LOS ANGELES — Four times Oscar winning filmmaker-actor Clint Eastwood has
lamented about the era of “remakes and franchises”.
The venerated actor and director recently gave an
interview to Austrian newspaper Kurier, urging fellow filmmakers to come up
with original ideas and bemoaning the “era of remakes and franchises.”
“I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote
movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had
a new idea,” the Juror #2 director said, reports deadline.com.
“We live in an era of remakes and franchises. 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 95-year-old behind Oscar winners like Million Dollar
Baby and Unforgiven, both of which he also starred in, added in the interview
that he has no thoughts of retiring and planned to keep working “for a long
time yet,” reports deadline.com.
When asked how he remains energetic, he replied, “There’s
no reason why a man can’t get better with age. And I have much more experience
today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I’m
not one of them.”
Eastwood added that throughout his half-century-long career,
he has been pushed to adapt, which enabled him to pick up new skills.
“As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio,
was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year, and
that’s why I’ll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I’m truly
senile.”
Eastwood achieved success in the Western TV series
Rawhide. He rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No
Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns and as
antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films.
These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring
cultural icon of masculinity. Elected, Eastwood served for two years as the
mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Eastwood's greatest commercial successes are Every Which
Way but Loose and its action comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can.
Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang
'Em High, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider, Where Eagles Dare, Escape from
Alcatraz, Heartbreak Ridge, In the Line of Fire, and The Bridges of Madison
County. More recent works include Gran Torino, The Mule, and Cry Macho.
