American Rebel (37 page)

And it was all shot in less than a month.
^*

    
T
he pre-release buzz on this film was enormous from the start. The cast included two actors at the top of their respective games—Morgan Freeman, who had been nominated for Best Actor for Bruce Beresford’s
Driving Miss Daisy
(1989), and Gene Hackman, who had won Best Actor for
The French Connection
(1972). Years before the script even came to Clint, Hackman had turned down the role of Munny. He’d also turned down the role of Daggett when Clint offered
it to him because he felt he was oo violent and repulsive a character, until Clint somehow managed to convince him the film carried a strong antiviolence message. Richard Harris, an offbeat Irishman born in Limerick City, had hung around inside the Hollywood A-list long after his best movies were behind him; those who saw advance footage of his scenes said it was the performance of his career.

Because of all the good advance word, Warner volunteered to take over the film’s promotion. Clint would normally have rejected the offer but this time readily agreed. Almost every previous Malpaso film had been promoted independently by Charles Gold and Kitty Dutton, whom Clint had hired, via Malpaso, during Warner’s Frank Wells period, when he had little faith in the studio’s ability to promote films. Now that Terry Semel and Bob Daley were in charge, the studio had become far more aggressive, and they convinced Clint they could do a better job than Malpaso on this one.

Several press junkets were arranged—Clint had been opposed to them before
Unforgiven—
and Richard Schickel, the film critic and documentary filmmaker, was allowed virtually unlimited access to produce a “making of the movie” promotional short. Jack Mathews of the
Los Angeles Times
was allowed aboard, as was Peter Biskind of the then relatively new and highly influential
Premiere
magazine, which had a
Rolling Stone
look and similarly hip style of reporting for movies. Numerous theatrical tie-ins and promotions, contests, and one-on-one interviews with Clint were arranged.
^*
And something nobody thought they would ever see: Clint actually agreed to go on
The Tonight Show
to hawk the film.

The reason for all this atypical accessibility was not hard to understand. Clint still wanted to win an Academy Award. It was as simple as that. He would be sixty-two when the film came out, the fiftieth film that he had either appeared in, or directed, or both, and if it was ever going to happen, the time was now.

    
U
nforgiven
, dedicated to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel in its closing credits, opened August 7, 1992. August is a month where summer films that are not expected to do well are released; the best are given
the Memorial Day weekend slot, the next July Fourth, the also-rans after that. But with this film, the aley-Semel strategy was to separate
Unforgiven
from the year’s other big summer films that included Tim Burton’s
Batman Returns
and Phillip Noyce’s
Patriot Games
starring Harrison Ford, both of which opened before August.

The strategy paid off big time, with a $14 million opening weekend, Clint’s best ever. Not only was his career resurrected, but suddenly he was the hottest actor
and
director in Hollywood.
Unforgiven
went on to gross $160 million in its initial domestic theatrical release and an additional $50 million overseas, placing it behind only Clint’s two orangutan films as the highest grossers of his career to date.

That winter, when the Oscar nominations were announced, to no one’s surprise, Clint and his film were prominent among them.
Unforgiven
was nominated for Best Picture, pitting Clint as producer against Neil Jordan’s quirky, sexually ambiguous, highly original, and completely riveting
The Crying Game;
Rob Reiner’s military courtroom drama
A Few Good Men
, which starred three of Hollywood’s then-hottest stars, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore, and that carried the added imprimatur of having been a recent Broadway stage hit; James Ivory’s
Howards End
, the obligatory prestige nomination that showed the world how literary Hollywood could be; and Martin Brest’s bizarre
Scent of a Woman
, about a blind man who can really “see,” starring Al Pacino as the “hoo-wa” man.

Clint was also nominated for Best Actor, a long-awaited first that put him up against Robert Downey Jr.’s facile Charlie in Richard Attenborough’s windy biography
Chaplin;
Stephen Rea’s affecting performance as an Irish subversive in
The Crying Game;
Denzel Washington in the title role of Spike Lee’s
Malcolm X;
and Pacino.

He was also nominated for Best Director, against Robert Altman—for his inside-is-hell exposé of Hollywood amorality,
The Player—
Martin Brest, James Ivory, and Neil Jordan.

Other major nominations for
Unforgiven
included Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman, and Best Screenplay for Peoples.

On March 29, 1993, the night of the awards, a smiling, silver-haired Clint showed up resplendent in a tuxedo and tie, with a not-yet-showing pregnant Frances Fisher on his arm. The usual Academy dross that passes for humor and entertainment was kicked off by host
Billy Crystal being driven onstage in a chariot by Jack Palance, the unlikely winner of the previous year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Ron Underwood’s
City Slickers
, thereby robbing himself and the ceremonies of any last shred of dignity.

The theme of the show was “Women in Film,” and although memorable women’s roles and performances were few that year, the appearance of Elizabeth Taylor and the presenting of a Jean Hersholt Award to the recently departed Audrey Hepburn sent an electric charge through the audience as the evening crawled toward the expected coronation of Clint Eastwood. One bump in the road came when the Best Actor Oscar went to Al Pacino, for one of the lesser performances of his career, not long after Gene Hackman had won for Best Supporting Actor. In a night that was a Vegas gambler’s delight, always in danger of sidestepping the favorites, Clint braced himself.

Barbra Streisand, arguably the biggest female star in Hollywood, dressed resplendently in black, made the next presentation. “This award is for the Best Director,” Streisand said, leaning slightly into the microphone, her bare shoulders glistening under the bright lights, “and it is my privilege to present it tonight.” She dutifully read the names of the nominees and their films, while clips of them directing flashed across the screen. Clint’s name was read last, and the visual showed him unshaven and looking into the viewfinder of a movie camera while slowly and steadily chewing gum. “And the Oscar goes to …” she said, opening the envelope, then breaking into a big smile as she nodded to Clint, sitting in the first row with Fisher, before saying, “Clint Eastwood!”

The audience erupted with its most enthusiastic response of the night, a rush of cheers and “yays” reaching above the happily clapping crowd. Just before he rose from his seat, Fisher gave Clint a quick kiss on the cheek. On the way to the stage, he stopped long enough to accept a handshake and congratulations from Attenborough. When he arrived at the podium and the cheering subsided, Clint made an off-the-cuff comment about his dry throat, the result of having to sit for so long waiting for the big moment. He wiped his lip and then began again. “I just want to …,” he said, then trailed off, looking at the Oscar in the tight grip of his right hand. “This is pretty good, this is all right.” Then, laughing nervously, he continued his acceptance speech.

As Clint turned his head in mock confusion, good-natured titters rippled through the audience. Then he smiled.

W
ith that, Clint raised the Oscar and waved it to the crowd, before leaving the stage to more thunderous applause.

Only to return a few moments later when a smirking Jack Nicholson read off the names of the nominees for Best Picture as if they were a private joke and then opened the envelope and calmly announced Clint’s name. Once again enthusiastic applause filled the room, and this time Clint was ready with the names of those he’d failed to thank in his earlier speech, including Warner publicists Joe Hyams and Marco Barla, studio executives Terry Semel and Bob Daley, and “the whole executive strata” at Warner. He also paid special tribute to former
Warner chief Steve Ross, who had died the previous year from prostate cancer, and who had been one of Clint’s strongest supporters at the studio. And then, pausing and in a soft voice, Clint said, “In the Year of the Woman, the greatest woman on the planet is here tonight, and that’s my mother, Ruth.” The cameras quickly found her in the audience, eighty-four years old and looking quite robust, smiling with pride over her son’s success.

It was a night of triumph for Clint and his film, which walked off with four Oscars, two for him, one for Hackman, and one for Joel Cox for Best Editor.

    
A
fter dutifully, if briefly, attending all the official celebrations, including the obligatory Governor’s Ball, Clint took a couple of close friends and Fisher to Nicky Blair’s restaurant. Blair had been one of the Universal contract actors Clint had met during his early days who remained a friend and who also happened to be a talented chef. In those days he’d often made meals for all his out-of-work buddies, including Clint. He had since become a well-known restaurateur on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Clint partied there with Fisher and his friends until dawn.

Asked by a reporter the next day how he felt, Clint replied, “Tired.”

    
A
t sixty-two years of age, Clint had reached the peak of his career. A tottering John Wayne had been that old twenty-three years earlier when he won his only Oscar for his twilight-years performance in Henry Hathaway’s
True Grit
. Clint felt not only redeemed but rein-vigorated, and within days of his double Oscar win he was ready to begin work on a new film,
In the Line of Fire
. He was set to embrace the future, unencumbered at last by the limitations of his past, believing all the old scores in the game called Hollywood had finally been settled.

Until Sondra Locke reemerged, more determined than ever to settle her own score with him.

Clint outside the courtroom-Burbank, California, Tuesday, September 17, 1996-during a break in the long civil trial brought against him by former lover Sondra Locke.
AP
Images
.