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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A serious look at Clint, June 17, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Clint Eastwood: A Biography (Vintage) (Paperback)
There's plenty of opportunity to gripe about this biography: The writing style is ponderous and sometimes downright clumsy, there's not enough details about Clint's private life, there's too much trivia about incidental movie roles (i.e. Witches.) But that aside it is nice to see a serious examination of Clint the Film Maker, which I might add does offer good critical examination of his movies, pointing out many of the movies' weaknesses as well as their strengths, and offering solid reasons for why the theme or story appealed to Clint. Pigeonholed early by narrowminded critics for his supposedly anti-establishment, brutal movies, he had to wait another twenty years for the critical tide to turn and for there to be a re-evaluation of his contribution to cinema (at least here in the U.S. -- in other parts of the world he'd long been recognized as a great director and actor.) And still some of the best movies he's done (whether he directed them or not) are not given the credit they deserve by self-important critics: Beguiled, Play Misty for Me, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Outlaw Josey Wales, White Hunter Black Heart, Bird all come to mind as well as many others. In forty years of making movies beginning with A Fistful of Dollars, most of the time coming out with a movie a year, he's been involved in less than a handful of mediocre movies, none of them ranking as truly bad. The Rookie and City Heat come to mind as truly mediocre movies, certainly bordering on bad, and there's a couple of others that had good potential but turned out to be bad decisions on his part, but I consider that a fantastic track record. He knows story and he knows how to get the most from out of a movie, and it's the reason he's stayed at the top of the box-office for all these decades despite the fact that he's never done just what "the audience" wants from him. I recommend the book Interviews, for those interested in Clint the film maker, which is an excellent collection of interviews in which Clint very articulately discusses his ideas of film making. I can't help but add that I have to wonder about one of the reviewers who wrote that whether Unforgiven was a great movie was "questionable." Then does there exist a unquestionably great movie?
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Padded and Nonobjective..., August 9, 2004
This review is from: Clint Eastwood: A Biography (Vintage) (Paperback)
If you are looking for a thick book about actor/director Clint Eastwood's life and career, illustrated with some unusual photos, then this will fill the bill. If you want an objective biography of Eastwood, together with an objective analysis of his film work, this is not the book you want. Schickel was basically an employee and friend of Eastwood during the researching and writing of the book, and he tends to ignore or downplay the dark side of Eastwood's activities, particularly his alleged "women are like kleenex" philosophy, and his alleged cruelty toward former collaborators.
The long book is made longer by merciless padding, including detailed and completely unnecessary plot summaries of the films.
Viewed from 2004, Clint Eastwood is an important actor--- as good an actor as Jimmy Stewart and as iconic an actor as John Wayne. He is also an important and stylish director, and justifiably famous for his gentle ways with cast and crew, as well as his efficiency in coming in under budget. One of the author's continuing themes, brought up on nearly every page, turns upon the consistent misunderstanding of Eastwood, both as actor and director, by two generations of famous mainstream film critics. This theme wears thin quickly when one realizes that there is probably not a single case in which famous mainstream film critics have had the slightest clue as to the value, importance and significance of any new film or film star.
Eastwood is an important figure in 20th Century cinema, and he deserves an objective, scholarly, independently-researched analysis of all aspects of his life and career. I don't know of one... we'll keep looking.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too much time spent on critics., July 19, 2008
This review is from: Clint Eastwood: A Biography (Vintage) (Paperback)
Richard Schickel is a friend of Clint Eastwood. That itself shouldn't disqualify him from writing this book.
The problem with the book is that it is very biased, he spends an absurd portion of the book defending Eastwood from an assortment of negative movie critiques, predominantly those of Pauline Kael.
I am a fan of most of Clint Eastwood's films and movie critics have never been a factor in formulating my opinion of any particular movie. And I don't see why Clint Eastwood's work needs defending!
"Clint Eastwood-a Biography" is otherwise loaded with some fascinating facts about Eastwood's life and career.
Schickel describes how Eastwood obtained various scripts for movies that he was involved in as an actor, director, and sometimes both.
The details include his relationship with other stars, directors, and producers.
Who proposed the forming of Malpaso and how monumental that company became is another topic in the book.
I found it interesting that Clint turned down the part of "Harmonica" in "Once Upon a Time in the West". That's the role that Charles Bronson accepted in a movie that eventually came to be regarded as one of the best westerns of all time and a personal favorite of mine.
The book details Eastwood's inherited musical talent and how deeply jazz has influenced the actor both musically and in film.
Clint solves the mystery of the identity of his character in "High Plains Drifter".
Another aspect of Eastwood as a director is the location of shoots for the "Eiger Sanction" and "Unforgiven". His sense of realism can be extreme, but admirable.
Overall "Clint Eastwood-a Biography" has a lot of trivia-type information and can be entertaining. What downgrades the book considerably is the seemingly endless ranting about the negative reviews from movie critics.
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