My fascination with Clint Eastwood boils down to two…make that three things. One, how he kicked his directing chops up a couple of notches in the early ’90s and became a seriously formidable director. Two, his affinity for jazzy piano playing. And three, an alleged quote of his that I heard 15 or so years ago, and which I’ve repeated a few times over the years:
“Show me a beautiful, fascinating and worldly woman whom any man would be delighted to know” — in the Biblical sense, I presume he meant — “and I’ll show you a guy who’s tired of fucking her.”
That sounds initially like a brusque or insensitive observation, but the basic thought is one of fatigue and resignation. He was saying that longterm relationships are hard.
I don’t know anything about longterm relationships, much less keeping the fires going in the midst of one. My first marriage lasted four years (’87 to ’91). My second lasted the same**. My other relationships (including the People magazine affair with the married journalist) have all lasted two or three years so what do I know?
I know that keeping the coals hot isn’t easy. A dude has to reach deeper and deeper within and give it up Delbert McLinton-style, and if he holds back and retreats into his inner man-cave for some selfish reason he’ll gradually lose her. Because you have to give it up even when you don’t feel like it. And sometimes that’s difficult.
HE to Shawn Levy, author of “Clint: The Man and the Movies“, which streeted yesteday (7.1.25):
“How ya livin’? I’m still longing to own copies of your coffee-table books about the Sinatra Rat Pack and Rome in the golden age of the ‘50s and ‘60s. I’ve just decided (15 seconds ago!) to go the Wilton library route, but libraries don’t tend to own glammy large-format books of this sort.
“The early reviews of your Clint book (which I haven’t read yet) seem to indicate that it’s as full, thorough and well-measured as Patrick McGilligan’s “Clint: The Life and Legend”, which published in ‘02.
“If I were you I’d say ‘you’ve got it wrong…my Clint book delves much deeper into the crevasses of Clint’s storied, if peculiar and guarded, life and is far richer and more flavorful’ but what do I know?
I will continue to share my all-time favorite Clint anecdote, whether it’s true or not (when truth becomes legend, print the legend), but please tell me, privately or publicly (whatever), that while researching your book you were told that Clint did in fact say this on occasion. I’ve chatted with Clint a few times and interviewed him once for a Los Angeles magazine piece in ‘95, but you’ll be breaking my heart if you tell me this quote is fictitious or mis-attributed.”
** Then again four years isn’t nothing — it’s 48 months.