Hardly any other actor or director can look back on as long a career as Clint Eastwood: his first appearance in front of the camera was almost 70 (!) years ago, and 53 years ago he made his directorial debut in the cinema with the psychological film thriller ‘ Sadistico’. Since then, he has not only become one of the biggest stars of the Western genre and has a legendary franchise to his name like ‘Dirty Harry’, but also wrote his name in the annals with directorial works such as ‘The Texan’, ‘Merciless’ and ‘The Bridges on the River’ from film history. Eastwood is currently working on Juror No. 2”, his 41st feature film – and reportedly his last.
Eastwood owes the fact that he releases an average of one film in theaters every year in no small part to his notorious work ethic. Unlike, say, Sergio Leone, with whom he worked on the legendary ‘Dollar’ trilogy, Eastwood is not a perfectionist – instead he relies on efficiency, and it’s usually over after one take. There is little that would cause the director of “Gran Torino” to deviate from the tight shooting schedule – this is proven by an anecdote that took place on the set of his 2019 legal drama “The Richard Jewell Case”.
The film was already well advanced when clouds of smoke suddenly appeared behind the studio lot in Burbank, California. The cause was the bushfires known as the Barham Fire, which raged not far from the studio and caused air quality to deteriorate dramatically. It was soon announced that all studio buildings had to be evacuated – but Eastwood didn’t let that bother him.
Eastwood’s son Scott posted a video of the rather menacing scene to Instagram and captioned his post with the following caption: “Security has asked us to evacuate the studio. But my 89-year-old father said, ‘No, everything is fine, there is work to be done.’ Then we went to the mixing desk and all watched his new movie, The Richard Jewell Case. Or as he would say: ‘Go back to work and shut up!'”
You can see the message here:
Clint Eastwood himself confirmed the incident on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, saying he initially feared the smoke was coming from the studio itself. When he noticed that there was only a fire behind the studio, he saw no reason not to continue working on the film.
In any case, as an employer you must treat Eastwood with caution. If you want to know who enjoyed working with him so much that he even shed tears of joy, you can read more here: