The Good,The Bad & The Ugly – Leone’s West (1/2)
Clint Eastwood and other people in the film industry discuss the Spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone. If you want some ideas for a great looking clint eastwood man with no name/blondie costume, then you should consider reading this article – clint eastwood blondie costume.
transcript for the video:
Richard Schickel (Film Critic and Historian): Spaghetti Westerns had begun well before Sergio Leone. Germans and so forth wrote westerns even though none of them penned the American Western. It was a kind of a European tradition and the Italians came along and so they started making these pictures often using slightly broken-down American stars or stars like Clint who were on the rise. It was a very unpretentious I guess it’s the polite way of putting it genre. I mean you know it was mainly made for Europe and I think Leone’s were really the first to make any kind of impact in the United States. Then we looked on askance because they so violated the long American tradition of how Western stories were told is one things that that Clint once said to me about it so he liked about them they were breaking all the rules.
Mickey Knox (English Language Version Translator): Leone is the only director of spaghetti westerns that made it in America he by the way there were dozens I produced the spaghetti western myself there were dozens of them but almost all of them never played in America only Leone bitches because he was artful he was very very clever in the making of his movies he made them feel like real important pictures by the way he shot it and the kind of characters he used
Alberto Grimaldi (producer) the westerns done by other directors at the time were cheap films I was the one who started Italian westerns and my films were shipped to the ones before saloon so there was no outstandingly a Western director better than a Sergio Leone at that time and even later because the Western general was considered as something cheap not worth doing it while surgery only loves love them and I love the Western
Clint Eastwood (Blondie): we were doing very small budget films this wasn’t the the high budget Italian film the first a fistful of dollars was a two hundred thousand dollar film and that may be a few dollars more than that if you pardon me pun but they were very shoestring they had a German money in it and and Spanish money and Italian money and those three entities were constantly arguing with themselves about who would pay what they’d always be arguing or reneging on the deal and walking off the set every was it was 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 I always thought at the time I hope this thing will either do really well or it won’t do anything probably the latter so I thought this thing is going to really bomb out but I’m going to get a trip to Italy and Spain I’ve never been to place if it if it did something if the dice came up 7 or 11 I I’d be it would be just a bonus deal we must remember that he always had a name in all three of these pictures the man with no name was it was actually a marketing concept somebody united I just came up with when they decided to bring out these three pictures in relatively close order but in this picture he’s blondie Clint brought a lot of costume with him black jeans which finally you know just in the Levi’s store somewhere his gun belt was his rawhide gun the cigars bought near to Hollywood across from the farmers market and point of fact he wasn’t a smoker but when he did have to smoke one he said I was foul taste he said put you in the right mood for the character and he brought that sheepskin jacket anywheres under this Robbie this Robbie was Sergio’s and I think he bought that in Spain on location actually but the sheepskin coat when she wears quite a bit in all three of them was was Clint’s addition to the costume Marie if this movie it was kind of all pieced together and you never had duplicates at triplicates in case something got lost in case something had damaged we had nothing I had one hat if I lost that hat I was I was a goner there’s 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 and took the Hat poncho which we only have one of I just kind of had to keep very very careful track of everything and that’s about it I was in California making another another movie and the agent said there’s a Italian director wants to make a Western and he wants you to be in it I said well how do Italians make westerns all he said yes forget a Western I said spaghetti westerns sound like like Hawaiian pizza I I never heard of it oh he says he he’ll make a good Western he’s made to others a fistful of dollars and a few dollars more so I met Leone was a big bear of a man and he said I wonder I I want you to come to Italy to make the movie he said see a piece of my movie and I show the credits upon this movie where his name appears and then a gun appears and shoots his name I thought that’s very interesting it shows he has an ego but he’s willing to be shot down so I said yes where do you want me he said I want you in Rome a month from now and we’re gonna start making the movie I arrived in in Italy the next thing I know I’m on a horse being turned in by Clint Eastwood to get a reward for my capture because of this is bad and I have lines to learn and I put on this costume and there I was in the movie and I was playing this character you prey with a minute panel go back come on you eli is uh well he’s a very very fine actor I was always a great admirer of his prior to doing this film with him and I’m even naming afterwards make it sound like I have to it but he was a just a great performer and very very versatile actor but he always had a tremendous amount of energy he just enjoyed himself immensely he enjoyed building the character and putting it together with my character which much more on the stoic side I’d play my humor and more of a wry fashioned his was more where do we I thought we made a pretty good combination filthy bastard come here such ingratitude after all the times I’ve saved your life well I enjoyed Clint cuz Clinton didn’t say much but he had a great sense of observation and listening and that’s a great strength in movies he doesn’t seem to do much but when you look up on the screen there it is and it’s wonderful we fly to Madrid and was going to shoot in the southern part of Spain in a place called al Maria Lawrence of Arabia they shot there and there in southern Spain you had the water then you had desert and had mountains so could be very Western we were the only people in town and spoke English no concierge no serena’s as they call him there and it would spoke English you’re just a small hotel everything was Italian our spanish brother and people who spoke a little Spanish got by and if you didn’t you if you ordered a milkshake you get a potato salad so you had to learn really quick 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 Clint I don’t know how he communicated but I communicated with broken French Woodleigh only spoke pretty good French and that’s why we we communicate but after a month of shooting this movie six days a week 12 to 14 hours a day we learned to communicate remember the gun shop where I put the gun together I said Sergio I don’t know anything about guns he said just take God fun and what I admired about him is he let me go through the whole thing of taking a gun apart putting together and I put things in like this you know and I shook the other thing I did all kinds of crazy things that I had no idea were authentic cut he says good I like that finished.
