Clint Eastwood does not yell “Action!” Ever. There’s no “Roll it!” or “Cut!” either. There’s no yelling, period. If you’re on his crew, you use your inside voice. It’s a key component of the World of Clint – the zen oasis that is an Eastwood movie set. For one of our most iconic tough-guy film stars, he’s shockingly mellow as a director and producer.
Not that he’s a pushover, of course. It’s hard to imagine anyone who’d want to mess with Dirty Harry, even at 78. It’s simply that in the nearly four decades he’s been directing movies, he’s figured out how to get things done without making himself, or anyone else, insane in the process.
Over the years, he’s developed enduring relationships with crew members, who come back to work with him time and again. They know how to make movies his way, and he knows how to foster an environment that keeps everyone feeling good. And get them home for dinner.
He has his own production company, Malpaso, named for a creek in Carmel, Calif., where he lives on an expansive ranch (and, for two years in the ’80s, was the mayor). Malpaso is renowned in the industry for its small, efficient staff and lack of pretension.
“He’s just the classiest, most elegant, coolest man there is,” gushes actor Jason Butler Harner, who plays serial killer Gordon Northcott in Eastwood’s new movie, “Changeling.” “He hires people around him who he trusts and he’s worked with his whole career. The stunt man, Buddy Van Horn, worked with him in westerns in the ’60s, and is, like, 80 years old.”
Harner, who would clearly have worked with Eastwood under any conditions, says he was surprised and delighted by the director’s calm shooting environment. “It’s such a laid-back set, it’s very quiet,” he says. “Usually, there’s a lot of mania, and that spastic, neurotic energy can really be damaging [to] the flow of the movie.”
Eastwood’s longtime producer, Robert Lorenz, says the director pointedly keeps things low-key because of his firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to be an actor.
“As they’re preparing to do a scene, he’s very adamant with the crew that they be conscious of that, so it’s not a tense, charged environment, but a calm and relaxed one,” says Lorenz. “He insists that everyone wear radio mikes, so there’s no squawking radio going off.”
And when he wants to start filming, he simply says, “Go ahead” – a practice that apparently dates back to the ’60s TV show “Rawhide,” on which he starred as cowpoke Rowdy Yates.
“They couldn’t yell ‘action’ because the horses would get spooked,” says actor Jeffrey Donovan, who plays crooked LAPD captain J.J. Jones in “Changeling” and is a huge self-professed Eastwood fan. “So they would just roll cameras, and then say ‘Just go ahead.’ “
“Just go ahead” might be an equally good motto for Eastwood’s outlook on life. In the past five years, he’s made six feature films: “Mystic River,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Flags of Our Fathers” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” and now “Changeling” and the forthcoming “Gran Torino.”
He produced most of those films as well, and wrote the scores for “Mystic River,” “Million Dollar Baby” and “Flags of Our Fathers” – and still found time to score “Grace Is Gone,” a 2007 movie that starred John Cusack as the widower of an Iraq soldier.
It’s a staggering pace that would be unimaginable for most directors. Even the ultra-prolific Woody Allen keeps his schedule to one movie a year. But to Eastwood, it’s just how Hollywood ought to work. “Everybody thinks (two back-to-back films) is a big deal, but they did it all the time in the old days,” he told USA Today. “John Ford would make two or three films a year.”
In 2004, Eastwood even found time for TV work, directing a 90-minute installment of Martin Scorsese’s documentary series “The Blues,” which featured 89-year-old bluesman Pinetop Perkins. “You got a diet I should follow?” he reportedly asked the well-preserved musican upon meeting him for the first time.
It’s a telling remark, and one that gives rise to an enduring question. How does he do it? In his late 70s, he looks more like he’s in mid-50s. He’s older than John McCain, but looks as if the presidential candidate could be his dad.
“He’s extremely health conscious,” Lorenz says simply. “He reads medical journals and, you know, he can tell you what vitamin to take if you’re not feeling well. All that sort of stuff. He’s got a lot of good friends who are doctors.”
Eastwood has used the same craft service caterer for years, a place called Tony’s that specializes in steamed vegetables. “It does help to have a caterer who knows his tastes,” Lorenz says. “I remember a couple pictures ago, a crew member was standing around eating something. Clint says, ‘What’s that you’re eating?’ The guy says, ‘A piece of pizza.’ It was dripping with grease. He says, ‘Do you want a piece?’ Clint says, ‘No, I have several more movies I want to make.’ “
Eastwood’s soft-spoken sense of humor serves him well when it comes to the issue of age, says Lorenz. “He’s got a great sense of humor about it. He jokes about walking slowly, and creaking bones and all that stuff. All very kind of light-hearted.
“He did mention the other day about Paul Newman’s passing – that he had been thinking about how few people from his generation are still out there working and active. He seemed to have this moment where he was just sort of pondering that.”
But he didn’t stop to ponder for too long. He doesn’t have time. “Gran Torino” is in post-production at the moment, and due out in December. Meanwhile, “Changeling,” one of Eastwood’s most ambitious and epic films yet, is out Friday.
The film, based on a true story from the 1920s, stars Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins, a woman whose nine-year-old son disappeared one day while she was at work. The notoriously crooked LAPD announced five months later that it had located her son – and triumphantly presented her with a child she knew immediately was not hers.
But her protests were written off as the ravings of a hysterical woman, and she was briefly committed to a psychiatric ward on the instruction of the police detective who was tired of hearing her protests. That incarceration would eventually fuel her lawsuit against the department for neglecting its duty to find her missing son.
Jolie, by all accounts, was a good match for Eastwood, who has affectionately referred to her as “Tomb Raider” and “Dirty Harriet” during their joint interviews. And she had nothing but praise for him.
“He is, to me, very much the ideal man,” she told USA Today recently. “Maybe it’s generational, but I think we could use more of it. People look up to him.”
This is certainly true of his “Changeling” cast, which seemed uniformly transformed by the experience of having worked with him. (“He’s definitely spoiled me for other directors,” Harner says.)
Some arrived on set starry-eyed and stayed that way, such as Donovan: “I was slightly intimidated,” he admits, “because I was a fan, and I was just a little nervous being in his presence.”
Michael Kelly, an actor from the cast of “Generation Kill,” plays the lone LAPD detective with a conscience. “I slept maybe two or three hours the night before I started work [on the film],” he says. “I was so nervous. But when I get there, Clint comes over, like, ‘Hey how are you?’ Just the kindest, coolest person in the world, and he just puts everyone at such ease.”
The process by which Eastwood hires his actors is itself unusual. He goes by a single taped audition of the actor, sent to him by his casting director. This is not because he doesn’t have the time or inclination to meet in person, says Lorenz.
“He doesn’t like to make them nervous by being present, so he puts them on tape,” Lorenz says. “He also knows how difficult it is to go through that rejection constantly, with numerous auditions. He’s always saying if they met him in person, he’d be inclined to hire everyone he meets.”
His remote auditions also allow non-LA actors to try out for his films. One such New York performer was Harner’s best friend, Amy Ryan, Oscar-nominated for her role in “Gone Baby Gone.” Thanks to the taped-audition process, Eastwood cast her as Jolie’s fellow psychiatric ward inmate.
Harner also bonded with Kelly the first day they met on set, mostly over their shared incredulity about the awesomeness of working for Clint. “We’re two guys that were given these incredible roles in a Clint Eastwood movie,” says Kelly, “and we’re thinking about what this could do for us, and just really enjoying the moment.”
When you show up on Clint’s set, you know to bring your A-game. This is because – as you might expect – Eastwood is not a dilly-dallier. He’s famous for his one- or two-take shots.
“He’s got a camera guy, Stephen Campanelli, who can do a steadycam shot for 20 yards, moving all around,” says Kelly, “and he’ll turn to Campanelli and say, ‘That’s good for me.’ If you’re on any other set, you’re doing that shot 10 or 20 times.”
“He likes the spontaneity that comes with the first take,” says Lorenz. “He wants to capture that on film. If people over-analyze things, he says, they kind of wear it out.”
Eastwood’s next film, “Gran Torino,” is possibly even more intense than “Changeling.” In it, the director steps in front of the camera, in his first role since “Million Dollar Baby,” to play a man coming to terms with his own racism through his relationship with a Hmong teenager.
“It’s a smaller story, not nearly as epic, and therefore it was possible for Clint to do both acting and directing,” says Lorenz. “He’s got so much more to do, in terms of not only picking the shot but remembering his lines. He had to carry the film. He’s the main character, he’s in almost every scene – and so we had to go at a slower pace to give him time to prepare and to do it.”
The production is running as smoothly as ever. Lorenz puts it down to this: “There’s a complete lack of ego on his sets. Oftentimes, when you put together a crew, there’s a lot of jockeying going on – everyone trying to figure out who’s actually running the show, who’s going to stand up, who’s going to back down.
“On Clint’s set,” he says, “everyone knows it’s Clint’s show.”
* CHANGELING (2008) Angelina Jolie plays a 1920s LA woman whose son is kidnapped. When the police find the boy, she’s sure that he’s not her son. Based on a true story. Out Friday.
*GRAN TORINO (2008) Eastwood plays a Korean War vet with anti-Asian prejudices. He grows close to a Hmong family from Laos after their teen son tries to steal his car. Out Dec. 25.
* FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (2006) The Battle of Iwo Jima tale focuses on the men who helped raise the flag in the iconic WWII photo. It earned Eastwood a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director and two technical Oscar nods.
* LETTERS FROM IWO (2006( Showing the Japanese view of the battle, Eastwood captures the enemy’s humanity, winning a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and getting got four Oscar nods, including Best Picture and Director.
* MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004) Eastwood co-starred with Hilary Swank in the story of a young boxer paralyzed during a prize fight. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won Best Picture, Director, Actress (Swank) and Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman).
* MYSTIC RIVER (2003) Three friends are caught in a murder mystery while one deals with childhood abuse. Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture and Director, it won Actor (Sean Penn) and Supporting Actor (Tim Robbins) .
* “THE BLUES: PIANT BLUES (2003) An avid jazz pianist who writes his own scores, Eastwood got to jam with many of his keyboard idols, including Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck and Marcia Ball. It received a Grammy nomination for Best Long Form Music Video.