A mysterious interview recently published by an Austrian outlet, and denounced as ‘phony’ by Clint Eastwood himself, is revealed to have been rather cobbled together.
Earlier this week, acting and filmmaking icon Clint Eastwood had some choice words to say about the current state of filmmaking.
“We live in an era of remakes and franchises,” Eastwood said, according to the previously obscure Austrian outlet, Kurier. “I’ve shot sequels three times, but I haven’t been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home.”
The only problem was, Eastwood didn’t recall saying any of these words, or even taking part in the interview in the first place.
As quotes from the interview began to circulate on other major outlets – and not-so-major ones, like this one – Eastwood went to the unusual length of contacting Deadline to issue a clarification.
“I can confirm I’ve turned 95,” Eastwood said in a statement, drily referring to his recent birthday, mentioned in Kurier’s interview. “I can also confirm that I never gave an interview to an Austrian publication called Kurier, or any other writer in recent weeks, and that the interview is entirely phony.”
As outlets – again, including this one – hurried to update their own articles, an obvious question remained: if the quotes in the original piece were indeed ‘phony’, where on earth did they come from?
Read more: Juror #2 review | All rise for Clint Eastwood’s superb courtroom thriller
Usefully, Variety now appears to have the answer. The quotes attributed to Eastwood are genuine – they just aren’t at all recent. In a statement, the writer behind the interview, Elisabeth Sereda, revealed that the article is essentially a patchwork quilt of quotes taken from other interviews and press conferences, some them dating back almost 50 years.
“Quotes from Mr Eastwood cited in the story are culled from several of those 14 press conferences I attended and covered,” Sereda wrote.
In place of the original article, Kurier has published a statement of its own. Here’s an excerpt, translated from German to English via Google:
“The article was formatted as an interview, not a portrait. This was intended to create the impression that it was a new interview. The fact that this wasn’t the case is not in keeping with the quality standards the KURIER maintains. Even though no quote is fabricated, the interviews are documented, and the allegation of falsification can be refuted, we will no longer work with the author in the future because transparency and our strict editorial standards are paramount to us.”
Variety writer J Kim Murphy has also gone to the lengths of figuring out roughly when Eastwood might have said some of the quotes in the now-deleted Kurier piece. The “We live in an era of remakes and franchises” line appears to date back to the early 1980s, when Eastwood directed his belated Dirty Harry sequel, Sudden Impact.
Inspired by the Kurier method, we decided to conduct our own interview with Mr Clint Eastwood by simply popping in a DVD of Sudden Impact and seeing what the great man has to say. So here goes.
Film Stories: Hi, Mr Eastwood, how are you? Would you like a cup of tea or perhaps a biscuit?
Eastwood: Go ahead, make my day.
Film Stories: Lovely. Here you go. Just out of interest, are you a fan of our website?
Eastwood: Listen, punk. To me you’re nothin’ but dogshit, you understand?
Film Stories: Blimey. Well, we’d best be going. Thanks for your time, Mr Eastwood!
You read it here first, folks.
