Clint Eastwood Book:

				Publisher: HARPERCOLLINS Salesrank: 5048498
		Used Price: $11.25
		Media: Hardcover

CLINT: THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF CLINT EASTWOOD Reviews:
Dirty Mcgilligan
2003-11-07 - Patrick McGilligan's "unauthorized" biography of film giant Clint Eastwood is dedicated to "Mom." If Mrs. McGilligan bothered to read the book, she might have said "Thanks, but no thanks," and request that her name be removed from such a seamy book. Of course, McGilligan could argue that it isn't his book that's offensive, but the life of its subject. I think it's a little of both.

If McGilligan is correct, Eastwood's public image is a sham. Widely praised for his loyalty, the Eastwood in McGilligan's book banishes lifelong friends from his circle should they dare ask for even a tiny crumb of the pie they helped bake. Producers, directors, editors, writers, all of them working for comparative peanuts, become "non-persons" in the eyes of Clint the squint, and they are exiled from his Malpaso production company and from the film industry itself because, they insist, the big man is vindictive, and uses his considerable influence to deprive them of their right to make a living. But the macho icon is also a coward who loathes confrontation and never fires anyone directly, letting others do his dirty work for him. Rich beyond mere tabulation, Dirty Harry's Republican alter ego slams welfare and brags that he worked for "every crust of bread" he ever ate, yet never pays for a meal, insisting on being "comped" wherever he goes. And as a filmmaker, his legendary habit of delivering films ahead of schedule and under budget is nothing but carelessness and a wiliness to accept subpar work to keep his budgets low and his percentages high.

He's also a womanizer whose relationships produced numerous illegitimate children, an opportunist who used his brief reign as Mayor of Carmel for his own financial gain, and a father in name only.

Then there's that temper. Anyone who dares park in his unmarked space on the Warner lot will know holy terror as Eastwood vandalizes their vehicle with a golf club, hammer, or a pickup truck. Good luck if you sue him in court, especially with a judge who asks for his autograph.

As someone who always thought highly of Eastwood personally no matter what I thought of his films (most of which I admire), I found this account of his life rather disturbing, but the book is disturbing in ways that have more to do with McGilligan than Eastwood. The punctuation is often a mess with periods appearing outside quotation marks, and the spelling is often questionable, with the author spelling tires as "tyres" when describing the ludicrous climax of The Gauntlet. Maybe the guy is English and doesn't always Americanize his language but the biographical notes describe him as living in Missouri, so that may not be an excuse.

There are also more substantial errors. McGilligan has Ronald Reagan appropriating Dirty Harry's famous "Make my day" speech from Sudden Impact in March 1983, nine months before the film is released. And he gets other dates wrong: In his world, Paint Your Wagon opened a year later than it did, and Escape from Alcatraz debuts in the Christmas season of 1979 when, in fact, it opened the previous June. One can excuse errors here and there, but release dates can be easily verified, and McGilligan makes them consistently. If he can't get a film's release date right, how much faith can we have in his account of incidents from Eastwood's life, incidents at which the author was not present?

If nothing else, this book's sloppy research suggests McGilligan suffers from one of the same personality flaws for which he frequently reprimands his subject. Eastwood, he says, is always happy with the first draft of the screenplays he stars in and/or directs, never requesting and always resisting rewrites (perhaps because they require shelling out cash, something the miserly multi-millionaire is loathe to do). McGilligan's book reads like a first draft that never made it to the proofreader. Perhaps a quote from the Bible is in order here: "Judge not lest ye be judged."

McGilligan's book is certainly an improvement over Richard Shickel's earlier look at the Hollywood titan. McGilligan is fairly thorough, offering more information about Eastwood's ancestry than we might even want to know about our own, and providing a more subjective view of the star's contribution to the cinema. Thankfully, he never fawns over Eastwood the way "critic" Schickel did in his "authorized" bio, but one may be tempted to wonder if he went too far in the opposite direction.

fascinating portrait
1999-06-30 - McGilligan has produced another great biography with his book on Clint. It's a fascinating portrait of the enigmatic Eastwood which looks at his films and private life. For those out there who have found Clint's recent films (including the over rated UNFORGIVEN)somewhat slapdash, Mr McGilligan's book provides some answers. While fans of Clint might find this bio somewhat harsh about their hero, it comes across as a reasonably fair portrait of the actor/director. This is a thoroughly gripping read and,as usual, the author has supplied his reference sources in great detail. Highly recommended.