’d be on the next one, he assured Daley. Carter appeared as announced—staggering drunk. Ramus hustled him into a bar, propped him up at a table and once again made for the phone. He told Daley that the man was in no condition to be brought to the office. The tone of their sotto voce conversation suddenly changed when Ramus burst out, “Oh, God, what’s he doing?” “What’s going on? What’s happening?” an alarmed Daley cried. “He’s taking a whiz in the middle of the Satellite Lounge carpet,” the driver replied, “and here come the cops.”

  Ramus hastened to Carter, wrapped his burly arms around him and told the policeman, “Officer, I’ll take care of him—he’s my father.” With that he hustled his charge to his station wagon, made him lie down in the backseat and drove him to a motel, where he administered hot coffee and cold showers until the man sobered up.

  The next day Carter appeared in Daley’s office, dressed in cowboy regalia and acting as if nothing had happened. His opening words, however, were: “Well, I don’t wanna take up any more of your time. I guess I’d better go home now.” Daley says he had to physically restrain him so they could discuss Josey Wales. This went well enough, and Daley proposed that Carter stay over another night. Though he could not join the party he asked Ramus and two of Malpaso’s secretaries to have dinner with the author. Once again he turned up drunk, and in the course of the meal he drew a knife, held it to one of the women’s throats and told her he loved her and that he would kill them both if she didn’t agree to marry him.

  By now it was clear to everyone that they were dealing with sociopathy of some sort, though its full depths would not become known until after the film was released. On the other hand, this strange creature had somehow managed to write this story that they loved, and it fell to Daley to keep him placated. It was not easy. At a certain point Carter was convinced by friends that he was being exploited by a rich and powerful movie star and began demanding more money. Finally, Clint bought a measure of peace by advancing him, out of his own salary, the fifteen thousand dollars due Carter when the picture went into profit.

  Prior to its publication in 1976, Carter showed Daley the manuscript of another book, The Education of Little Tree, a memoir of what Carter claimed was his orphaned childhood, when he was raised by Native American grandparents. This, too, interested Malpaso, but when he pursued the rights Daley discovered that Carter had optioned them to three other producers. This was fortunate, for they discovered a couple of months after the release of their film that Forrest Carter was, in fact, Asa (Ace) Carter, a virulent segregationist who had organized a particularly vicious subgroup of the Ku Klux Klan and had been an anti-Semitic and red-baiting radio broadcaster as well. Before that he had also been a speechwriter for George Wallace (author, apparently, of his infamous “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” phrase) though he later broke with the Alabama governor because he became, in Carter’s warped view, too liberal on the race issue.

  His past history on the further fringes of American lunacy was exposed by an Alabama newspaperman, Wayne Greenhaw, just as The Outlaw Josey Wales was released, and though his widely reprinted story did not harm the movie, it tainted The Education of Little Tree, which made no great impression on its initial publication. With its failure, one might have imagined this strange tale would conclude, especially since Carter died of a heart attack three years later.

  But this is America, where memories are short and reinvention a national pastime. Somehow, The Education of Little Tree made its way to the University of New Mexico Press, which reprinted it in paperback in 1986. Its sentimental representation of Native American culture, with particular emphasis on its ecological soundness, struck a chord in the eighties, and it became a word-of-mouth bestseller. Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg, among others, expressed interest in making a movie of it.

  Remarkably, nobody recalled the earlier stories about Carter’s rancid past until 1991, five years after Little Tree’s republication. Then Dan T. Carter, who said he might be a distant relative of Asa and is a scholar specializing in the history of modern racial politics in the South, wrot
e a piece for the op-ed page of The New York Times, reexposing the author. Other commentators expanded on his work, pointing out that though young Asa did have a grandfather of Cherokee descent he never lived with him and that his grandmother had died before he was born. Dan Carter erred factually in his description of Asa Carter as a “friend” of Clint Eastwood, and critically in misreading Clint’s work in general, the adaptation of Carter’s novel specifically. He suggested that the violence of Clint’s movies, among others, besides demeaning popular culture, matched quite naturally with Carter’s racism, though the latter was not manifest—rather the opposite—in the movie version of Josey Wales.

  Clint was on location, making Unforgiven, when this article appeared, and he sent a polite letter to the Times, pointing out that he had met the man he knew as Forrest Carter only once. He also observed, “If Forrest Carter was a racist and a hatemonger who later converted to being a sensitive, understanding human being, that would be most admirable.”

  Did Carter’s writing, all of which was apparently completed during a silent withdrawal from political life that began in 1971, represent a genuine conversion and atonement? Or was it an elaborate hoax? One thinks of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous dictum about the test of first-rate intelligence being its ability to hold opposed thoughts simultaneously and still function; here was a third-rate mind—and a very disturbed one at that—managing the same trick. Bob Daley observed some of this schizophrenia firsthand. He saw a decent side to the man, reflected in warm, supportive letters he received from Carter on the death of his father. He also saw vicious anti-Semitism, directed at William Morris agents, when the arguments about money started up. He finally came to the conclusion that Carter was basically an opportunist, willfully burying—but not necessarily abandoning—his racism so that he could rejoin decent society.