Clint Eastwood on "Baby"

Sunday, Feb. 20, 2005 By RICHARD SCHICKEL
THE WORKINGMAN: "You become what you become in life, and you don't sit and think about it," says Eastwood
MERIE W. WALLACE / WARNER BROS.
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IT'S INTERESTING THAT YOU BRING UP PAYNE'S WORK BECAUSE IT REALLY IS MUCH CLOSER TO YOUR WORK IN SCALE THAN ANYBODY ELSE'S THAT YOU'RE COMPETING WITH IN THIS YEAR'S OSCARS. Yeah, he tells a small story with a certain size. It would be easy for a story like that to be told almost in head shots. But he makes it feel like a movie and not something you could see on TV. It isn't just MTV drivel. And not that there's anything wrong with MTV. I guess ... well, there is to me because I think that stuff is fatiguing to the brain. If we're going to have a pop culture that's just going to be a lot of flash images, we're never going to get a chance to look at anything.

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DESPITE THE TROUBLES YOU'VE HAD GETTING THESE LAST TWO PICTURES FINANCED, YOU THINK YOU CAN PROBABLY GO ON TO THE END OF YOUR CAREER DOING WHAT YOU WANT TO DO? Well, I will because if I can't, then that'll be the grand hint to get the hell out of here. But I think the next picture I'm going to do [Flags of Our Fathers] has a little bit broader scope. It bounces back and forth between 1945 and 1996, and it's got to capture several generations. There's the generation of the men who fought World War II and also their families and the impact it had on all of them when they were brought back to the States and were treated as heroes--that horrible thing about being anointed as a hero when you don't feel like you've done anything heroic.

THIS IS GOING TO SOUND ABSURD, BUT BEAR WITH ME. ISN'T IT SOMETHING LIKE BEING A MOVIE STAR? As far as movie acting, yeah, sometimes people expect you to be something more than you are. Really, you're just doing a job, applying some techniques you've learned. But it's ruined a lot of people. You tell somebody like Marlon Brando that he's brilliant and exceptional and you ruin his whole life--all of a sudden this Mid-American guy feels like a fool. But, you know, you become what you become in life, and you don't sit and think about it. You just go ahead and do it. You've entertained some people, and that's great--hope to do it again. But you don't want to sound like Frank Sinatra singing My Way.

YOU'RE ONE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST LIVING CELEBRITIES. HOW HAVE YOU AVOIDED THAT PITFALL? I'm not a great self-analyst, but the only secret is just being interested in new things and being interested in moving on. I think I've always reached out for expansion. I've kept working, I've kept learning. Let's say you keep a piece of clay or something. You just have to keep shaping it, molding it. And hopefully it gets better and better. I like to think I'm a better person now than I was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. I don't know, but I certainly had different habits then than I have now.

WELL, I THINK YOU'RE LESS HAIR-TRIGGERED. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

A LITTLE MORE TOLERANT. Yep. I used to be terribly intolerant of inefficiency and things not going the way they should. Now I sit there and kind of figure, "Well, O.K., I'll just keep going."