| Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Directed by Clint Eastwood) |
Clint Eastwood frequently refers to an aspiration for “realism” in his films. He was attracted to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil [1997] because it was about “real people, people whose differences make them interesting.” Savannah, where the film is situated, is depicted “realistically, as if a character in the story.” The actors and the camera perform in tandem to capture “immediacy and spon- taneity,” discovering rather than imposing a view on the film.
Norman Mailer once said of Eastwood, “You can see the man in his work just as clearly as you can see Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms.” What Hemingway sought to achieve with language, Eastwood similarly endeavors with unobtrusive camerawork—that is, to address the world as it is, clearly, with the least mediation...
As the shot unfolds, Eastwood determines if it is satisfactory or not—that is, what is revealed by and through the shot itself, not according to an inflexible predesign. “I think a film is seeing it,” Eastwood says, “when you see it there live, when it’s happening right there in front of you.” Video assist, used by other major directors in Hollywood to view the shot afterward on a monitor, is not used by Eastwood. He is fully at home with and trusts his senses. Ultimately, Eastwood is a naturalist in the truest sense of the term, faithful to the moment and the environment but idealizing neither.
Unlike Hemingway, Eastwood obviously has the advantage of encountering the quotidian, or physical world as he records it—this is the special prerogative of the camera. As such, one might imagine the envy of an artist like Hemingway or Eastwood the filmmaker when the former identifies the three most difficult impediments to writing: “knowing what you truly felt rather than what you were supposed to feel”; putting “down what really happened in action”; and then find- ing “the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion.” The idea is to reach beyond precedent to one’s inner reserve of instinct and feel- ing to address the new experience with authenticity—for instincts and feelings, like Nature itself, do not lie: they are the truest part of a person. Again, Eastwood’s way with the camera may very well comprise the logical extension of Hemingway’s own ambitions with prose.
Eastwood’s characters, often peripatetic riders or drivers, men without homes and rarely with families, escape the usual restrictions of routine, conventional education, dogma, mundane responsibility, and society itself so that, keeping their own counsel, the true impulses of the self beneath anything artificial may emerge...
The independence of Eastwood’s characters as well as the man himself draws from within but corresponds with the seclusion and purity of life outside, beyond ordinary borders, both physical and psychological. Eastwood is quintessentially American, a pioneering spirit that goes ever forward into “unchartered territory.” As Mailer writes, “There is perhaps no one more American than Eastwood.”
– Ric Gentry.
RG: How did you become involved with the Midnight project?
CE: Well, about a year and a half ago the writer—this was before Absolute Power [1997], as a matter of fact—John Hancock was here on the lot (at Warner Brothers) working on the screen adaptation of the book [by John Behrendt]. He’d written the screenplay for A Perfect World, which I made a few years back [1993]. And John came to me one day and asked if I would have a look at the Midnight adaptation and tell him what I thought. I hadn’t read the book, though I knew it was a bestseller. John said he thought it was an interesting story and that he had the feeling they were going to take him off the project for some reason and put another writer on. He was developing it for the studio and wanted to get it going as a project, not for any particular producer.
So I said, “Sure, I’ll have a look at that.” I read the screenplay and I really liked it. I called John and said, “I think you did some very good work here.” So I called the studio; I think I spoke to [president] Terry Semel, and I said, “This is a very good screenplay. Are you unsatisfied with it in some way?—because I think I’d be very interesting in directing it.” He said, “Well, that’s great. We’d probably be interested in that. Let’s see what we can do.” I said, “OK, let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to go back and read the book itself.”
So I did, and I liked the book, too, but I appreciated the screenplay even more because I saw how difficult it was to translate all that material from the prose. There were a few things omitted from the book that I thought might go back in as well as a few other changes but once we all agreed that I would direct it we did a rewrite and then got ready to shoot.
RG: What were some of the changes you recommended?
CE: The protagonist was originally an attorney and I thought it should be changed back to the writer. I thought that was a bit more faithful to the book. Since part of the story would involve the courtroom, an attorney’s background and allegiances might muddle the point of view.
And then I wanted a few more of the characters back and a bit more detail in general about several of them. It seemed to me that the idiosyncrasies of the characters were important to the book’s appeal and that those who had read Midnight would feel more satisfied if they encountered some of those characters on screen. Obviously, when you’re working with material that’s so popular, you don’t want to tamper too much with what made it that way. At the same time, 90 percent of the movie audience isn’t going to be familiar with the material at all, so it has to be something that will attract them, too. Though presumably, if it was compelling to the readers of the book, why wouldn’t it be to movie viewers as well?
RG: And what was it that most attracted you to Midnight? Was it the characters?
CE: It really was. There are so many action-adventure films these days, and I’ve done my share of them, it’s just rewarding to do a story about people—people who are unique, who aren’t like you or me, whether it’s a woman who practices witchcraft, or a guy moving from place to place who wants to open a saloon or another guy who takes his pet flies into town on miniature leashes [laughs] or an antique dealer, eccentrics some of them obviously, but people in a very interesting and unique region of the country as subjects in themselves for a movie. The fact that they were all real people, people whose differences make them interesting, people from recent Savannah history attracted me. Most of them are still around. Some of the characters are composites but in the composites they still seem real...
RG: There tends to be idiosyncratic, even eccentric characters in many of your films. Bronco Billy [1980], High Plains Drifter [1973], The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976], Escape from Alcatraz [1979], Bird [1988], Unforgiven [1992] come readily to mind.
CE: I like individuals. I’m drawn to that, I guess. And I encourage actors to bring themselves into the performance, go for the take and try to be instinctive with their characters. I often like to be surprised by what’ll occur before the camera.
CE: It really was. There are so many action-adventure films these days, and I’ve done my share of them, it’s just rewarding to do a story about people—people who are unique, who aren’t like you or me, whether it’s a woman who practices witchcraft, or a guy moving from place to place who wants to open a saloon or another guy who takes his pet flies into town on miniature leashes [laughs] or an antique dealer, eccentrics some of them obviously, but people in a very interesting and unique region of the country as subjects in themselves for a movie. The fact that they were all real people, people whose differences make them interesting, people from recent Savannah history attracted me. Most of them are still around. Some of the characters are composites but in the composites they still seem real...
RG: There tends to be idiosyncratic, even eccentric characters in many of your films. Bronco Billy [1980], High Plains Drifter [1973], The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976], Escape from Alcatraz [1979], Bird [1988], Unforgiven [1992] come readily to mind.
CE: I like individuals. I’m drawn to that, I guess. And I encourage actors to bring themselves into the performance, go for the take and try to be instinctive with their characters. I often like to be surprised by what’ll occur before the camera.
RG: John Cusack mentioned that there was a lot of improvisation on this film.
CE: There was. Quite a lot. There was a lot between his character of the writer and Chablis, for example, who were really great at just amiably provoking one another and really getting the most out of a scene. But there always is improvisation to some extent. I really like the actors to find their characters as we go along, not so much the dramatic direction but the soul of the character and in that respect what they’ll reveal in a given moment or situation, something ideally only that character or personality would do or express. Not think it out too much, but make discoveries as they happen right there in the scene, often as we’re doing it.
RG: You mentioned that you like to be surprised and John said that at one point he started to tell you what he was going to say to Chablis in a scene, something that wasn’t scripted, but you promptly told him not to tell you what it was he wanted to say but just to do it once the camera was rolling.
CE: I think a film is seeing it, when you see it there live, when it happens right there in front of you. Say John walks in and then Chablis walks in and the scene just goes, right at the instance of the first take. You know, a lot of times it’s a shock. You think, “Jesus, that worked terrifically.” At other times it doesn’t and you have to work until it does happen. You might have a little scene you think you’re going to get done in no time, with very little effort and before you know it you’ve spent a good part of the afternoon on it. But I like to keep everything moving and keep the actors from tiring and I think the best takes are usually the first ones, before the actors fall into a pattern. You see and feel the energy and immediacy of the first takes.
After Meryl Streep had a look at The Bridges of Madison County [1995], she said, “You know what I really like? You used all my mistakes, too.” And I said, “Yeah, but they were genuine mistakes.” In other words, they were human mistakes, not an actor’s mistakes. They’re more like how people really behave.
RG: As a director you don’t like to overplan. For instance, in terms of your camerawork, you don’t decide what the angles and composition are until you come to the set and to accommodate that, Jack [Green, the cinematographer] will light the set virtually 360 degrees so the camera can go in any direction. There’s never any fixed shot list or storyboards.
CE: No, because it’s a similar thing from that side of the camera, where you size up the moment as you encounter it. I come to the set knowing what we need to do and with very clear ideas of what I think will work, but I don’t like to walk in and impose on the setting with a lot of preconceptions. I like to see what we’ve got on that day, what the lighting is like, what’s in the environment, what’s interesting or can be made to become interesting and then to see where the actors are going to go. You size it up and work it out and figure where all the coverage is and I’ll confer with Jack [Green] and then shoot.
A lot of times I’ll have thought something out when we scouted the location, which may have been a month before, maybe just the night before. Sometimes all you’ve seen of the location are photographs the art director has brought in, a house maybe for a minor sequence. But nothing is ever the same the day you go out to shoot and so I like to be open to what I find. The light is never the same. You’ve got actors in the environment now, and they are going to be influenced or stimulated by the environment and they’re going to be doing the scene as a character or as characters they’ve been developing for the first time in that situation. I like to respond to all that, work with it and bring it into the film.
RG: Is there a certain heightened awareness that occurs while you’re shooting?
CE: Yeah, I think so. I think you become hyperaware as you work, as a director especially. I think you do see in a heightened way, with the adrenalin going, coming to terms with what’s in front of you and around you, kind of coming together with it all while you’re out there. I think that’s one of the virtues of working with film, really, that immediacy and that interaction.
CE: There was. Quite a lot. There was a lot between his character of the writer and Chablis, for example, who were really great at just amiably provoking one another and really getting the most out of a scene. But there always is improvisation to some extent. I really like the actors to find their characters as we go along, not so much the dramatic direction but the soul of the character and in that respect what they’ll reveal in a given moment or situation, something ideally only that character or personality would do or express. Not think it out too much, but make discoveries as they happen right there in the scene, often as we’re doing it.
RG: You mentioned that you like to be surprised and John said that at one point he started to tell you what he was going to say to Chablis in a scene, something that wasn’t scripted, but you promptly told him not to tell you what it was he wanted to say but just to do it once the camera was rolling.
CE: I think a film is seeing it, when you see it there live, when it happens right there in front of you. Say John walks in and then Chablis walks in and the scene just goes, right at the instance of the first take. You know, a lot of times it’s a shock. You think, “Jesus, that worked terrifically.” At other times it doesn’t and you have to work until it does happen. You might have a little scene you think you’re going to get done in no time, with very little effort and before you know it you’ve spent a good part of the afternoon on it. But I like to keep everything moving and keep the actors from tiring and I think the best takes are usually the first ones, before the actors fall into a pattern. You see and feel the energy and immediacy of the first takes.
After Meryl Streep had a look at The Bridges of Madison County [1995], she said, “You know what I really like? You used all my mistakes, too.” And I said, “Yeah, but they were genuine mistakes.” In other words, they were human mistakes, not an actor’s mistakes. They’re more like how people really behave.
RG: As a director you don’t like to overplan. For instance, in terms of your camerawork, you don’t decide what the angles and composition are until you come to the set and to accommodate that, Jack [Green, the cinematographer] will light the set virtually 360 degrees so the camera can go in any direction. There’s never any fixed shot list or storyboards.
CE: No, because it’s a similar thing from that side of the camera, where you size up the moment as you encounter it. I come to the set knowing what we need to do and with very clear ideas of what I think will work, but I don’t like to walk in and impose on the setting with a lot of preconceptions. I like to see what we’ve got on that day, what the lighting is like, what’s in the environment, what’s interesting or can be made to become interesting and then to see where the actors are going to go. You size it up and work it out and figure where all the coverage is and I’ll confer with Jack [Green] and then shoot.
A lot of times I’ll have thought something out when we scouted the location, which may have been a month before, maybe just the night before. Sometimes all you’ve seen of the location are photographs the art director has brought in, a house maybe for a minor sequence. But nothing is ever the same the day you go out to shoot and so I like to be open to what I find. The light is never the same. You’ve got actors in the environment now, and they are going to be influenced or stimulated by the environment and they’re going to be doing the scene as a character or as characters they’ve been developing for the first time in that situation. I like to respond to all that, work with it and bring it into the film.
RG: Is there a certain heightened awareness that occurs while you’re shooting?
CE: Yeah, I think so. I think you become hyperaware as you work, as a director especially. I think you do see in a heightened way, with the adrenalin going, coming to terms with what’s in front of you and around you, kind of coming together with it all while you’re out there. I think that’s one of the virtues of working with film, really, that immediacy and that interaction.
– Clint Eastwood. Interviewed by Ric Gentry. In Gerald Duchovnay (ed): Film Voices
