Great stint with Clint
By Andy Seiler
USA Today
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Warner Bros. photo "You could feel that the camera was where you wanted to be if you were standing in a room watching the story unfold." — Sean Penn |
As an actor, Eastwood expresses more in the lift of an eyebrow than others do with a page of dialogue.
When directing, "the only thing he told me was to talk faster," says Kevin Bacon, who plays a policeman in "Mystic River," opening tomorrow in Hawai'i.
Working with some of today's most gifted actors, Eastwood's firm yet hands-off approach has paid off in what critics agree is a career high: a wrenching early Oscar contender. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers calls this tale of three childhood friends pulled back together years later by a murder "a dark masterpiece that can stand with 'Unforgiven.' " USA Today's Mike Clark calls it one of Eastwood's best.
And contrary to the cliche that the people making the movie never know what the end product will be, this time, the actors and director agree, they had a feeling.
"It was really quickly clear on the set that your stories were being told," says Sean Penn, whose performance as the ex-con father of a murdered girl is generating Oscar heat. "You could feel that the camera was where you wanted to be if you were standing in a room watching the story unfold. We'd look at each other and say, 'This is going good, isn't it?' You knew."
Penn and Tim Robbins, who like Bacon have also directed, cured themselves of their addiction to viewing "dailies" — the scenes that are shot each day — on the "Mystic" set. "I never had that kind of insecurity where you say, 'I've got to see dailies,' " Robbins recalls. "I always felt like everything was right."
And Eastwood did it in 39 days.
"It should have been an 18-week shoot," says Penn. "I'd not be shooting on a day, and I'd come back to the hotel and say, 'What did you get done today?' and it would be, like, 'All of it.' How did he do that?"
Eastwood hints at the answer.
"People like to primp a lot on a set," he says. As an actor, Eastwood, 73, says he can no longer tolerate it. Nor can he handle it as a director.
"At some point I'd inform crew members, 'just leave people alone, right now, for this scene.' I like it when the crew goes home at night feeling like we've done something and we've gone somewhere."
Penn agrees. "There was a consistent sense of accomplishment, where you really knew that you were going to have the energy for the next day's work."
And Laura Linney, who plays Penn's tigress of a wife, adds: "It becomes so much easier in a lot of ways. Not that the material was easy. It costs to do it — but you feel such momentum."
Marcia Gay Harden, who plays a woman who suspects her husband (Robbins) might have committed murder, credits the stage experience of the cast members and their awareness of Eastwood's methods for the smooth shoot.
But Harden didn't know the rules the first time she worked with Eastwood, on "Space Cowboys" (2000). "I had just come from 'Pollock,' so I had, you know, those bangs (from her Oscar-winning turn as painter Lee Krasner)," she recalls. Harden figured that the crew would provide her with a wig or a new hairdo. It didn't happen.
"I probably would have brought my own hair if I'd known that they don't do that," she says. "This time I knew to come ready. You come with whatever hair you want."
If hairdressing is out, you can forget about multiple retakes.
"I've worked with actors who said, 'I do my best work on the eighth or ninth take,' " Eastwood says. "And I've said, 'Oh, really? That's too bad.' "
I just think that actors act better this way, especially at this pro level," he says. "Once they're there and everybody's in the mood, I just try not to distract. The crew works very quietly and efficiently."
It's quiet on the outside, frightening on the inside, Bacon says.
"Laurence Fishburne and I would be there and we'd have about maybe, I don't know, four pages on the schedule and we'd have been drilling our lines," Bacon says. A crew member would approach, he recalls, and say: "Guys, by the way, I think we're going to shoot another eight pages today, as well."
"It's a little scary," Bacon says.
Even the changeable Boston weather performed for Eastwood.
"We don't allow it to not cooperate," he says.
"One had the sense," Penn adds, "that the weather was intimidated by him. OK, I'll be gray today!"
Minimizing pain
"Mystic River" deals with heavy themes, murder and child molestation among them. Eastwood says all the characters are "damaged goods." Yet Eastwood's rapid-fire directing style minimized the psychic damage to the actors.
"I've been on movies where you had to cook up that kind of emotion and you're doing 60 takes," says Robbins, whose character is haunted by his abduction as a child. "It's not only exhausting, it's morally exhausting. You don't feel like you're talented at the end of the day. You feel like, 'Why did I have to do it that much? I sucked.' "
But Eastwood only asked for one or two takes.
"It's very tough with Tim's kind of character," Eastwood says. "That's a tough load to pack around and go home and have a home life, or talk to your kid and try to act enthusiastic about something else that's going on in the day."
Penn agrees. "It took its toll, Tim," he says, turning to Robbins. "We'd go back to the hotel, and ask everyone, 'How are you doing?' 'Great!' You were the one who just said 'OK.' "
For all Eastwood's quiet authority and confidence, he admits that he hasn't felt this comfortable shooting most of his other films. "In every movie there comes a point when you're usually about three quarters of the way through when you wonder: What am I doing this piece of crap for?" he admits. "We never had that in this movie because we roared along and got to the end, and everybody felt good about it."
And because they hadn't rehearsed, the actors found themselves saying their lines differently and reacting to the performances of the others.
Mutual admiration
"Everything Tim did was a surprise for me," Harden says. "Even the way he said my name, 'Celeste.' I just loved him so much, and it broke my heart. I didn't know
Tim. The first time I met Tim, all I could say, was, 'You're so tall!' like an idiot geek." (Robbins is 6-feet-5.) "He was just such a gorgeous actor, and he was just my husband. That was such a welcome surprise."
"Well, backatcha," says Robbins, praising Harden's generosity as an actor. "It's a difficult situation to walk into a set with a person you know but really don't know too well, and all of a sudden she's your wife."
Penn pipes in: "Sounds like marriage to me!"
Joking aside, Penn's role was as grueling as Robbins', especially a scene where a crowd keeps Penn from seeing his daughter's body.
"Sean was struggling with quite a few guys hanging on there, and by the end of the day he was threatening to quit smoking," Eastwood teases.
Penn snuffs out his cigarette.
"I thought they were going to have to wheel him out on a stretcher, frankly," says Bacon.
When it came time to film Bacon's reaction to Penn's outburst, Bacon was shocked to see the badly bruised Penn volunteer to do it all again — even though this time, he wouldn't be on camera.
"He was just as in it for me as he was for himself," Bacon recalls.
A film with a message
Harden says it's a "relief" to be in a movie that deals with real life in a serious way. "Every single person I talk to is suffering in some way in this day and age," Harden says. "There's nobody that I've talked to in maybe two years who's going 'zip-a-dee-doo-dah-day.' And I read something recently that said the same place in the brain where you'll find things like bestiality — these heinous, heinous behaviors — are where you'll find love and compassion and those behaviors that are so human. So, great! Here comes a film that's talking about suffering. With all due respect: 'Legally Blonde 19': I don't give a (expletive)! I want to see movies that talk about things that I care about."
Despite the somber subject, it wasn't all work on the set. And though Robbins and Penn, both outspoken opponents of the war in Iraq, say that topic never came up on set but may have been discussed "in the bar," nobody will 'fess up to what the after-hours playtime was like.
"Laura and I were grandmothers, drinking tea, and the boys were not, that's all I will say," Harden offers coyly.
"We were at the Boston Zen center after work, right until the morning, meditating," Penn says.
Eastwood has a different alibi: "Went to the library, went to the health club and went to bed."
He must have been with Robbins. "They've got a great library in Boston," he says. "I did a lot of reading."
