Clint Eastwood: A Biography - Softcover

Richard Schickel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679749918 ISBN 13: 9780679749912

Publisher: Random House Inc, 1997

Synopsis

On the basis of deeply probing conversations with the actor-director, conducted over a three-year period, and interviews with friends, colleagues and family members, Schickel gives us the most candid and close-up portrait of Eastwood we have ever had. We see the boy, Clint, regularly changing homes and schools as his family struggles to overcome the hardships of the Depression. We watch a restless West Coast adolescent obsessed with cars and jazz turn into an angry young man going through years of frustration and rejection as he tries to establish himself as an actor. After Eastwood achieves star status in the television series Rawhide, we witness him making the daring choices that propel him first to international stardom - the decision to make a spaghetti western (Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars) - and then to superstardom as the controversial Dirty Harry. We trace, too, the emergence of Eastwood the director, from modest beginnings (Play Misty for Me) through increasingly complex and ambitious films such as The Outlaw Josey Wales and Bronco Billy to the Oscar-winning success of Unforgiven. And finally Eastwood becomes not only one of the most admired figures in his profession, but an American icon. Here is the essential Eastwood, caught in action as he directs and stars in some of his most important movies, reflecting on what is unquestionably a remarkable career. Here is Eastwood describing his feelings about his own work, about his unwillingness to settle for the roles he knows he can play and his desire to challenge himself; about films and filmmakers, directors, actors and actresses; about his family; about what he has accomplished and what he hopes to accomplish.

About this title

Review:

In 1992, when Unforgiven won director/star Eastwood the critical respect that had eluded him for a quarter-century, film critic Schickel was already a friend of 15 years. Their relationship, and a series of in-depth interviews conducted over five years, gives this biography a pleasing intimacy. Schickel believes Eastwood "has taken the presentation of the heroic male into country he has not previously ridden"; he makes a strong case for that idea in an admiring(but not fawning) book that lays the foundation for more objective works in the future. --Christine Buttery

About the Author:

Richard Schickel has been reviewing movies--first for Life, then for Time--for exactly as long as Clint Eastwood has been starring in them. He is the author of many books about film and filmmakers, among them The Disney Version, the definitive study of Walt Disney and his works; D. W. Griffith: An American Life, which won the British Film Institute Book Prize; and The Men Who Made the Movies, on the directors of the classic Hollywood age. For more than two decades he has been making television documentaries, mainly about the history of movies. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught film history and criticism at Yale and USC. He lives in Los Angeles.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679749918
• ISBN 13: 9780679749912
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 570