- [Clint] Could you do one more
and try to lift your head a little bit.
- Okay.
I don't deserve this, to die like this.
(thunder rumbling)
I was building a house.
- Deserves got nothing to do with it.
- Clint is a very learned storyteller.
- And roll it. (crew shouting in background)
- He always makes an interesting movie,
always makes an interesting movie, always.
- Now push it towards him, push it.
There you go.
- Clint Eastwood's films have very happy companies
and he comes in under schedule
and he comes in under budget every single time.
- If you have a good screenplay, you're 50% there
and if you cast it well, you're 40% on top of that,
and there's 10% of which you can screw it up.
(dramatic music)
- Go ahead, make my day.
- [Narrator] For most actors
being the biggest movie star in the world would be enough
but for Clint Eastwood,
a restless desire to move behind the camera started early.
- Well, when I was a young contract player,
back in the early fifties,
I used to go down to the sound stages at Universal
all the time.
And I was always curious about the directors
and curious about how they were putting it together
and I watched various shows.
Finally, one day I started thinking
I had to try this myself.
- [Narrator] Eastwood's break into directing
came in the form of a low budget thriller
set in his beloved Carmel, California.
(woman gasps) (cloth tearing)
- I knew Clint as a humongous movie star,
just this international icon and what changed me completely,
and I think change most of the rest of Hollywood,
was when all of us saw "Play Misty For Me"
and realized that there was a storyteller not just an actor
whose job it was to tell someone else's stories.
- [Narrator] With "Play Misty For Me"
serving as his auspicious debut,
Eastwood began a directing career
firmly rooted in classic American cinema.
- He is a kind of a throwback
to the old days of movie-making.
- The thing about Clint Eastwood
is his films are put together
in a much more old-fashioned Hollywood style.
- That style has gone, it's not there,
but the last link, I think, is with Eastwood.
- Clint's been very fortunate
in that he has an arrangement with Warner Brothers
and over the years because of his star-power,
he's used that power
to do the kinds of movies that he wants to do.
"Million Dollar Baby",
that's not the kind of movie that a studio would make.
- If I was thinking straight I'd go back home,
find a used trailer, buy a deep fryer and some Oreo's.
Problem is, this the only thing I ever felt good doing.
If I'm too old for this then I got nothing.
That enough truth to suit you?
- I think on the inside
he's gripped with a passion to tell these stories.
(bullet zinging)
(metal clicking)
- All right now, I'm coming out.
Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him
I'm gonna kill his wife.
All his friends.
Burn his damn house down.
- [Narrator] Eastwood's passion for filmmaking
has never been more apparent than in his greatest Western,
a film that turns the legend of the mythic gunslinger
inside out.
- "Unforgiven" was really the film that made me think,
my God, this is a great artist.
- No, don't tell nobody, don't tell my kids,
none of the things I done here.
- All right, Will.
- [Narrator] Although not technically a Western,
"Cry Macho" gave Eastwood the opportunity
to revisit some familiar terrain,
both geographical and emotional.
- The thing that everybody loves to see
is Clint in a cowboy hat and on a horse.
He hasn't been on a horse since "Unforgiven".
- Let's see if we're the right leg length?
- But the first day
that we filmed the scene of him up on the horse,
the crew, on my, they were just like all so excited.
It was a special moment, he's back in the saddle again.
- Good, put your heels down.
Your dad's gonna be a happy man, I can see that.
- There's also
sparks for a relationship with a woman in his life again.
- Okay. - Awesome, awesome.
(Marta speaking Spanish)
- I'm catching on onto this stuff.
- Si. (laughing)
- But it is a love story, yeah, it's got that in it.
It's got a lot of different other aspects to it.
- It gives you all of those great iconic moments
that you've seen in all other Eastwood films
and you want him to go and ride his horse
off into the sunset.
- Yeah, I hear you loud and clear.
- The most amazing thing about Clint Eastwood
is among all of us, Clint is the most eclectic.
He's a chameleon in that he adapts to the book
or to the screenplay, so he changes up.
(uplifting dramatic music)
- Brace for impact.
(boxer grunting) (crowd shouting)
- No, no, God.
(man screaming)