[Richard Schickel] Clint Eastwood : A Biography (epub){Zzzzz}

Through extensive, exclusive interviews with Eastwood (and the friends and colleagues of a lifetime), Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel has penetrated a complex character who has always been understood too quickly, too superficially. Schickel pierces Eastwood's monumental reserve to reveal the anger and the shyness, the shrewdness and frankness, the humor and powerful will that have helped make him what he is today. of photos.

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
Schickel, a movie critic for Time magazine, surveys the life and career of Hollywood's laconic macho superstar. Eastwood's career has slowly developed: television success in Rawhide; his icon-defining role as the nameless gunslinger in Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns; movie superstardom with the Dirty Harry series; then a softening, and even some intellectual respectability, with his Oscar for directing Unforgiven. Shickel chronicles Eastwood's middle-class upbringing in Oakland, California, details a personal life that included a drive to bed many women, and recasts Eastwood from his role as the male equivalent of the "dumb blonde" to that of "one of the great ironists of the age."

From Booklist
To be a Clint Eastwood fan is to be more enamored of the independent, strong, rugged male type than the mere actor. Schickel is an Eastwood fan; he is also a film critic. And he seems to have had a heck of a time reconciling his admiration for the great, independent man with the achievements of the mere actor. Schickel repeatedly informs the reader that Eastwood is really a free spirit who has always been shy and reticent and suited to California sunshine (which must account for his slow, uneventful start in the acting business), turns often to rowdy Eastwood quotes and tough guy lines, Bogie lines, and digs up inane examples of assertiveness, such as the one about Eastwood on the Rawhide set wanting to take a camera into a cattle herd to shoot close-ups and being turned down by the director. The strong, independent male is also Schickel's chief excuse for Eastwood's promiscuity. At this early stage, the book is wearing, in spite of some interesting examples of Eastwood's outsider mentality, which led to his involvement with jazz at an early age and sheds light on his later, intimate involvement with two solid American films about jazz, Bird and Straight, No Chaser. Schickel breaks out a bit when discussing Eastwood's flicks, beginning with the transition from Rowdy in Rawhide to the Man with No Name in the spaghetti westerns and on to the Hollywood films that he directed. A reputable tribute to an average man who made it to the big time. Bonnie Smothers

Publisher: Knopf (19 November 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679429743
ISBN-13: 978-0679429746

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

A serious look at Clint 18 June 2002
By A Customer -
There's plenty of opportunity to gripe about this biography: The writing style is ponderous and sometimes downright clumsy, there's not enough details about Clint's private life, there's too much trivia about incidental movie roles (i.e. Witches.) But that aside it is nice to see a serious examination of Clint the Film Maker, which I might add does offer good critical examination of his movies, pointing out many of the movies' weaknesses as well as their strengths, and offering solid reasons for why the theme or story appealed to Clint. Pigeonholed early by narrowminded critics for his supposedly anti-establishment, brutal movies, he had to wait another twenty years for the critical tide to turn and for there to be a re-evaluation of his contribution to cinema (at least here in the U.S. -- in other parts of the world he'd long been recognized as a great director and actor.) And still some of the best movies he's done (whether he directed them or not) are not given the credit they deserve by self-important critics: Beguiled, Play Misty for Me, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Outlaw Josey Wales, White Hunter Black Heart, Bird all come to mind as well as many others. In forty years of making movies beginning with A Fistful of Dollars, most of the time coming out with a movie a year, he's been involved in less than a handful of mediocre movies, none of them ranking as truly bad. The Rookie and City Heat come to mind as truly mediocre movies, certainly bordering on bad, and there's a couple of others that had good potential but turned out to be bad decisions on his part, but I consider that a fantastic track record. He knows story and he knows how to get the most from out of a movie, and it's the reason he's stayed at the top of the box-office for all these decades despite the fact that he's never done just what "the audience" wants from him.
I recommend the book Interviews, for those interested in Clint the film maker, which is an excellent collection of interviews in which Clint very articulately discusses his ideas of film making.
I can't help but add that I have to wonder about one of the reviewers who wrote that whether Unforgiven was a great movie was "questionable." Then does there exist a unquestionably great movie?

Enjoyable read, very informative. 11 July 2004
By A Customer -
This is an excellent book about the life and work of a legend. Richard Schickel gives us a close look at the free spirited man that's living inside of the veteran actor. Very detail work about Mr. Eastwood's movie making process and his no bulls**t attitude toward the studio execs and anyone who stands on his way. Ms. Pauline Kael should just say it out loud that she's begging for the legend's attention or just shut the hell up. Any Eastwood fan will really appreciate the author's work.

Very informative Book 29 June 2008
By W. Hilton -
Several folks here have given this book a bad review simply because the author and subject are friends. So what? Clint will not write an autobiography so this is the next best thing. He simply chose to focus on the film making process that Clint uses and stay on the positive side of his personal life. He admits in the book that he cheated on his wife numerous times but doesn't go into great detail about it. We all know this anyway, why should we hear the details? Reading this book gave me great insight on Clint's life growing up, his family, his Army days, behind the scenes of "Rawhide" and all his greatest movies. I know Clint was not a saint in his personal life but that's not what I want to read about anyways. I want to read about his work which is why I'm a fan to begin with. If you want to read the gossip which may or may not be true, read the enquirer or Pat McGilligan's book which paints Clint as just a step above Hitler!