[Here is where last night's video was supposed to go. I still have it. If you are unhinged and insane, I have the video. I will send it to you if you want. But why would you? I was so drunk and rambling. No. You don't want that. Granted, that's the way I write all of these, but I cut the rambling out. Mostly. So here is a cleaner, to the point version.}
So I recently went down a Clint rabbit hole. Eastwood, not Howard. Sorry. I saw some interviews, but the one that interested me the most is the James Lipton Inside the Actors Studio interview. Look down if you're watching this on my blog. It's in two parts. *points down*
So I've noticed this thing about Lipton. He never asks a question he doesn't already know the answer to. But Clint surprised him. Lipton asked about the cigarillos Clint had for the Leone trilogy, and Clint said, I forgot what, but he got them in a smoke shop in maybe in North Carolina? Just click on the link. And Lipton responds with shock. "Really?!" he asks. I thought that was funny.
Another thing: we all think of Lipton as super serious (unless we've seen Arrested Development) when he's doing the interview gig. Well, at one point he invites Clint's agent since the Leone films to stand up and say a few words, and the agent does. Then he says something about how he also represented someone else, a young actor looking for work by the name of, maybe you've heard of him, James Lipton. And Lipton gets this demonic look on his face, like he sometimes gets when he's about to make a joke that turns out to be really fucking funny, and he says, "I just want it on the record that Clint Eastwood and I have the same agent." And I laughed my ass off.
Why did I call this The Impression? I'm almost there.
So Clint said something that struck me in the heart. I always knew it, but I never knew it specifically. He said something that I've never thought about, but I've known for a long time, and it helped me understand my own approach to my art. He said, "Always take your work seriously. Never take yourself seriously." Holy fuck, that's true.
But the impression he did is fucking delicious. It's the reason I wanted to do a video version of this. I wanted to do an impression of Clint doing an impression of John Wayne who refused to do an impression of Clint. I can't make this shit up. Watch the video below, if you have 90 minutes to kill.
So Don Siegel directed Clint in many movies. Most famously in Dirty Harry. But Siegel also did The Shootist with John Wayne. The book by Glenn Swarthout is fucking amazing. But Siegel was making that movie, famously John Wayne's final. He was down to one lung, remember. When they were between takes, John Wayne was on oxygen.
So Siegel wanted Wayne to shoot a character in the back. It made sense for the character, but John Wayne--who clearly hadn't read the script--took Siegel to task. He insisted he would never shoot anyone in the back. And Siegel argued, reasonably I think, why the character would. I remember John Wayne, whose work I love despite the horrible person he was, in Red River, where he played the villain for a change. I remember him shooting someone in the back, but I can't remember for sure. What I *do* remember for sure is when he shot Liberty Vallance from ambush. That's why James Stewart thought he'd done the deed. Maybe this is neither here nor there, but John Wayne refused to shoot this character in the back.
Don Siegel, who had worked with Clint a lot, maybe five times? Clint was at the top of his iconoclastic game, changing the face of the Western. By then, they'd worked together at least twice. So Siegel says, "Clint would have shot him in the back."
At that point, John Wayne lost his shit so badly he was blue. Remember, one lung. And I watched Clint as he leaned his head back and did the Clint squint. While still being the Clint we all know, which isn't the real Clint (he's a vegetarian who hates guns and doesn't squint at people; he's usually just a dude who has a laid back joke for everyone with his eyes more or less wide open), he does this great imitation of John Wayne refusing to do an impression of Clint: "I DON'T CARE WHAT THAT GODDAM KID WOULDA DONE!"
I swear, I think I nailed the impression of an impression of a refusal of an impression. I'm sorry you missed it, but YouTube fucked me. So did Blogger. Sorry Blogger. I know you let me spout my pre-sleep madness, but you know what you did.
I have to wake up early tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep now. I hope that you enjoyed this even without my physical video for impression.
No comments:
Post a Comment