Clint Eastwood on “A Fistful of Dollars”
On August 6, 2003, Clint Eastwood sat for a career interview on his work with director Sergio Leone. On the video below, Clint Eastwood talked about his work on the movie “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964). If you want some ideas for a great looking clint eastwood man with no name/blondie costume, then you should consider reading this article – DIY man with no name costume.
transcript for the video:
Clint Eastwood: When I was approached to do A Fistful of Dollars there was no such thing as a spaghetti western. There were a few westerns that had been made by Italian companies few small ones but they were never dubbed that particular thing that came later on. In fact I think it was the Japanese they used to call them in order to segregate the American westerns from the Italian made ones. They called the Italian once macaroni westerns and so that’s how that came about in fact the idea of making a Western in Italy sounded odd but then it turned out well we’re going to make it in Spain and the terrain in Spain it’s very much like Arizona in some spots or parts of California when I was first making Fistful of Dollars it was a Western version of Western remake of Yojimbo and I I always loved your Jimbo so that’s what inspired me to take the project I always thought at the time this thing will either do really well or it won’t do anything probably the latter I thought this thing’s gonna really bomb out but I’m gonna get a trip to Italy in Spain I’ve never been to either place it’s going to be it’s going to be find experience and if it if it did something if the dice came up seven or eleven it would be just a bonus deal so I just went and made the trip work the best I could on it well it’s true I did bring a lot of my own equipped but I’ve just bought some jeans I bought this boots I wore on rawhide and brought mostly wardrobe with me we picked up a few things in Spain unlike an American film or a film anywhere that is on a our modest to high budget you would have duplicates and triplicates in case something got lost in case something that damaged we had nothing I had one hat if I lost that hat I was I was a goner no way to match up to anything else so what I did is I took my wardrobe home at night I took it back to the hotel I took the hat in the poncho which we only have one of the stuff that I brought over head trip of it but the stuff we bought over there we didn’t Sergio didn’t speak any English and I did speaking Italian when I first went over there he knew goodbye and I do arrivederci and that’s about it so we had a wonderful woman from Poland who had been working for Constantine films and she spoke many many languages and Italian fluently she sort of represented Constantine in Italy so she interpreted and her her English had been learned by Americans after World War two so she knew american-style English with all the slangs and what-have-you Baxter’s over there Rojo is there a friend of mine in Rome said oh they’re gonna lose the track they deuce to a guide track there they don’t pay too much attention to it and they because you’re gonna loop everything later anyway so they said be sure and keep track of any changes you make because they’re going to lose the guide track and they did sure enough a year or so later when I was looping fistful of dollars a few dollars more to come out in this country I had to go back to my own notes I don’t like to take money unless I feel I’ve earned it I’d make up a lot of stuff anyway and we just all kind of do the same xand whatever the intent was but you did to have to keep track of it because you’re gonna loop it later too dangerous it was so funny because you’d be doing a scene and in your eye-line off of this one side of the camera another you’d see a couple guys back there playing frisbee here making motions or telling jokes and you hear people talking and it’s it’s very very distracting and I just kind of forged over it a Vegas it gave me a reason to concentrate that much more intently but they just weren’t used to the quietness of a set where sound is a very important feature we were doing very small budget films this wasn’t the high budget Italian film Fistful of Dollars was a two hundred thousand dollar film and that may be a few dollars more than that if you pardon the pun but that they were very shoestring I just had German money in it and Spanish money and Italian money and those three entities were constantly arguing with themselves about who would pay what sometimes to do a shot three or four times because they were so paranoid in the early days they do a couple takes because they figured the lab would screw up the first two or three or somebody would get scratched or somebody would drop it it was a very haphazard the efficiency level is certainly not as good as it is with American crew or British crew or or even even Italian crew today we were shooting in ah Maria and he needs a tree for a hanging tree but a new song he just wanted to tree with a noose as simple as I ride by this is back in a festival at all is he couldn’t get couldn’t get a tree there was a it was an old tree that was in somebody’s yard it was dead but it was in somebody’s yard and so all of a sudden the guy they go in he sends a crew in and they cut the tree down at the geyser look the guy comes out the front door I said what are you doing cutting down a tree and he says that we’re from the highway department this is a danger this tree might fall on the road so we’re taking it out and the guy kind of okay but that’s the kind of creativity he’d use and we were once shooting in a few dollars more and he wanted a crane we didn’t have a crane we couldn’t afford a crane on these pictures but the DeLaurentis company had a crane nearby in the summertime in Spain they have a Catholic holiday about once a week is it there’s a different holiday well there was a Catholic holiday coming up so and and the Allah s company was going to be able to shoot being Italian company catholic oriented group but sergio went to the bishop and said we’re not we’re not catholics we’re a jewish company and we’re here over here shooting this film and we’re both so we’re not we’re not Catholic so could could we film that day so the bishop gave his permission sure you guys can go ahead and film so we went to deal her mother’s and said you can’t film but we’re gonna film can we have your crane so he bought the crane it’s a great experience to look back on but the time it was kind of it was kind of funny I mean now it’s very funny.
