HEREAFTER directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Peter Morgan, with Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Frankie McLaren, Jay Mohr and Bryce Dallas Howard. A Warner Bros. release. 123 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (October 15). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies.
New York City – Clint Eastwood is talking about the time he almost died. Two times, actually.[briefbreaks]
At the New York Film Festival press conference for his new film, Hereafter – which premiered last month at TIFF – Eastwood is holding court, flanked by actors Cécile De France, Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan.
The film is about three characters struggling to define their relationships with death, so it seems logical to ask whether any of them has had a near-death experience.
“Everybody’s had some kind of one,” Eastwood says, looking pretty damn vital for a man who celebrated his 80th birthday this year. “I remember when I was very young, my dad was taking me into the surf on his shoulders, and I fell off. Even though I was probably four or five years old, I can still remember the colour of the water as I was being washed around in the surf before I popped to the surface again.
“Then years later, when I was 21, we ditched a plane off the coast of northern California in the wintertime. I must say, as I was going in toward shore, I kept thinking, ‘Should I be thinking about something?’ I wasn’t thinking about my demise. I saw lights in the far distance and I said, ‘Somebody’s in there having a beer and sitting next to a fireplace, and I just wanna be in there, so I’m gonna make it.’ There was no sense of fate out there, or anything like that. I don’t think you get a chance to think that much about it. When you get that much of a chance to think, you’re usually gonna be okay.”
I have a different question, though. There’s a theme that’s appeared in Eastwood’s films over the years, as he’s evolved from being an actor who directs the occasional picture to one of America’s most revered filmmakers. From Bronco Billy to Gran Torino, he’s made movies in which older characters remain relevant and vital in a world that’s ready to move past them.
You can see it in Unforgiven and A Perfect World, and in Space Cowboys and Million Dollar Baby, and even in more generic pictures like The Dead Pool, Absolute Power, The Rookie and True Crime. I was wondering what he thought of that, and whether it applies to his own filmmaking.
“You know, it’s very subjective,” Eastwood says. “I think it’d be easier for somebody else to evaluate than it would be for myself, cuz I don’t think of it in that way. If I start evaluating myself, I’d be afraid that I wouldn’t be able to think intelligently about every project and the various meanings thereof.”
That’s where Eastwood wants to leave it, but Matt Damon, who plays a reluctant psychic in Hereafter, picks up on the thought.
“I actually asked a similar question of him on Invictus,” he says, “but it was about directors as they got older. Why was it that they historically seem to fall off? Because he’s obviously completely avoided that.”
“Not so fast,” Eastwood says to huge laughter. Eighty or not, the man has fantastic timing – and his self-deprecating response nicely undercuts any conversation about the decidedly mixed responses to recent work like Flags Of Our Fathers, Changeling, Gran Torino, Invictus… and, yes, Hereafter.
But Eastwood has a theory. “I knew Frank Capra a little bit,” he says, “and I spent some time with him at June Lake, where he lived in the summertime, and he was always so bright. I always figured, ‘Why isn’t this guy still working?’ And I also knew Billy Wilder somewhat, and he stopped working in his 60s. And I thought, ‘God, this is amazing, here’s a guy who’s bright and lived well into his 90s and didn’t work.’ And I never could figure that out.
He continues. “I figure your best years should be at a point when you’ve absorbed all this knowledge. Now, maybe they just didn’t keep up with the times, or they picked story material that didn’t work, or they had a few pictures that didn’t do so well, and all of a sudden…. People are very fickle, the Hollywood thing is very fickle, and they kinda move on.”
Of course, Eastwood – whose relationship with Warner Bros. lets him make pretty much anything he wants – doesn’t have to worry about Hollywood leaving him behind. And he has no intention of slowing down.
“There’s a director in Portugal [Manoel de Oliveira] who is still making films at over 100 years old,” he says, pausing for effect. “And I plan to do the same thing.”
The room bursts into laughter and applause. How can it not? Clint Eastwood just said he’s not going anywhere.
Interview Clips
Clint Eastwood and Cecile de France on shooting the film’s opening sequence:
Clint Eastwood and Matt Damon on the trouble with boiling this movie down to a trailer:
Peter Morgan on the real-life events that inspired his script:
normw@nowtoronto.com
