Have you seen Clint's new movie, Juror #2? WB really fucked him over on this. How much money has Clint made for them over the decades he's been making movies? How many awards do they have because of him? Yet because he's an old man, it's time to push him out the door. Instead of releasing a film by Clint Eastwood, one of the greatest living film directors we have, in theaters, it's been released to streaming instead. It's on Max if you wish to look it up. Yes, it did get, what, 50 theaters? But seriously, for a Clint movie? I don't even think that qualified him for Oscar season.
It's a great movie, and it shows that Clint is at the top of his game still. He might not even have a bottom to his game. The story is of a soon-to-be father getting sucked into jury duty only to discover the man accused of a murder might be innocent because the juror did something stupid when he was drunk many years ago. It starts out like 12 Angry Men, but before long it becomes obvious that it's 12 Angry Men From Hell. (12 From Hell? Like Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell?).
I don't want to go too much into the movie itself, because it's so much better if you go in knowing nothing more than this, but I was talking with my comics guys today, and I brought up this movie. As I talked about it I realized something interesting.
I like Nicholas Hoult. His performances are always top shelf, whether he's a young Beast from the X-Men or Renfield. Even when he's telling us stuff like, "Oh what a day! What a lovely day!" You can tell he's something special.
It occurred to me that, decades from now, Hoult is going to be an old man, possibly a director himself, talking to young film students. And one of them is going to ask about this film. More importantly, they're going to ask him, "What was Clint like?"
There will be a YouTube video. If you're alive at the time, check and see if I'm right.
Because Hoult does know Clint now, and he can tell these kids about what the old master was like. He can tell them about all the legends he worked with, and I know someone's going to ask him about Nic Cage. And that's the nature of history. The youngest one of the group usually tells the next generation (or even the next-next) what the rest of them were like. I'm thinking here of the Clint we remember from Rawhide, from the beginning of his artistic journey. He worked with just about everyone except John Wayne, and that wasn't for lack of trying. There's the famous story about . . . eh, not tonight.
I tried to think of what that would be like for Clint. Who would a film student ask him about now? I'd wager Sergio Leone, but it could very well be Don Siegel. He knew Lee Marvin and Richard Harris. Pat Hingle. John Vernon. Guys like that. As a nonagenarian he is an encyclopedia of Hollywood knowledge that will probably be lost when he dies. Has he done a Masterclass? If not, I hope he does one soon. I hate to think of that knowledge vanishing from the earth, never to be recovered. I feel the same way about another nonagenarian, Mel Brooks. I shudder to think of the world we will lose when they're both no longer among us.
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