EASTWOOD, CLINT: SPACE COWBOYS

How did you wind up directing this film when you were originally just going to produce and star in it?
I talked to a few directors about doing it and they all talked about the difficulties about it and I started thinking, ‘why does everybody think it’s so difficult?’ Then I talked to ILM (Industrial Light & Magic special effects house) and they said it could be done, so they showed me mock-ups and things and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could get into it and it could be done. I’ve been working on this thing almost a year and a half and considering that part of it, by the time I did the conventional part of the film it was no problem at all. And I still had to wait for effects and didn’t even get the last ones in until 30 days before the first press screening!

How were you able to focus on the human elements of this story with so many special effects?
I believe it is the human element that sells it. You can have a lot of special effects movies but I still have an old-fashioned theory that the story is king and the relationships are the most important part of that. Without the story, the effects become like a tour of a national park or something. To me the relationships are what intrigues people over a long period of time. Maybe that’s not the case, maybe times have changed but we’ll find out with this movie, I guess.

It must have been a treat to work with another three great actors in such great roles?
They are all such pros so it was very easy. You could come in and shoot right away with no fooling around. Well I can’t say there was no fooling around, actually. There was a lot of joking and fooling around but everybody knew when you yelled ‘roll ‘em’, everything stopped and everybody got back to business.

I believe you have a very streamlined style of directing?
Yeah, I go right to it. The film is the cheapest commodity of the whole process. Time is very important and expensive but you can rehearse things on film and see what happens and that way, good things can happen right away when you don’t know what’s cooking. Many of those scenes were improvised in this film. I’d say, ‘come on in, we’ll walk into this room and talk about this’ and I’d signal to the cameraman and he’d be rolling. A couple of times, Donald would say, ‘are we rehearsing now, what are we doing?’ and I’d say, ‘no that’s it’ and he’d say, ‘ Oh, I can do it much better!’ and I’d say, ‘no I don’t want it better, that’s good!’ It’s just kind of spontaneous and helps that camaraderie aspect that works so well in the film.

Has space travel always intrigued you?
It’s always been intriguing, as a kid looking at Buck Rogers, but it’s always been for someone else. It’s always been someone else’s profession, not mine. I never even thought in my lifetime we’d see people on the moon so who knows what will happen in the next 40 or 50 years – it will be very exciting for you to visualize – I won’t be around!

The characters struggle through the physical part of the preparation to go into space. How taxing was it for you as an actor?
You struggle along with it. It may not be that taxing but you portray it like that. Like In The Line of Fire I had to be out of breath running alongside the presidential limousine and I wasn’t really out of breath because it wasn’t that far. I only had to run about a block so that’s called acting!

How much training did you do to familiarize yourself with space apparatus?
We started working at the Houston Space Centre learning everything we could, working with astronauts and they were very nice giving us their time and expertise. They would tell you what it was like out there and we learned how they moved around the cabin in weightlessness and we learned what it is like when you re-enter the atmosphere when it gets to thousands of degrees outside and they’re frying this thing up and it all helped us portray it.

Donald broke his knee. James broke his shoulder. What were you doing to these guys?
With these damn space suits, they were so damn heavy and Donald had to do a thing where he was holding the suit and he fell back and cracked his knee. And Jim had his shoulder pop out of the socket . . . but I once played a role in 1973 where I had chronic shoulder dislocation so I was familiar with how to put the shoulder back in and we went about it and it worked. We finished the day and that was fine. Jimmy didn’t play golf for a while!

The film has a lot to say about aging. What is your own attitude to aging?
Everything has been a ball and I’ve just enjoyed it all. Whatever happens, there is nothing you can do about it except take care of yourself and age gracefully or smoke and drink and go into a decline. I take reasonably good care of myself and enjoy the process. Age makes you more appreciative of family and a lot of the things you take for granted as a younger person. And you’re not as driven. As a young person, you get depressed with your career when you hit a rough spot because you don’t know what is around the corner so when you get work, you take it all. I was an incessant worker in the 60s and 70s and all through the 80s but in the 90s, where I think I did some of my better work, I was not driven very much but I was just working along at a good pace. This picture will be my first picture out in the year 2000, my fifth decade of releasing films and that is a pretty long time.

Any plans to retire?
I’ll keep doing it for a while but I’ve got other interests and one day I may just say to hell with it. Then again I may not. It depends on what roles come up and if they capture my imagination or not.

Publication date: 29/9/2000