Last month, on the opening day of Gran Torino, I went up to Lincoln Center to participate in a roundtable discussion about Clint Eastwood for a Film Comment podcast. Kevin B. Lee, who also participated in the roundtable, has since adapted the conversation into three video essays: one on Changeling (in which I am extremely quiet; I guess I was playing by the “if you have nothing nice to say…” rule); one on Gran Torino, and one (embedded above) on the look of Eastwood’s films, and particularly his use of light. I’m quiet in that last one, too, but in this case it’s because my knowledge of Eastwood’s filmography was brutally overmatched by that of the Film Society’s Evan Davis, Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine, Akiva Gottlieb of The Nation.
I’ve always had major problems with Eastwood’s work, but being part of the conversation made me excited about going back and watching some of his directorial efforts that I hadn’t seen, including The Bridges of Madison Country, which coincidentally ended up showing the weekend after we recorded the podcast on the WE network, where I gave it about four hours of my life, counting the frequent breaks for Rich Bride, Poor Bride promos. It was worth it.
