Clint Eastwood It is important to work quickly and efficiently – regardless of whether he is in front of or behind the camera. As a director, he would get impatient if one of his stars takes more than two or three attempts to give him exactly what he asks of him when filming a particular scene. Even as an actor, he’s probably not a fan of multiple takes. When he feels he has given his best possible performance, he wants to move on to the next setting and not try again.
This attitude is said to have led to discussions and even real fights on set several times over the course of the film legend’s career. However, Eastwood usually had the upper hand. He started working in many of his films early on, not only as an actor and/or director, but also as a producer. This last role means that in addition to his artistic interest, he also has a financial interest in ensuring that everything on set runs smoothly and that there are no unnecessary delays. Because these always cost money. And not too close.
During one of his biggest hits of the 1980s, the thriller The Wolf Runs, Eastwood was reportedly very frustrated with the director’s slow work pace. Ultimately, he probably lost his patience and would have simply pushed him aside on set and taken over the staging of the sequences himself. That was also so easy because lead cameraman Bruce Surtees had worked for Eastwood repeatedly since “Sadistico” (1971) and yet only listened to him.
In The Wolf Raids the Pack, Eastwood played a cop named Wes Block, whose latest case is particularly chilling. It’s about an apparently psychopathic prostitute killer who sows fear and terror in New Orleans’ entertainment district, the famous French Quarter.
Block, who personally knows many of the women in the trade and has developed a penchant for sadomasochism in his private life, is drawn into a treacherous game of cat and mouse by the killer. As a result, he quickly becomes suspected by his police colleagues and not just himself. His two daughters, whom he raises alone, are suddenly in mortal danger…
The actual director of the film was Richard Tuggle, who wanted to make his debut behind the camera here. Tuggle not only wrote the script for ‘The Wolf Chases the Pack’, but also for one of the most important titles in Eastwood’s filmography: ‘Escape from Alcatraz’.
Perhaps because of this connection, the star and producer did not fire his employee, who was too slow for him, but even gave him direction on the credits. After that, however, there was never any further collaboration between the two men.
In addition to the Hollywood icon, the cast of “The Wolf Hunts the Pack” included not only Geneviève Bujold (“Queen for a Thousand Days”) and Dan Hedaya (“Blood Simple”), but also Eastwood’s daughter Alison, who is only eleven years old during filming. She appeared several times alongside her father, as well as in films such as ‘Breakfast Of Champions’ and ‘Fusion Factor’, until she retired from acting in the mid-2010s. However, Alison Eastwood returned to the camera after a few years away. You can read how this came about here:
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