Movie Review: 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

DATE June 25, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Clint Eastwood and Richard Schickle discuss Eastwood's
career in acting and directing films
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily
News sitting in for Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of theme song of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")

BIANCULLI: Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," one of the iconic
Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, has just been released in special DVD
edition. On this archive edition of FRESH AIR we'll hear an interview with
Eli Wallach, one of the stars of that landmark 1966 film. He played Tuco, the
ugly referred to in the title.

But first, we have an interview Terry conducted with Clint Eastwood and
Eastwood's biographer, Time film critic Richard Schickle. Schickle also
provides the audio commentary for the new DVD release.

Clint Eastwood became a TV star as Rowdy Yates(ph) on "Rawhide," but left that
series in midstream to go overseas and make movies with Italian film director
Sergio Leone. Eastwood's stoic and vengeful character who appeared in several
films was dubbed `the man with no name,' but it made Eastwood not just a star
but an icon. When Terry spoke with Eastwood in 1997 she spoke fondly about
the series "Rawhide," but didn't expect Eastwood to do the same.

(Soundbite of 1997 interview)

Mr. CLINT EASTWOOD (Actor): Actually I liked the role. It was--we just used
to sit around the set and use self-demeaning kind of humor as a way of keeping
our sanity out there doing the series week in, week out. I think that Gil
Favor--Eric Fleming used to call himself Mr. Failure instead of Mr. Favor.
And I used to call myself Rowdy Yates--Rodney Yates, trail flunky. And we
just kind of, you know, just joke about it; it was nothing that nobody
disliked the series particularly. We just had--it was just kind of a way and
somebody picked up on it, I guess, that it was total unhappiness. It wasn't
unhappiness, it was just kind of a way that--to keep yourself amused, I
suppose. Eventually when you do a series after the years go by you do start
to get frustrated. You'd like to go on and do something else. I suppose I'm
no exception in that case.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Did you have any sense that your future was going to be in Westerns and in
action films? Did you have a sense of that for yourself?

Mr. EASTWOOD: No, a lot of the--a lot of people thought, `Well, he's a tall
guy, maybe he'll be good in Westerns.' For some reason somebody thinks that
Western heroes are tall guys for some reason. That's sort of based upon the
predecessors of Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Randolph Scott and what have you over
the years, so they thought, well, maybe he'll play in Westerns or what have
you. But nobody really knew. I was just kind of out there and hanging about,
studying acting and it was a steady job. It was kind of nice at the time.

GROSS: Well, in some of your action roles, in some of your Westerns and like
"Dirty Harry" films, you not only don't say a lot but what you do say you're
saying often through clenched teeth, you know, in that really guttural voice.
How did you develop that style of speaking?

Mr. EASTWOOD: I don't know what you're talking about (laughing). Well, I
think that the character just drives you in that--the character who is maybe
frustrated with the things that the common person on the street are frustrated
with, the bureaucracy that we live in, the nightmare that we as a civilization
have placed on ourselves. And it--I think this is a person who is frustrated
with that, especially if you're trying to solve a case in a limited amount of
time so, `Make my day' line, or the `Do you feel lucky, punk?' kind of lines
were lines that people gravitated towards.

GROSS: Did you have a sense of that reading the script that, you know,
presidents would be, you know, making, you know, improvising on those lines,
and that they'd be--there'd be people just--they would just enter the general
vocabulary? Could you read a script and say, `These lines are going to last
beyond the film'?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Nobody can say that for sure, but you can kind of find the
lines that are sort of squelch lines, the ones that come in and put a topper
on it. I think the appeal of some of those early characters was the fact that
the man would have the right answer and it was always usually very terse and
kind of right to the point but with a little bit of humor involved so
everybody said, `God, I would love to be able to do that.'

GROSS: Have you ever been able to do that, have just the right comeback at
just the right moment?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Very rarely.

GROSS: Now when you're doing a line like `Make my day,' and you know `OK,
this is a really good line,' do you like go home and do line readings and go,
`MAKE my day.' Make MY day.' Make my DAY'? And just do it over and over
until you figure out exactly how you want to do it?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Looking into the bathroom...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. EASTWOOD: ...mirror and doing some of your best acting there.

GROSS: Are you talking to me?

Mr. EASTWOOD: No, I don't go over the lines. I don't play them out loud.
I'd rather play them for the first time when I do them.

GROSS: No, really?

Mr. EASTWOOD: And I usually do them by the motivation of what the feelings
are at the time, so I start them from what the intent is and then let it kind
of go out as sort of like blowing through a trumpet or something that you
start--the sound magnifies as it comes out. If you sit there and practice
line readings to yourself you'll just get confused.

GROSS: I want to get to your Spaghetti Westerns, the films you made with
Sergio Leone. You started the Sergio Leone films when you were still making
"Rawhide," the TV Western. How did Sergio Leone get to see "Rawhide" and
decide you're the one to star in his Western?

Mr. EASTWOOD: He had seen an episode that somebody was showing around--an
agency had in Rome and he had seen an episode and they thought, `Well, here's
a chance to hire an American actor who has been doing Westerns, but is not
very expensive.'

GROSS: Right.

Mr. EASTWOOD: They didn't have any money to spend, so they didn't have a lot
of choices as far as names of the moment.

GROSS: There's a lot of really interesting facial close-ups in your movies
with Sergio Leone and he had a very iconic graphic way of shooting faces,
particularly your face. And your face in those close-ups is often, well,
mysterious, unknowable and sort of is the facial close-ups like revealing this
essence of who you are--they reveal the unknowability of who you are. And
I've always wondered what were you thinking during those close-ups to get the
right expression on your face?

Mr. EASTWOOD: The first response would be to say absolutely nothing to get
the--George Cukor used to say, he'd tell Greta Garbo sometimes to look into
the camera and stare and don't think about a thing, but that's maybe a little
oversimplification or a way to get a certain effect out of her at that time.
But, you think about oh--of what you're doing with the plot line, what the
demands are of the plot. Usually, because this character--though he wasn't
saying a lot, he was plotting a lot, and so you just thought about what your
next moves were.

It's just a question of thinking like you would in real life. You don't--and
you may be thinking--you have an inner monologue--every actor plays an inner
monologue as you're playing your outer character and sometimes your outer
character is saying, `Good evening, it's wonderful to see you,' but underneath
you might be saying, `That dirty rotten'--so you really don't care. And so
that's your inner monologue and so I might have been saying something like
that to myself at the time. You know? Unlike these guys I'd like to blow
them all away, but I'd be very pleasant at the moment.

GROSS: And you developed a squint also in some of those close-ups.

Mr. EASTWOOD: Well, that was just the sunlight and I...

GROSS: Was it?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Yeah. They bombed me with a bunch of lights and you're outside
and it's 90 degrees, it's hard not to squint. Yeah.

GROSS: Richard Schickle, I want to ask you what you think of the importance
of the Sergio Leone films and Clint Eastwood's filmmaking career.

Mr. RICHARD SCHICKLE (Time TV Critic): Oh, I sort of think that Clint would
have made his way into wider public consciousness in some other fashion, but I
do also feel that those movies were so singular. They were truly deeply
profoundly revisionist Westerns as Clint has often said at a time when the
Western was in a kind of a dull place. The traditions of the Western in
America had been kind of used up as though--we were in a period where Westerns
were very popular in television and coming out of a period in which they had
been very popular in the theaters.

Nonetheless, you know, the basic Western moves, the traditional moves had
become dull and overused and kind of cliche-ridden and I think it's one of the
things that drew Clint to this was that opportunity, not just for his own
character to expand a bit but for him to participate in a kind of a revision
of a form that he actually liked. I mean, it's important to remember that,
you know, Clint does know quite a bit about film history and so forth. He had
seen "Yojimbo," the Kurosawa movie which was a source for this particular
movie, for "Fistful of Dollars," and he had seen it two years before and had
said, `Hey, this would make a great Western, but I don't think anybody in
America will make it because it's too tough.' And here were these crazy
Italians who were, you know, willing to do exactly that.

GROSS: Clint Eastwood, since there's been these great iconographic close-ups
of your face I'm wondering what you think of your face as a man, an actor and
as a director, because you have to work with your face as a director and look
at it very objectedly, I'd imagine.

Mr. EASTWOOD: As a director you think of yourself as another character. A
lot of times when I'm talking to the editor I'll say, `When he comes in the
room,' `When she does this,' and `Hey, that goes here,' and what have you, I
never think of myself in the first person. It's just you have to do that and,
you know, you don't dwell on your face, you dwell on the fact that you're
there and the character. If you think too much about certain things you can
get yourself very confused, so rather than do that you just forge right on
ahead with what you're doing.

BIANCULLI: Clint Eastwood and Richard Schickle speaking to Terry Gross.
We'll be back with more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to more of Terry's interview with Clint Eastwood
and Richard Schickle.

GROSS: Now in Richard Schickle's book about you, he says that, you know,
"Rawhide" followed the strict production code of the time, you couldn't show a
fired gun and the victim of the bullet in the same shot, there had to be an
edit in between. What was your reaction to Sergio Leone's really vivid
approach to violence?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Well, that was true. The Hayes Office at that time had a rule
for Westerns only, ironically, and you couldn't show the shootee and the
shooter in the same shot. It couldn't be a tie-up shot, in other words, so
you would have to do it as an individual cut, and if you look at even later
American Westerns of "High Noon," you won't see the tie-up. But, Sergio
didn't know about all that and I wasn't about to tell him because I was really
enjoying this. It was breaking all--we were trying to break all the molds,
and in breaking all the molds it made those pictures a hit.

There was somewhat of a revisionist idea or certainly an outsider's point of
view. They became popular, but they also brought with it some resentment, as
you and Richard touched on earlier in the show. There were a lot of people
felt maybe--Who is this upstart? We didn't come in and bless this guy to come
along and we didn't bless these movies to come along, an Italian
interpretation of the great American genre. So there was a certain resentment
that hung around with those pictures for some time.

Now as people look back on them they enjoy the fact that this was a different
period and that it went on to somebody else. And Sam Peckinpah came along
later and he did another look at the Western and someone else comes along and
does another one. Then I come back to them and take another shot and then
somebody else down the line, that way it keeps the great American art form
alive.

Mr. SCHICKLE: Well, I think one thing that's interesting when you do look
back at the Leone films is today, despite all of the hubbub about their
violence, they're not terribly violent movies by modern standards, you know.

GROSS: There's a lot of really sick sadistic people in them.

Mr. SCHICKLE: That's true and yet Leone, for the most part, does not linger
on the actual violence, he lingers on the lead-up to violence. I mean...

GROSS: The savoring of the violence.

Mr. SCHICKLE: There's a kind of a dance and almost, you know, sort of stately
minuet leading up to the violence. I mean, the concluding shootouts in these
things is a long and elegant time as people circle one another and in effect
threaten one another. But the actual death is very quick, is very clean, you
know, we don't see a lot of blood squibs going off in the Peckinpah manner,
slow-motion death. Death is in these movies, as it so often is in life, I
mean, it's quick, nasty, brutal, but it's not something that is in and of
itself aestheticized. What's around it is aestheticized, but the actual
moment is not. It's shown for the brutal thing that it is.

GROSS: Clint Eastwood, I thought that your choice of directing and starring
in "Unforgiven" was such an interesting choice, because it's a movie about a
man who goes from bad man to good man to myth. And it's also interesting
because it's about the difficulty of killing someone and what it takes out of
you when you do kill someone. And you'd been in so many mythic movies and
been in so many movies where the character that you played killed a lot of
people. So I'm interested in how you related to the story in "Unforgiven" and
how it dealt with mythmaking and with violence.

Mr. EASTWOOD: Well, those exact things that you mentioned are what attracted
me to the project. The fact that even though I had done pictures where I'd
been the police officer and Western films where had a lot of gunplay and
stuff, it's not that I approve that sort of thing and I don't necessarily
approve of the romanticizing of gunplay and I don't think it's--and I thought
here was a chance, here was a story that sort of shot holes in that, if you'll
pardon the pun. You know? And it brought out the truth about gunplay and the
fact that there is some loss to your soul when you commit an act of violence.
And to play a person who was deeply affected in his life because of some of
the mayhem that he'd been responsible for was to me made the character more
interesting, it was more interesting for me to play and that particular--in
fact, I never thought the film would be really commercial when I was making it
because it had all these statements about mayhem and violence. And I thought
maybe this might not be a straight-ahead action movie that people wanted, but
I liked the story and I felt it was worth telling.

GROSS: Well, Clint Eastwood, I feel like I must talk with you a little bit
about music and to kick off this chapter of our interview let's listen to
this.

(Soundbite of "Don't Fence Me In")

Mr. EASTWOOD: (Singing) Oh, give me land, lots of land under the starry
skies above, don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country
that I love, don't fence me in. Let me be by myself in the evening breeze,
listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees. Send me off forever but I ask
you please, don't fence me in.

Unidentified Chorus: (Singing) Just turn me loose, let me saddle my old
saddle underneath the...

Mr. SCHICKLE: Terry, you should have seen the pain in this room.

GROSS: And that's from the album "Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites."
And there's a picture of CLint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates on the cover,
"Rawhide's" Clint Eastwood sings cowboy favorites. Yeah.

Mr. EASTWOOD: That was--actually, I was the Milli Vanilli of the moment
there. I did--that wasn't me.

GROSS: Oh, yes, it was. I actually like your singing voice; I really do. I
mean, this is a strange album with strange arrangements and not always good
songs, but I really like your singing. I imagine you're also like influenced
by Chet Baker in your singing.

Mr. EASTWOOD: Well, that wasn't--in the first place that wasn't the kind of
songs I would normally like to sing.

GROSS: The songs on here I'd imagine not. Yeah. But you got to sing Cole
Porter, "Don't Fence Me In."

Mr. EASTWOOD: There's nothing wrong with that. Cole Porter is certainly
wonderful, but what happened is that somebody had the brilliant idea that I
should do some cowboy songs, not the country-western songs, Nashville-type,
but real straight cowboy songs. And I wasn't sure whether I liked the idea,
but they said, `Well, you'll do it and we have a session tomorrow.' And I
said, `Well, not tomorrow, I'm leaving.' `Well, you'll do it. You'll just
stop by the studio on the way to the airport.' So I did a whole album, when
you think about people who take six months to make an album, but this one we
did the whole album in one session and I didn't know the songs. I had to come
in and, you know, learn them real quick. Some of them I knew, some songs like
that you've heard as a child but you don't really know them. And, so it was a
little frustrating. It wasn't my favorite musical experience in life, but it
was, you know, there again you learn something every day.

GROSS: Had you sung much before? Did you think of yourself as a singer at
all?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Not really. I'd done a few things. I'd done a few records.
I had been involved in music so I could sometimes carry a tune. My father
loves singing. He had a group that played and he loved to sing all the time.
He would have loved to have been a singer more than anything I think.

GROSS: Now I know you're still, and were, as a young man, very passionate
about jazz. Did you ever think that you would become a professional musician
instead of an actor and director?

Mr. EASTWOOD: Well, I thought about that earlier when I was a kid and I was
doing some things, but I never thought--I never really knew what I wanted to
do until I became an actor and at that point I kind of knew which direction I
was going to--at least make--get up and swing at bat.

GROSS: Would you like to sing more or play more or...

Mr. EASTWOOD: No, I don't have any--there's one of my key sayings...

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. EASTWOOD: ...man must know his limitations.

BIANCULLI: Clint Eastwood and Richard Schickle speaking to Terry Gross in
1997. One of the films that made Eastwood a star, "The Good, the Bad and the
Ugly" has just been released as a special edition DVD.

I'm David Bianculli and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of theme song from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: Coming up, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" continues. We'll hear
more about the making of that great Spaghetti Western with actor Eli Wallach.
He spent a total of six years making Westerns in Italy. Also, film critic
David Edelstein reviews "Fahrenheit 9/11," the new documentary from Michael
Moore.

(Soundbite of theme song from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")

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Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
been omitted from this transcript

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Review: Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Michael Moore's provocative new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," opens around
the country today. Finally, the public gets a chance to see the film that's
caused so much fuss and gotten so much advance press. Disney backed out of
distributing it. It won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and most
recently, some conservatives have argued that if commercials for the film
featuring President Bush continue after July 31st, the 30-day mark before the
Republican National Convention, it'll constitute a violation of campaign
finance law. Film critic David Edelstein has a review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN reporting:

Remember the '80s: Reagan and Bush in office, Jimmy Carter off building
houses for the poor, Mondale and Dukakis, ineffectual Democratic candidates?
There were right-wing dirty tricksters like Lee Atwater, and bullying TV and
radio personalities like Morton Downey Jr. and the fledgling Rush Limbaugh.
Back in that era, a lot of liberals found themselves wishing for a blowhard
whom the left could call its own, someone who'd give it right back, who'd
recapture the prankster spirit of counterculture leaders like Abbie Hoffman,
who'd mock and spew and savage instead of taking it like a wussy.

So now we got him: Michael Moore, whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the liberals'
"The Passion of the Christ," a barnstorming and cathartic declaration of holy
war against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the president's men.
On the one hand, it's a compelling polemic; on the other, a piece of thuggish
grandstanding with wall-to-wall cheap shots.

I don't trust anyone, pro or con, who doesn't feel at least a little
ambivalence about his or her responses to this film. Needless to say, the
film itself never waffles. Here are more salient points: that Bush and his
family have been in bed with the Saudis, which made him less responsive to the
likelihood of al-Qaeda terrorism, especially since a pipeline in Afghanistan
promised billions if the Taliban was on board. Better to concentrate on Iraq:
unfinished business and a potential gold mine for US corporations.

Moore ranges far and wide. He shows graphic footage of dead Iraqi children,
killed in what the Pentagon called `surgically precise bombings,' and a
grieving old woman, shrieking curses at Americans. On the home front, Moore
implies that the Patriot Act was unread by legislators, and harps on absurd
applications, like the agent who infiltrated a septuagenarian, cookie-baking
peace collective in Fresno.

In the last act, Moore dogs hawkish congressmen outside the Capitol. Would
they send their own sons and daughters to fight in Iraq, he asks, often to
their backs as they flee.

It's true that you can make anyone look like a goofball with a careful
selection of unflattering shots and out-of-context quotations, but Moore has
an easy time finding clips that make the president look bad.

(Soundbite of "Fahrenheit 9/11")

Unidentified Man: With everything going wrong, he did what any of us would
do: He went on vacation.

(Soundbite of song "Vacation" by the Go-Go's)

GO-GO'S: (Singing) Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away.
Vacation, meant to be spent alone.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations
to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now
watch this drive.

(Soundbite of golf swing)

EDELSTEIN: That's the Moore technique: ironic music, jokey stock shots of
American leisure and Bush hanging himself. Now you might see an honest,
plainspoken leader unfairly ridiculed, in which case I doubt you'll be a
convert. But "Fahrenheit 9/11" will put fire into the troops and maybe sway
the undecided with powerful images, like the shot of Bush in the Florida
elementary school classroom after receiving the news that a second plane has
hit the World Trade Center--seven minutes in which the commander in chief
seems kind of superfluous.

Moore is best when he doesn't stage dumb pranks, but provokes with his mere
presence. When he interviews the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud" in
front of the Saudi Embassy and the Secret Service shows up to ask what he's
doing, it's a `Gotcha' moment. He has a light touch there that's missing from
the rest of "Fahrenheit 9/11." In one scene, his camera moves in like a
vampire on a Flint, Michigan, woman weeping over a son killed in Iraq.

Afterwards, a friend railed that Moore was exploiting a mother's grief. When
I suggested that at least it made moral sense in the director's universe, my
friend said, `When did you become a relativist?' I'm troubled by that charge,
and by the fact that we almost came to blows, but I think that when it comes
politics, relativism is--well, relative. This is not a documentary for the
ages. It is an act of counterpropaganda that has a boorish, bullying force.
Like it or hate it, you'll be spoiling for a fight.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for Slate.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.