American Rebel (39 page)
Authors: Marc Eliot
The next day Locke was cross-examined by Fisher, who went over the terms of the first lawsuit settlement, emphasizing along the way, no doubt for the jury’s sake, the fact that all the while Locke was seeing Clint, she had been married to another man.
After a few more witnesses it was Garrity’s time to put Clint on the stand. He was going to have to answer all of Garrity’s questions under oath. She was swift and to the point, focusing in on what she thought was the most essential aspect of the case. Taking a deep breath and exhaling, she asked Clint if he had entered into an agreement with Locke in 1990 to settle her lawsuit against him.
In a soft and steady voice, he said he had. He then also admitted that he had made a separate agreement with Warner Bros. to indemnify
them for all of Locke’s expenses during the three years of her contract with them; that he had not told Locke of the arrangement; and that he had not offered Locke any type of similar deal during that period with Malpaso. That was it. Garrity was finished with him, and he was dismissed from the witness stand.
After a few more days and several other witnesses, Garrity rested and Clint’s defense took over. Soon it was Clint’s turn to take the stand in his own defense. He was upbeat and expansive as Fisher led him through his testimony. Then Fisher got to Clint’s relationship with Locke.
FISHER
:
What was your opinion of Ms. Locke once the 1989 lawsuit was settled?
CLINT
:
My feelings were the normal feelings you have when someone has been planning for many months to assault your children’s inheritance … Well, you know, I didn’t feel very good about it, I must say …
Clint went on to express his dismay and his feeling that he was suffering from “social extortion.”
After a few minor disruptions—a reporter had smuggled a camera into the courtroom—and several objections from Garrity, Fisher asked Clint if he had had any intention to commit fraud. Clint said no, adding that it would make no sense for him to use his influence to prevent Locke from getting work at Warner because, according to his deal, he would have to pay for her contract if she didn’t earn any money. He then insisted that despite his best efforts, it was Warner, not he, that chose not to green-light Locke’s various proposals.
During cross-examination Garrity tried to get Clint to admit that he had tapped Locke’s phones, something Locke had long suspected, which Clint denied. She then went over the terms of his indemnification deal regarding Locke, which Clint corrected, reminding her and the court that his deal had been with Warner, to indemnify them, not with Locke.
When Garrity let Clint off the stand, Fisher, who had vehemently objected to several of Garrity’s questions, moved for a mistrial. The
jury was removed, and Fisher insisted the jury should not have heard any testimony about wiretaps. The motion was denied, and with the jury still out, the judge broke for lunch.
Among the defense’s final witnesses was Tom Lassally, who admitted under cross-examination that Clint had never talked to him about any of Locke’s proposed projects.
F
inal arguments began September 19, 1996. Garrity crisply summed up the case, as she saw it, finishing in less than a half hour. It was then Fisher’s turn. He worked slowly and methodically, taking several hours to work his way through his version of the facts of the case and why it should be decided in Clint’s favor. As he came to the conclusion of his summation, he made what sounded like a very solid point—the crux of his argument—that Clint had been under no legal obligation to tell Locke about his indemnification of Warner; that it was a completely separate deal totally unrelated to the terms of her settlement with him.
When Fisher finished, the judge instructed the jury and sent them out to decide the case. After three days of deliberation, the jury asked for a definition of “legal” as it pertained to whether Clint was under a “legal” obligation to inform Locke of his indemnification deal with Warner.
The next day, a Saturday, Garrity called Locke to tell her that she had just received a call from Fisher, who said he wanted to talk over the possibility of a settlement. At this point Locke was adamant; she didn’t want to settle. This had been a long and difficult battle for her, and she was determined to see it through. When Garrity conveyed Locke’s decision to Fisher, he pressed Garrity to prevail upon her client to reconsider. He stressed that a verdict was certain to damage at least one and possibly both of their clients’ careers, and that no one can ever be sure what a jury will do.
Locke talked again with Garrity and took her suggestion to at least think it over. The next day Locke agreed to listen to Clint’s offer. Fisher delivered it, and after deliberating once more with Garrity, she decided to accept. The only condition imposed by Clint was that the amount of money not be revealed to anyone. Locke agreed. The announcement that the case had settled brought a slew of reporters to
the courthouse steps and interviews with several of the released jurors, all of whom claimed that they had already decided in favor of Locke, and that the penalty for Clint would have been in the millions.
A few days later Fisher first threatened to withhold the money and then wanted papers signed; Garrity ignored the first and refused the second. After much grumbling, Fisher personally handed over the check, and Clint’s involvement with Locke was finally over, leaving Locke a little richer, Clint a little poorer. Both of them, after their fourteen-year romantic and six-year litigious relationship, appeared to be finally and forever free of each other.
*
Although he almost never talked about his relationship with Locke after that, he did at least one time, to
Playboy
, during an interview he gave in 1997:
I guess maybe I’m the only one who finds it weird that she’s still obsessed with our relationship and putting out the same old rhetoric almost ten years later. There are two sides to this whole thing … she’s been married for 29 years, but nobody puts that in their stories. As far as the legal action goes, it was my fault. I have to take full responsibility because I thought I was doing her a favor by helping her get a production arrangement with Warner Bros. I prevailed upon Warner Bros. to do it and it didn’t work out. So she sued Warner and then she sued me and finally at some point I said, wait a second, I would have been better off if I hadn’t done anything and had let her go ahead and file the palimony suit against me. I tried to help. I thought she would
get directing assignments, but it didn’t work out that way … I should have known that it ould come back to haunt me … but you go on with your business. I’m going on with my life, and if other people can’t get on with theirs, that’s their problem.
Clint was not present for the handing over of his settlement check, leaving that to Fisher. Free at last from his tar-baby relationship with Locke, he took the next logical step in the never-ending drama of his own real life.
He became a father again, for the seventh time. And he got married again, for only the second time, to the baby’s mother, who was thirty-five years his junior and three years younger than his firstborn, Kyle.
*
According to Locke, in her memoir, once the deal was dead, Schwarzenegger took the concept to Ivan Reitman, who eventually made a reworked version of it without her into
Junior
, starring Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.
*
Clint was no stranger to litigation. As early as 1984 he sued the
National Enquirer
over an article that had linked him romantically with Tanya Tucker. He asked for $10 million and settled out of court. He sued them again in 1994 over their publication of a so-called exclusive interview, and won $150,000 in 1995 that was held up on appeal in 1997. He donated it to a charity (which he did not name). His legal team was awarded $650,000 for legal fees.
*
This was a civil lawsuit. Only the state can bring criminal charges.
*
Several sources list the settlement of the fraud case against Clint—the second lawsuit—as 1999. In fact, it was settled in 1996. Locke’s autobiography, which includes details of the settlement (but not the amount), was published in 1997. In it she discussed the case at length. Clint’s only public comment was to
Playboy
in March 1997, when he told interviewer Bernard Weinraub that Locke played the victim very well. He indicated that he believed her history of cancer had made her more sympathetic to the jury. Although the terms of the settlement have never been disclosed, it was rumored to have been between $10 million and $30 million. (Some sources report the figure to be closer to $7 million.) After the settlement, Locke directed one more movie and appeared in two others. Her last known assignment in Hollywood was in 1999. She still lives there, for more than a decade now with Scott Cunneen, a director of surgery at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Finally, in 1999, Locke sued Warner (but not Clint) yet again, this time for collusion, and won yet another out-of-court settlement with another undisclosed financial amount and a new production deal that has not yet resulted in any new films.
Clint and Meryl Streep on set during the shooting of The
Bridges of Madison County
. Warner Bros
.
If I start intruding and getting fancy and trying to dazzle people with whatever tricks I may or may not have as a director, I’m tampering with something … I revere the performances and I don’t want people to visualize a camera and a camera operator and a guy with a focus-thing, and another person there … I just want people to visualize the movie, so I keep things as subtle as I can, at the same time punctuating the points I need to punctuate
.
—Clint Eastwood
O
n August 7, 1993, Clint quietly became a father for the sixth time when Frances Fisher gave birth to a baby girl they named Francesca Fisher. He had already begun to emotionally pull away from Frances. One reason may have been a souring on the notion of romance by his endless battles with former lover Locke. More likely, though, the cause was the arrival in his life of Dina Ruiz, who would eventually become the second Mrs. Eastwood.
Ruiz, born and raised in California of African-American and Japanese descent on her father’s side and Irish, English, and German on her mother’s, first crossed paths with Clint in April 1993, when she interviewed him about his recent Oscar triumph for KSBW, the NBC TV affiliate in Salinas. Having graduated from San Francisco State in 1989 and apprenticed with KNAZ, a small station in Flagstaff, Arizona, Ruiz had landed the job at KSBW, and one of her first assignments was to interview Clint Eastwood.
The first piece went so well, Ruiz asked Clint to answer more questions so she might expand it into two or three parts. The two met several times more, and the interviews show clearly that Ruiz, twenty-eight years old, and Clint, sixty-three, had very good chemistry. Ruiz readily admitted to Clint that she had seen few of his movies (“zero” was the number she used) and was in love with her boyfriend. However, even though Clint was about to become a father again, this time with Frances Fisher, the two agreed to stay in touch, which Clint normally did not do with reporters.
Ruiz and Clint met again in mid-1994, just after Clint finished
A Perfect World
, which starred Kevin Costner, who was still hot off the 1990 Academy Award–winning
Dances with Wolves
.
*
Costner had continued to appear in big, successful movies—Kevin Reynolds’s
Robin
Hood: Prince of Thieves
(1991), Oliver Stone’s
JFK
(1991), and Mick Jackson’s
The Bodyguard
(1992)—that had made him one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for the first half of the 1990s. When Costner approached Clint about the possibility of directing
A Perfect World
, Clint read the script and was attracted to the plot’s familiar escaped-convict tropes, especially the relationship between the pursued, Butch Haynes (Costner) and his pursuer, Red Garnett. Clint said yes, if he could play Garnett and, of course, produce it through Malpaso.
Filming on location in Martindale, Texas, proved more difficult than Clint had anticipated. His hurry-up directorial style clashed with Costner’s snail’s-pace multiple-take perfectionism. (During the making of
Dances with Wolves
more than one participant had complained, off the record, that the endless retakes had driven everyone crazy.) According to one story, Costner angrily walked off the set during a shoot, and Clint used Costner’s stand-in to finish shooting. Afterward, when Costner complained, Clint told him that as far as he was concerned, he could take a walk off the set or off the film—either way was fine with him. Costner did no more complaining after that, and the film was finished without further incident. It opened on Thanksgiving weekend, becoming one of Warner’s big fall releases of 1993; it grossed $30 million in its initial theatrical release and more than $100 million worldwide.