Paul Dechant on Unforgiven

Paul comes back to chat about the classic Eastwood Western, Unforgiven.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.

(00:28):
Hey everybody, and welcome to Movie Crush Friday Interview edition.
In here with Paul again after it seems like it's
been a minute, Paul, I think it's been since before
I moved to New York, which is where I'm Lord's
where I'm coming to you now from. That's right, you're
in Brooklyn, I am, Yeah, in a little closet right

(00:50):
now in Brooklyn. Come out of the closet, Paul, already,
come on. Maybe maybe by the end of this episode,
I will that right, And you know we've spoken since then, obviously,
but I'm everyone should know that you're doing well. You've
got a great place, you're happy, you're living with with
your lady friend now finally after quite a while apart.

(01:12):
So congratulations, thanks man. Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm enjoying
New York. It's hot though, and I'm getting used to
having window air conditioners instead of central a C. Yeah.
Those windows they can pump it out sometimes though, if
they're good, they can. But it's just it's just an adjustment,
for sure. Yeah, sometimes you have to wait wait to

(01:35):
get cool, just than having it right away. New York
Hut is different too. It's pretty steamy. The concrete makes
it very unpleasant. Yes, agreed, But enough about New York City,
because we're here to talk about a Western. We haven't
done then many westerns on this show. And when you
threw out a short list of movies, Unforgiven was on there,

(01:59):
and it had been a while since I've seen it,
so I jumped all over this one. I'm glad man,
I'm a I'm a Western fan and um I in
fact Unforgiven though I didn't see this for the first
time until a couple of months ago. I've kind of
been going on in Clint Eastwood kick and uh, mostly
like the films he's directed himself, and Unforgiven has always

(02:22):
has always kind of been considered one of his top movies,
and so I don't know, just like a couple of
months ago, I watched it and I was just like
blown away by how great it was and really excited
to talk about it today. Dude, that's great. I didn't
know that this was new to you. Clint Eastwood is
a legend. He uh, he is someone who's politics I
don't agree with, but I just I love the guy

(02:44):
even so you know it's I forget about all that stuff.
He um this. I believe his movie coming out this
year will be either his thirty ninth or film as director,
which is just crazy. Man, he's not. I don't feel
like he's on the short list for a lot of
people for best directors, and he should be. At the

(03:05):
tender age of ninety one. I think, uh, he's pumping
out movies one one every year at this rate. Uh,
And it's just it's honestly, it's pretty inspiring to like
watch at this point because um uh, you know, some
of them are hit and miss, but I like a
lot of them, especially his recent work and just the
way he works. And like, like you mentioned, I I

(03:28):
tend to disagree with his politics as well, but I
think that that will make this conversation richer because despite
his politics, I personally find a lot more ambivalence and
uh nuance in his movies then you might think from
somebody who too sort of character tries him, you might
think of as like a crotchety old conservative guy telling

(03:52):
young people to get off my lawn. You know. Yeah,
I mean he's really not doing a lot of that
in his movie. He's I guess Grand Torino had had
a bit of that element to it, but Great Arena
was fucking great. I love that movie. Yeah, I actually
just watched it on a plane a couple of weeks
ago for the first time. Yeah. Man, it's good, and

(04:12):
it's it's so fun to dive into like sort of
his psyche because again, he has these like surprisingly like
progressive views or things he shows in his movies despite
him sort of being like a sort of old fashioned
guy who believes in like say, you know, strong men
and and you know, uh, he thinks, you know, America

(04:35):
has become a nation of pussies and stuff like that,
you know. But uh, and I think and Unforgiven is
is a great example of sort of how he sort
of deconstructs a genre that is known for sort of
the strong silent man, you know. Yeah, and this is
a movie that was I think everyone kind of thought
this was his his goodbye to westerns uh, and it

(04:59):
kind of had been. Although his new movie coming out
is sort of a Western um not quite like this,
I think it's said in the seventies, but it definitely
is a is a bit of a Western um. But
this definitely is is his last sort of Hurrah to
the the pale writer character. This the Josie Whale's strong

(05:20):
silent type, and um, I remember when it came out,
it was it seemed very much a sort of a
statement movie, like this is it, This is gonna be
my my swan song for this kind of movie, And
what a statement it is. First of all, the fact
that it won four Oscars, including Best Picture, surprises me

(05:41):
just because how great it is. And um, meaning like
I feel like a lot of the times, the Best
Picture often goes to a film that might be good
in my opinion, but not the best of that year,
and I forget what else would have been nominated that year.
But when I look at like the I looked recently
at the list of like all the Best Picture winners
for the past forty years, Like I can think of

(06:02):
a handful of them that I consider like canon movies
that like people still talk about and I would still
go back to, and movies that just have stood the
test of time, and I think Unforgiven as one of
them for sure. Yeah, so this one best pure huh yeah,
best Picture, and I've got it somewhere here. Best Director.
I meant to look that up. Okay, Best Editing and

(06:24):
Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman, and then He's Good,
and then Eastwood himself was nominated for Best Actor but
lost to al Pacino for Scent of a Woman. Wow,
a movie I still haven't seen. I saw it ages ago,
but I need to need to revisit it. I think, Yeah,
it's funny the a couple of comments on that one

(06:45):
best Editing. I love that this one best editing because
it is such a thoughtfully edited and paced movie, and
I think that they don't get recognized as much. Uh,
there's no thing flashy about this movie. It is a
very very simple story. Was that a fly? There's a

(07:05):
gigantic fly in my closet here? Yeah? Uh? And then
the with with Hackman. It's funny you mentioned Pacino because
I was thinking when I was watching this, how people
make such hay out of like when de Niro and
Pacino finally got together in Heat and they shared the
screen and and it was great, and they've done that

(07:26):
I think since then. But like, why isn't even anyone
talking about Eastwood and Hackman sharing the screen? And then
throw in a Morgan Freeman like a third legend on
top of it. It's like to me, that was seeing
those two guys go toe to toe is just as
big a deal to me. Gene Hackman is one of
my favorite of all time. I'm like, I miss him

(07:46):
so so much. I know, I know, yeah, he's he's
so good in it, and uh, the role he plays,
it's easy to sort of say, like, oh, you can't
imagine this role being played by anybody else, but I
really feel that with this owl. And and like you said,
I don't have they worked him and him and Eastwood
work together on any other films, not that I can
think of. I can't. I mean, there's probably some obvious

(08:08):
one that everyone is like going to make fun of
us for forgetting, but I can't really think of anything.
And then Richard Harris is in it too. It's like,
good lord, yeah, it's it's funny because like I or
what I most know Richard Harris for is playing Dumbledore
in the first two Harry Potter movies. Get out right now,
get out of that closet and leave before he passed away.

(08:31):
He was Dumbledore for two movies, and so he's like,
you know, this wise and old gentle soul in Harry Potter.
And then seeing him I and I i've since I
know he has had a long and illustrious career aside
from Harry Potter. But seeing him in that another role,
he really sort of choose up the scenery in a
great way. Yeah. I love English Bob. He's he's pretty great.

(08:54):
It's funny. I thought it was funny, how in another
great role from Saul Rubenek as but Champ the writer, Um,
the writer who has no stomach for this stuff. He
wants to record the Old West. He wants to be
the biographer of these guys that I think he feels
like he admires. But I think he admired Bob because
Bob was this sort of winning, fun, jovial Englishman when

(09:18):
the tables are turned and then he is the back
for a little bill uh, He's he's in over his
head and he knows it, and that he's a sadist
in a and a genuinely evil person, and that's not
who English Bob was. The boat Champ character. Yeah, he
fascinates me for for a lot of reasons. And I
think you hit on it, Um when you're talking about

(09:41):
like the myth of the Old West and how I
feel like the Western compared to some other genres as
kind of very much a genre of cinema, right, that
cinema really created the Western, and so we have this
sort of archetypes, the archetypes of Westerns, you know, the
good gun slinger staring down out gunned out man, staring
down a room of bad guys and taking them all

(10:02):
out against the odds. Uh. And bow Champ is writing
these basically very much fictitious stories, as we learn with
English Bob when little Bill sort of corrects him on
the story he was writing about. Okay, here's what actually happened.
It was not heroic at all. Bob was drunk, and
the story about Parky that was pretty funny. Yeah. And

(10:22):
the duck, the Duck of Death really the Duke, the
Duke of Death. Yeah, the Duck of Death really just
uh kind of got lucky and took his time and
shot the guy sort of unarmed and without any honor
in quotation marks. And then though the sort of bow
Champ switches allegiances and he stays with Hackman because he's

(10:44):
enamored with hearing Hackman stories. And then you see them
sort of uh in in Hackman's Leaky House with the
roof leaking water, and he's telling more stories and you
can tell that he's embellishing them himself, right, that's yea.
And then finally, so what I think is interesting is
during the final shootout when when Eastwood shows up and

(11:05):
he you know, he kills the room of quote unquote
bad guys and and bow Champ is in the back.
And you see though his face like light up when
he enters the room, and once he starts taking out guys,
he's like he's he's sort of twisted lee fascinated by it,
and he's almost like, oh, this is this is the
best one of them all. This is the king of
gun slingers. And he immediately says, Okay, who did you

(11:27):
shoot first? And uh, it's usually traditionally the the fastest
gun you want to take out of the most lethal
and Eastwood just like, oh, I just got lucky, you know.
But he's clearly like still fascinated by this, and even
though he's witnessed this horrific violence, he still wants to
sort of embellish it and write more books about it. Yeah,
and Eastwood, I mean that scene is so key because

(11:49):
they're they're all like Bill, Little Bill is kind of
poopooing the whole biographer thing until he is his biographer,
and then he's way into it and he's embellishing, like
you said, and adding to the mystifying of these of
himself and people like him. But but Money just will

(12:13):
Money doesn't care about any of that stuff like that.
His chance, his entry point is to go right, like
he has the chance the doors open, to start telling
his story to this guy, and he just doesn't give
a ship. He didn't want to, he didn't want to
kill people anymore. He doesn't want to glorify killing people anymore.

(12:33):
I mean, that's what this whole movie is about, is
about the the guilt that this man feels about the
horrible things he's done in his past and how he
feels he is a bad guy, and he was a
bad guy. He killed women and children and was a drunk. Yeah.
I think that's sort of late in the film Revelation

(12:54):
where I think one of the prostitutes says, oh, you're
the guy. Little Bill said, You're the I who dynamited
so and so's place and killed women and children. And suddenly,
as a viewer, you immediately it's suddenly like your worldview
is rocked because you wanted to think of Eastwood's character
as this like stoic guy who probably killed for good

(13:16):
reasons in his past, and yeah, things got a little dirty,
but he always did maybe not the right thing, but
the thing that needed to be done. And suddenly you're like,
wait a minute, this guy is not nearly as heroic
and worth admiration as I might have thought. It makes
you make a choice, m you know, like, because you
know something was up, because he's a man clearly haunted

(13:39):
from his past. They sort of lead you to believe
that it's only because of his wife who had passed away. Um,
but you could tell that there's something more. He's not
drinking anymore. Alcoholism is different back then because annoyed me
how much Morgan Freeman kept trying to get him to
drink again, and I was like, stop, you're not supposed

(13:59):
to do that. Don't enable them, Like I don't think
enabling was a word back then. Uh, but boy, that
makes it so powerful when he takes that bottle at
the end and finally starts drinking. You know. Yeah, so
I'm very curious that that sort of ending. We've been
talking about a little bit where he finally shows up
to the saloon and he basically he's outmanned, out gunned,

(14:20):
and yet he takes out I don't know, six guys,
let's say, who knows, maybe more without a scratch on him. Like,
when you're watching that, what is your reaction to it?
I was into it because I like a good revenge
killing in a movie. Uh, little Bill was a bad guy.

(14:41):
I think they set it up such that you would
definitely root for that because of the um. The beginning
was so brutal when they cut that woman up. Uh,
that was a brutal scene to see, and so you
really want those fucking guys to to get theirs. Um,
but those guys had already gotten There's so interesting, like
he kills the bar, the saloon owner. Uh, in cold blood.

(15:05):
It just for you know, having Morgan Freeman's body displayed
out in front, which he didn't really have a choice of.
I imagine Little Bill was you know, he's calling all
the shots in that town. So, I mean that's kind
of one of the things I like about this movie
is that there it's not so clear cut and they
are a little ambiguous with who you should be rooting for.

(15:28):
But he one of the best parts of that whole
scene is when he's like, you know, any any any
man that doesn't want to get shot and just go
on out in the back and all those fucking guys
just get the hell out of there, and they have
a chance to kill him too, and they're just there,
you know, they're scared. Yeah, And it kind of goes
back to to what Little Bob was saying to to

(15:48):
bow Champ earlier about how it's not the who who's
the fastest gun, it's who stays the coolest under pressure.
I think, God, that scene. Can we talk about that scene? Yeah? Absolutely,
that scene. Yeah, when he Little Bob gives him the
gun basically, and I mean that whole scene is great
because that's when he sort of reveals that Bob English

(16:09):
Bob had been stretching the truth. It's a really long
scene and then he gives him that gun and he's
just he tells him to cock it and he points
it right at his chest and all that guy's gotta
do is squeeze the trigger and he knows he won't,
and then he tells him the hand of English Bob
and it's just such a power play, you know, in
my mind it links up to the Schofield kid character,

(16:30):
who who has actually never killed anybody, but sees himself
or tells everybody he's this this bad man killer. And ultimately, though,
like very I think it shows with the boat champ
taking the gun, it's like very few of us would
actually have the nerve or have the whatever you call
it to be able to do that, you know, And

(16:51):
it takes a certain kind of person to be able
to do that, and even back then, and you know,
I I don't think there's much of a moral judgment
placed on what type of person that is. Is it
somebody who like because all the guys we see who
are able to kill are kind of psychopaths a little bit,

(17:12):
you know, or they have like they're they're not the
best people. So it's like the ability to kill people, what,
you know, do you lose your soul in the process
or something like that? You know? Yeah, I mean that's
again that's sort of the central premise of this movie
is what does it take to do this? What does
it do to you? Like, how does it change you
as a person in this case as a man to

(17:34):
do it? Ah, I mean, it's one of the classic
lines in movie history. You know, is is Clint at
that one point when and this is that's what I
texted you immediately when he said unforgiven, it's a hell
of a thing killing a man. Take away, you take
away everything he's gotten, everything he's ever going to have.
And I think you just see on the kid's face
like he never even considered what it would feel like

(17:56):
because he was drawn in by the by Billy the
Kid and all these stories. You know, he wanted all
the all the notoriety and stuff until it actually happened,
and then it just wrecked him. Yeah, and the stories
that somebody like bow Champ probably makes money off of writing,
you know. And yeah, the performance, So the actor I
had to look him up, James Wolvett, who plays the
Schofield kid, I haven't. Yeah, he's great and I love

(18:20):
that he's so grading and annoying for like most of
the movie intentionally, and then the performance he gives in
that scene where he breaks down after killing one of
the guys, like it's just hard. It's it's a great
performance and it's just heartbreaking because you see you can
literally see the psyche shift in that scene. And then

(18:42):
you know the moment where he says, you know, I'm
not I'm not picking up a gun again, and I'm
never killing anyone again. If there's any sort of hope
to be found in a movie like this, it's the
fact that somebody like him takes that view and and
sort of decides to leave this life behind, you know, Yeah,
And you get the feeling that that's gonna hide him
for the rest of his life, even though that guy

(19:02):
really deserved what he had come and h which leads
me to another one of my favorite lines about you know,
the guy kind of deserving It is when little Bill
is dying on the floor of the saloon and he
says that, you know, I don't deserve to die like this,
and uh, Money just says deserves got nothing to do
with it. This is such a good line, And that's
a close as close as this movie comes to, like

(19:24):
a not pithy, but just sort of because he plays
it so straight. You know, there are a lot of
times this would have been a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger
or something is the retired old guy would have just
been chock full of corny lines. But that's as close
as it comes. And I thought it was a good line. Yeah,
and and it's sort of a metal line, right. It's

(19:44):
like we like to think of our our Westerns, especially
having clear cut good guys and bad guys, and the
bad guys deserve what's coming to them, and Eastwood just says,
you know, deserves, got nothing to do with it. It's
just a matter of doing it, you know. Yeah, we

(20:08):
should talk a little bit about just how beautiful of
a film this is. Those gorgeous shots at dusk and dawn,
the silhouette of he and uh ned when they're riding
those horses at sunset, it's just he pulls out all
the stops of kind of the beautiful old Western. Um
like that. That's what you want to see when you

(20:30):
see a movie like this, if you want to see
horses silhouetted against a red setting sun, shout out to
let's see. The DP was Jack Green who uh I
looked him up. He's he's deep. Had a lot of
Eastwood stuff, especially his stuff in the nineties. But yeah,
beautiful film. Um. I love the opening and closing shots
of the sun setting with the tree and Eastwood at

(20:52):
the the grave of his wife. Yeah, it's it's a
very sort of classical looking frame like something you'd see
in a movie from the fifties or something, and um,
I had to look it up. They shot it mostly
in Alberta, Canada, which is where a lot of westerns
are shot, like Days of Heaven was shot there. I think,
Oh yeah, planes, big open planes. Um, I will say that. Uh.

(21:15):
A fun tidbit is that they say William Money lives
in and it's mentioned he lives in Hodgman County, Kansas,
which is literally two counties away from where I grew
up in no Way. Yeah, yeah, it's a real county. Um.
Just a fun little thing. But yeah, they didn't shoot
it in Kansas as far as I can tell. You
think they came all the way from Kansas just to
fuck us. That was a great line, um, I was.

(21:37):
It was a little like disconcerting and and really hammers
home like how sexual assault his uh sometimes not even
changed that much. Like the the excuse that Sheriff Bill
uses after the assault is like these are pretty good guys,
like you know, what's what good is it gonna do

(21:59):
to go after for them than and ruin their lives?
And I heard that. I was just like, God, do
you hear that same ship today? When it's like, you
know that I can't remember was that the duke student
from the from the Good Family behind the dumpster And
you hear that same thing trotted out, like well, why
ruin his life now for this one mistake? And it's

(22:22):
just so maddening. It's crazy because like you expect to
hear and a ligne like that echoed in a movie
that's coming out. Maybe it's like hitting the pulse of
what's you know, current in the culture, and you have
to hear it in a movie from which is you know?
And it's basically a word for word of what, like

(22:42):
you said, these these lines that get trotted out in
cases today. It's it's a very smart script. Uh, Violet's
see David Webb Peoples who also wrote Blade Runner and Yeah, man,
the role of the women in this film is really fascinating.
I think, you know because after after the cuting happens
at the beginning of the film, they first of all say,

(23:03):
a little bill, you're only going to whip them, And
then once they agree to bring the ponies, he's like, oh,
we don't even need to whip him. Yeah, And like
you said, they're good boys who don't want to ruin
their lives and the fact that um, during that scene,
Skinny the bartender says, Oh, I've got a contract here.
These women are property. They are an investment of capital.

(23:23):
You know. All the men here see them as less
than human, as the equivalent of horses. Right, And the
fact that the women really have no recourse through quote
unquote legal means is ultimately why they turned to pooling
their money and trying to get somebody to come and
uh and kill these two guys. Yeah, like all the
money they have, it feels like, and you know, they

(23:45):
do love that they gave them some agency. There is
a you know, a very brief albeit feminist message in
this and that they're not going to take it anymore,
like this was one step too far and they're not
gonna sit down and take this lightly and let these
guys go. Like, you know, at any point they could

(24:05):
have called this off, because things really go sideways. You know,
once Bill learns that they have put out money to
to get some assassins in there and they're there, they
stick to their guns. What I really would have liked
to have seen was one of them ended up sort
of doing one of the killings themselves. I think that
would have Um, I would have liked to have seen that,

(24:28):
but you know that wasn't this movie. Yeah. And by
the end of it though, you know, at the very end,
once once Eastwood's kind of killed all these guys and
starts to leave town, you see all the women watching
him right away, and they all kind of have this
look of like, shit, was this really worth it? You know,

(24:48):
even though justice was achieved, Like, look at the violence
that was perpetuated. And I don't know if if you
saw it this way, but the woman who has the
the assault committed against her, I think her name is Lilah.
She there's a shot of her at the very end
when Eastwoods riding away, and she almost has this like
smile on her face, like she's and it's very haunting

(25:09):
because it's like, I don't quite know what to make
of it. They got justice, she and she's the one
who's almost seemed the most ambiguous about whether she actually
wants this or not. You know, even though she's the
one who had it done to her, it's all the
other women who immediately said, Okay, we need to we
need to have these guys killed. She's silent for most
of the movie. You always kind of wonder what she's thinking, right, Yeah,

(25:30):
Francis Fisher really leads the charge as the eldest. Yeah,
and rightfully so, like you said, but it does kind
of call into question the idea just of like violence
be getting violence, you know what I mean. Yeah, and
Bill even has that one line like, you know, haven't
we seen enough killing for one day? And it's interesting

(25:51):
because that's the line. I mean, I think that shows
the depth of this movie and that it's not so
clear cut because that message is one that the guy
should say, you know, like this, that's enough killing. And
and this is coming from the sadest of the movie,
you know who, who clearly delights and like humiliating and

(26:11):
beating up these other guys just to sort of fill
his own ego because he can't build a house, right. Yeah,
A lot of this movie seems to stem from like
the fragility of the male ego. Totally. Yeah, I mean,
even the fact that what leads to the sexual assault
is the prostitute laughing because the guy had a small
penis Yeah, totally. I forgot about that line. That's key.

(26:34):
He said he had a small pecker and she giggled
or something. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I looked down and saw
a small pecker and started giggling. That's what started this
whole thing. Yeah, that's a very key piece of information. Actually,
mm hmm. Um, Clint Eastwood has the number one best
face in movie history. I think, uh, this Clint, I

(26:56):
call it medium old Clint. I thought it was super
old Clint. But who knew that, you know, he was
going to keep doing this into his nineties. But I
really loved this version of Clint, this medium old Clint
when he's I went to look up how old he was,
which I do a lot now, and it's always a
little bit unnerving once you turned fifty, where you're like,
oh ship, they were like a year older than me.

(27:17):
And I was looking up. I was like, oh my god,
please tell me Clinty Sowood wasn't like fifty three. He
was in the sixties. He was sixty two or sixty
three when he made it. Thank god. Um. But I
love that era of Clint to play a character like
this and sort of like in Grand Torino. Now he's
he's clearly working out his own mortality and uh, leaving

(27:40):
these sort of statement films behind him. Uh, like I
guess alone kind of did it too with the Final
Rockies and the Final Rambos. Even though heard that Rainbow
movie was terrible. UM like their their legacy is sort
of they're they're controlling their own legacy and what they
leave behind. I think with movies like this, I read
some where that um so, first of all, I read

(28:02):
that the concept for the movie started sometime in the
nineteen seventies. Yeah, it was from a book, I think, right,
maybe I don't know, it could be yeah, but I
guess Eastwood came across the script sometime in the eighties,
but apparently he didn't want to do it right away
until he felt like he had aged enough to play
the part. Which is funny because, like this movie comes out,

(28:23):
I'm sure a lot of people are thinking, Oh, this
is his swan song, and then thirty years later he's
pumping him out one a year. Um, it's really But
I I do really want to talk a little bit
about this idea of Eastwood as as actor but as
also as icon, you know, because I feel like anytime
Eastwood is in a movie, he's not just playing the character,

(28:46):
but he's bringing his whole history of characters he's played
in the past. Right, And so Clint Eastwood like somebody
is Somebody is a lot like somebody like John Wayne,
who like they're always linked to their characters in the westerns, right,
And Clint, you think of you know, the side the
man with no name, the guy who comes into town,

(29:08):
sets things right and leaves on a horse, and I think,
here he does He technically does do all of those things,
but it's a movie where he sort of interrogates his
own Like you said, it's sort of a self inquiry
and interrogating his own persona as that icon and what
it means to sort of have been like the quote
unquote badass guy who goes and just kills a bunch

(29:31):
of people. But now we're seeing again the exact same
things happening sort of on paper. And yet my reaction
to it is very different. It's not one of like
raw raw cheering him on. It's one of like kind
of being horrified and chilling, you know, And I think, um, nothing,
there's no there's no more chilling shot in the movie
for me is when he leaves the saloon and there's

(29:54):
like a low shot looking up to him and there's
the American flag draped in the background. And the rains falling,
and he says like, or I'll come back here and
kill every one of you sons of bitches. Yeah, and
then your wives, and I'll burn your house down. Yeah.
First of all, the fact that the American flag is
behind it. It's like linking the idea of violence in
American history with sort of the myth of the West,

(30:16):
you know. And to me, like, I don't know how
other people read it, but to me, I find it
like very chilling and not necessarily like, oh, this is awesome,
badass guy taking him out again, Clint got you know,
Clint got it on him over again. You know. It's
sort of an anti violence, anti gun movie. It's weird.
It's I mean, he's he's really making a big statement
about like you said, I mean, not even within the

(30:40):
context of this film, but his whole career. And I
don't think it I would go so far as to
say it serves as an apology for serving up all
these movies. I think it's just more of a re
examination of of this stuff and what does it mean
to to have this kind of violence in movies and

(31:00):
then in a character's life on screen? Really pretty heavy stuff,
you know, like it's there's a lot more going on
for such a simple story than meets the eye. And
like you said, yeah, I would agree. I wouldn't say apology,
but it's yeah, re examination and and and inquiry into
his own role in sort of creating that icon and

(31:24):
asking what what does it mean? What is this leaving behind?
You know? Yeah, he definitely did not do anything to
glorify any of this or to make him seem like
this uh great character like he makes. He takes great
pains to to make sure this character isn't put on
any pedestal, even with I mean, I guess the one
scene where it shows him the most sympathetic is when

(31:49):
he's having that really sweet talk with the woman who
was assaulted and she offers him the freebee and he
says no and then feels bad because she takes it
as like that. You know, she's ugly now because her
face was cut up, and it was just such a
sweet scene. He's like, you know, if I was to
want a freeb I guess it would be with you

(32:10):
because you're beautiful and we both have scars, and that
line we both have scars was like just just fantastic.
I love that scene. Like you said, it's so tender,
and yet it's before the information has been revealed that
Clint Eastwood is somebody who's killed women and children. And
so again it's it's such a smart, subtle script in

(32:31):
the way it sort of reverses our expectations. I guess,
you know, because he is capable of tenderness, and he
is somebody who apparently when he got married and quote
unquote settled down, he didn't pick up a gun for
a decade, and his wife, he says, cured him of
of drink and wickedness. And and the movie maybe the

(32:52):
movie is saying, like what it really takes as a
good woman to to sort of stem the tide of
this violence or something. I don't know. Yeah, And you
know we even see it with Ned. I mean, the
whole uh message of this movie is just all over
the place because Ned, I can't kill that guy. And
Ned is a great shot, and he can't bring himself

(33:12):
to kill this guy who was laying there sort of
helpless under his horse. And I think that scene is
the peak of annoyance from the Schofield kid, when you
know he can't see what's going on, so he's like,
did you kill him? Did you kill him? Weren't you
killing him? Aren't you shoot him? What's going on? What's
he doing? Why aren't you gonna kill him? Didn't you
kill him? And I was just I wanted somebody just said,
shut the funk up for a second, like you have

(33:34):
no idea what you're talking about right now, kid. The
annoyance of the Schofield kid juxtapose against sort of Morgan
Freeman's face where, without almost saying anything, you see him
sort of working through like, oh god, I can't do
this anymore. Yes, I'm not the face acting in that scene.
It's just phenomenal. Yeah, it's so good. And also I

(33:54):
love that scene. We're talking about sort of the idea
of of movies glorifying violence. You know this they this
is where they're killing the first guy who's sort of
the the accomplice to the crime. Really yeah, who in
my mind, Like I'm not saying he's a good guy,
but he's far less you know, he's far less deserving
of death in my opinion than the guy who actually

(34:15):
did the crime. And yet when they kill him, it's
another it's another one of those scenes where you're kind
of like you expect to get some sort of satisfactory killing,
and yet what happens is they kind of he falls
on his horse, and then it's this long, agonizing scene
of him trying to crawl to safety and they finally
shoot him in the gut and then he takes like

(34:35):
five more minutes to die, and it's like unglamorous and
just really kind of pitiful. Uh. It actually bizarrely reminded
me of do you remember that scene in Austin Powers,
the first one I swear I'm going somewhere with us,
where Will Ferrell's character gets Yeah, he pushes the button,
he gets like attacked. They're fed to the sharks or something,

(34:55):
and then you think he's dead and you keep caring go, oh,
I'm badly burned but not dead yet. It's kind of
like the drama version of that where it sort of
plays up the idea of like movie killings and violence
in films, and it's like, this doesn't play out like
that in real life. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going back
to that question you asked earlier about how I felt
at the end there there really isn't a satisfying death

(35:21):
in this movie. Uh, they really take all that away
from the viewer, and I guess Bill came as close
as possible because he was a truly evil guy. And
when he died at the end, I was kind of like, yeah,
you know, like you deserve this, but that's kind of it.
Like even even when they kill the guy in the outhouse,

(35:43):
the really bad guy who did the assault, like you
want to see him dead, but they don't let you
sit there and enjoy that as a viewer, you know,
because the kid is immediately horrified with what he had done,
and and Clint is just so cool about it all.
He doesn't like he didn't play into any of his
kid's bravado or even even give him a lot of like, uh,

(36:09):
he doesn't laud him at all for what he'd done,
like good job or anything like something simple as that
he didn't even really do. Again, this killing of the
guy who if anybody does deserve it, it's him, and
it's it's literally he's sitting on the toilet like the
most vulnerable position a man can be in, so to speak,
and he's like terrified when you know Schofield kids got

(36:30):
the gun on him. I think he says, please don't
and then it's not satisfying because you can see the
Schofield kid just like taking everything he has just to
pull that trigger. And then immediately afterwards, when they're talking
about it by the tree, I think the Schofield kids
says something like he went for his gun, but I
got him first. And you can already see him sort
of changing the facts to build his own myth up

(36:52):
because when we see the scene, as far as you
can tell, the guy wasn't going for his gun. He
I think had his hands up. I think it was
hanging on the door, even I don't think he could
like could get to it. Even Yeah, it's just no
satisfying deaths in this movie really, except Gene Hagman a
little bit. It's interesting you say that because, like I
agree with you on how I view his character as

(37:15):
like the sadist who's clearly like drunk with power over
these people. And yet to me, I still find Eastwood's
character the most chilling by the end, By the end,
you know, um, And I just think it goes to
show how there are no clear cut answers in this
film and how different folks can sort of see different
things in it, you know. Yeah, And and Bill is

(37:36):
uh I thought it was interesting that he didn't allow
the retribution against the cowboys for what they had done.
Like from the very beginning, he steps in almost like
a peacemaker. Again he says, there's been enough bloodshed. Uh,
he's really intent on not allowing this to take place.
And I guess it's a power move, is the only

(37:58):
thing I could figure out, because it seems like the
old West, eye for an eye, he would have let
that happen, let it die with these two cowboys getting killed.
There end up being way more people killed than that
because he didn't allow it. And then you know, taking
everyone's guns when they came into town like that doesn't
happen in westerns either. So this this movie just it's
a it's I don't know about mixed messages, but it's

(38:20):
sort of an anti Western in some ways too, as
much as as it is a Western, yeah, or or
a revisionist Western, yeah you know. Um, But I think
you know that that scene at the beginning where he
talks about where you mentioned, you know, um, settling the piece,
Like I think it's also because again little Bill doesn't
see the prostitutes as equal to the men who committed

(38:43):
this crime. Yea He equates them with again property, much
like the horses. So in his mind he's made a
square deal, you know, trade a couple of horses for
taking away the skinnies chance to make more money. Right. Yeah,
I didn't think he was gonna kill Skinny. I think
I forgot that when I was watching it this morning. Um,

(39:07):
and I was a little surprised when he killed Skinny,
but he he went, you know, he broke bad. He
went right back to the old guy. As soon as
he you know, everything's turned and you know, and that
that great set up for the third act. As soon
as that the woman tells him that Ned was dead,
He's like, no, no, no, Ned went south, and she's like, no,
he's dead. He beat him to death, and he's displayed

(39:29):
outside of Greeley's and you just see that switch get
flicked and Clint starts drinking again, and you know it's
just gonna be bloodshed from there on out. And it's
so complicated because Ned is in air quotes. I'm using
this innocent in the sense that he didn't kill any
of the folks he was arrested for. It was done

(39:52):
by money and the school field kid. So he's sort
of like Eastwood in a sense is justified to come
take revenge on that, and yet there's nothing satisfying about it.
I also, I think it is worth mentioning sort of

(40:14):
Morgan Freeman's role in how race plays a part in
this film, and I think it's it's super interesting because
the film never explicitly comments on race, at least not verbally,
but I do think it's very consciously through its imagery
evoking racial issues. And I think the obvious one is
when you see Ned getting whipped by Gene Hackman, it

(40:36):
like immediately makes you think of like lynching, you know,
and the fact that the black man is whipped for
something he didn't do, and then he's he's proudly displayed
the way like you know, a lynching would hang somebody
and then show it off, you know. And again the
film never really mentions it, and it's script, but it's
very much there. Obviously, Ned was a killer in his past,

(40:59):
just like Eastwood was. Yeah, but he's retired to you know,
he's retired too. And as far as the characters in
this in this Town, no, they probably don't know anything
about that, you know, And so in that sense, he
is sort of an innocent, wrongly killed. Yeah. Absolutely. Um.
You know I mentioned earlier about Clinton, there were so
many opportunities, I think for him to have these tough

(41:21):
guy lines that like Arnold would have, and he just
he never does it. And I started to think that, like,
that's that's sort of Clint Eastwood period. Like he's an
actor who has built a career out of, uh, not
a lot of dialogue. I bet if you like had
some algorithm that ran like total total words spoken by

(41:44):
major actors, he would be at the well, I guess,
at the bottom of the list of few as words spoken.
And that's just sort of one of the hallmarks of
him as an actor, I think is I can't think
of many movies where he's had a monologue you know
you've and like it's always these sort of clipped lines
and clipped answers. He says so much with that fucking

(42:05):
face of his and the one at the end where
he says, you know, I'll see you in hell, you
know that I mentioned earlier from Hackman, and he just
goes yeah, and that's it. Like any other movie, they
would write some super cool thing or something tough or
a great comeback or whatever, and you just you don't
need that stuff. He strips all that away. I really

(42:28):
love it. That's how how expressive his face is, and
yet it's like it's a it's a face that's not
really expressive at all in the traditional sense. It's very stoic.
Yeah yeah, but it also I think it's you know,
it's the baggage he carries as a sort of that
icon of of Western masculinity. You know, like every line
or line he doesn't say it is imbued with all

(42:51):
the movies he's been in before. It's it's imbued with
the go ahead, make my Day's imbued with all the
sort of classic you know, one liners he said in
Films of the Past. Yeah, he did have some pretty
great one liners back then, but they were still pretty
short but pretty sure. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Um. I
don't think that our boss will mind if I tell

(43:11):
this story. But our boss Connell that everyone's probably heard
us mentioned. He's the one that founded and started stuff
you should know in all of the shows many many
years ago, and now he's our boss again. At I
heart great guy, good friend. He is good friends with
Bradley Cooper and I've mentioned that on the show, and
he told me a story a couple of years ago
about going to a barbecue at the house Clint east

(43:33):
it was renting. They were shooting what movie would it
have been? They were shooting something here in Atlanta. I
know they shot a um was it the Mule or um? Uh,
maybe it was part of Yeah. Bradley Cooper was in there, right, Yeah, yeah, okay,
I know they shot that in Atlanta. Yeah, they were
shooting The Mule here. And he had a little you know,

(43:54):
they a lot of the actors have rented houses here
in Atlanta when they work, and Clint had one rented
and had an afternoon barbecue on like a Sunday, and
brad invited Connal to come in his family. So Connal
is there barbecuing with Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper and
Krasinski and Emily Blunt are there with their kids, and uh,

(44:15):
a couple of other actors. The other guy from the
meal that I love so much, I can never think
of his name, and uh, he said, man, it's crazy,
and he's been to stuff like this before, now through Bradley, Um,
but he's still he's like, you know, you still don't
get used to it. And he said I look over
at one point and and eighty eight year old or
eighty seven year old Clint Eastwood at the time. It's

(44:36):
just standing there having a conversation with Connell's like six
year old daughter, and it's the cutest thing in the world.
And I'm just like, this is nuts man that like
you get to peek in on these scenes like that. Uh.
And he just he was a really good guy. And
you know, I'm sure you've heard the legend of his
movie sets and what they're like to work on. But
for the benefit of the listener, Clint Eastwood movie sets

(44:58):
are very calm, very meticulously planned out, so there's no drama. Uh,
he doesn't. I think all the Walkees either have to
be off or turn really low. No one's yelling and screaming,
no one's rushing. He's just legendarily known for for running
a really friendly, calm, humane set where you work, like,

(45:23):
you know, eight or nine hours and get it done
quickly and efficiently and just kind of move on with
your life. And that kind of says it all I
think about the guy. And he's also known for not
doing a lot of takes. Yeah, he'll knock a shot
out in two or three takes and say Okay, we
got it. Sure, he started thirty movies like you don't
want to, and he said, like, part of that comes

(45:44):
from his experiences as an actor, sort of the things
he learned, like, Okay, I like being directed this way,
I don't like being directed this way. And that's fascinating
to me as as also somebody who directs and has directed,
Like I would love the idea to be able to
knock out a scene a shot in just two or
three takes. And I would love to do that. But
it's so hard to do that, you know, because you

(46:06):
like to have a lot of confidence in what you're doing,
you know, and that comes with doing it a lot.
So I wouldn't feel too bad, I know. But but
and the fact that he gets such great performances out
of whether he is the one acting, or it's Bradley
Cooper or Paul Walter Houser and Richard Jewel or just
these wonderful performances, And I'm like, man, how do you
do and he's yeah, he's known for not doing a

(46:28):
lot of takes, uh, like normal ish work hours and
usually finishing a film on time and under budget. Yeah,
I mean, I know he's gotten like the Lifetime a
Chief and award as director and stuff like that now,
But I just think for a lot of years he

(46:48):
just everyone sort of thought as I thought of him
as an actor, and I think maybe some people maybe
not didn't even realize he directed Play Misty for Me
and Outlaw Josie Wales and uh, just some of his
like all time classics. He was behind the camera for
those movies, kind of quietly behind the camera. He's not
a a chess thumper when it comes to pumping himself

(47:08):
up in his movies or you know, in the press
after he's made his movies. So I have a ton
of respect for the guy. Uh. I wish he was
one of these great old grizzled liberal Democrats. Yeah, like
the old hippie fantastic. I think part of that is
why I think his movies continue to fascinate me, Because

(47:30):
to see somebody who has almost polar opposite politics as myself,
to find things to really love and admire in somebody
who inherently sort of disagrees with me, probably on a
lot of fundamental things, I think shows a lot of
maturity as a as a director, as an actor. To
you know, question the traditional you know, conservative pillars of

(47:52):
what conservativism stands for. Yeah, he's not. I don't feel
like he has an agenda as a filmmaker, and that
kind of sums it up best. You know, he um
because he very much could anytime someone is so upfront
about their politics and and held public office for God's sake.
He was the mayor of Carmel at the Sea, Mayor

(48:13):
of Carmel. Yeah, Carmel's lovely, lovely area out there. I'll
have to check it out. I love the couple of
bits of humor. There's two running jokes in this movie
which are kind of fun and a pretty bleak movie.
Is him and that horse trying to get up on
the horse was kind of fun. And then in Jane
and then Bill's Poor Carpentry, they get a few good

(48:35):
chuckles out of that, uh that stuff as well. Oh
and also the duck of death. Yeah, that's right, that's right.
There were three jokes that they played in this movie,
because they did hit that one a couple of times,
but just so low five, very little fanfare, almost like
a trope of a plot. You know, grizzled old veterans
come out of retirement to do one last job. It's

(48:55):
like The Ocean's eleven, the Anti Oceans eleven. You know. Yeah,
but he just he gets away with it without feeling
like a trope, because it's just there's more subtext and
there's more under the surface, and the pacing of it
is so languid and just really lets you as a viewer.
He I feel like he always sort of gives a
lot of credit to the viewers to make up their
own mind about stuff. He doesn't. He's not Oliver Stone

(49:17):
hammering your over the head with like you should feel
this way about this. Yeah. Man, just a very conscientious filmmaker.
I think you know when you said he he's not
showing about his politics or like at least in his films,
or like what he believes. I think he's just very
much like a humanist in a sense of like he rarely,
despite showing terrible characters, sometimes he rarely will outwardly judge

(49:39):
a character in his films, and he'll often just show
what they did and maybe show how they view themselves
in the world. Yeah. And I think if you ask
Clint Eastwood, he he was well known for playing vigilantees,
whether they were out West or dirty Harry style guys.
And I think he probably became a champion of some
of these, you know, sort of gun toting, good guy
with a gun out on the street dudes. I don't

(50:00):
think Clint would endorse that in real life, even though
he is, you know, a strong conservative, I don't think.
I don't think he really thinks people should go out
and take the law into their own hands and do
that stuff. He's not beating his chest about vigilanteism, you know,
even though we play those roles. Maybe I'm wrong, but
I just I don't see him as as that guy,

(50:22):
no man, and just to see him sort of question
that violence in a film like Unforgiven, in a film
like Some people might disagree with me, but I think
American Sniper also questions that violence. Yeah. Now some people,
I know a lot of people are divided on that film,
but I think it actually does question sort of that
idea of that violence wrapped up in sort of American culture. Yeah,

(50:45):
I mean, no other think of it. There's a lot
of ambiguity of feeling and in a lot of his films,
I think, uh, and that's to me the mark of
a really confident filmmaker, because I feel like so so
many times a filmmaker has a point of view they
really want to get across and try so hard to
make it super clear, and I feel like he's he's

(51:06):
more comfortable waiting into ambiguous waters, which is what you
do in your in your eighties and nineties and you've
directed thirty nine movies. There's someone who said some I
think director somebody famous who ages ago, said like, the
more something along the lines of the more important of
a theme or a point you want to make in
a movie, the less obvious it should be. Like you

(51:27):
should have an inverse correlation where the more important the theme,
the more hidden it should be. So speak, And I
think Eastwood is a great example of that, totally. Man,
that's a good yeah for anyone out there trying to
write stuff. That's a very good lesson, uh, Because I
think the instinct is to is to want people to
see things like you see things as a writer or filmmaker,

(51:50):
whether it's you should fall in love with this person
or you should want to kill this person. Yeah, it's
really hard to sort of do convincing ambiguity or convincing
ambivalence where it's not telling the viewer how they should
feel or think. Yeah, good stuff. Uh well, my docket
is empty. Do you have anything any other notes you
want to hit? Um? Let me see here. I think

(52:10):
that about does it for me. Uh great movie, great movie.
I Actually Eastwood's birthday was just a couple of weeks ago.
I think he's yeah, he just turned one, and there
was some Twitter Twitter thing going around where it was
like hashtag four favorite Eastwoods or something, so people were
posting their four favorite Clint Eastwood movies. So there's a
lot I've seen of his. There's a lot I haven't

(52:32):
seen of his, I know, But as of now, my
four favorites are this, Bridges of Madison County, j Edgar
I never saw that. It's good. Leo Leonardo DiCaprio great,
And it's another one where it's about like j Edgar,
this like very complicated man, and it's another sort of

(52:52):
ambiguous film. And then a movie called White Hunter Black Heart.
Heard that we've seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was
great again. I just that's another one I just watched
for the first time a few weeks ago and just
loved it. And I'm like excited to just keep going
through his filmography, because there's like probably twenty I still
haven't seen. Yeah, boy, I don't know if I could.
That would be very hard for me because I grew

(53:13):
up with those dirty Harry movies and I love the
ship out of him. Uh, Pale Rider is awesome. Play
Misty for me is great. I haven't seen those, so
that I got something to look forward to. Have you
seen Million Dollar Baby? Yes, I have a great movie. Okay,
that's a tear jerker. No spoilers that movie jerk the
Rug out from under me? Did not see this coming? Uh? Well,

(53:35):
awesome man, that's so good to see you again and
good to get you back in here. Uh. Maybe we
should start doing Ah. I don't know about a full
Eastwood series, but I'd be game for doing another one.
Adcent man, I'm so glad we got to talk about
east Wood today, and I would be more than happy
to talk about another film by him. Yeah. He's one
of those where when he passes, I will put him

(53:57):
in the category of like the Willie Nelson's and he's
sort of icons of culture that kept doing great things,
you know, and inspiring people to do great things because
I think there's so much ages um in in culture
and music and entertainment that like, I love seeing these
olds up there still killing it. It's great, yeah, man.

(54:20):
And the fact that, like I think you mentioned, he's
he got a Lifetime Achievement Award at the OSCARS. I
want to say he got that in like the nineties.
Probably give him another one. Gave him another one, because
that's twenty five years later and he's still out there
killing it. Man. All right, good stuff, Paul, And thanks
to everyone for listening. Go check out Unforgiven if you
have not, or any Clinties Wood movie for that matter,

(54:42):
even every which Way but Loose and any Which Great again,
those are kind of fun too, in a seventies way. Uh.
And we'll see you guys next week. Movie Crash is
produced and written by Charles Bryant and Meel Brown, edited
and engineered by Seth Nicholas Johnson, scored by Noel Brown.
Here in our home student you at Punksy Market, Atlanta,
Georgia for I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

(55:04):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.