By Gene Triplett
Entertainment Editor
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The subject was heroes.
The man walking toward the front of the Four Seasons Hotel meeting room was the embodiment of that ideal — as packaged and marketed by American cinema, anyway.
Clint Eastwood stood for a flurry of picture-taking in his bluish-gray suit and patterned tie, still straight and tall and squinty-eyed as Dirty Harry in his prime, although 76 years have thinned and grayed his hair and added a few more lines of distinction to his rugged good looks. He was here today to talk to the press about the real heroes depicted in his latest directorial effort, "Flags of Our Fathers," the true story behind the iconic photograph of the flag-raising that was taken on the fifth day of the bloody and crucial battle for Iwo Jima in the final months of World War II.
More than a war drama, the film, based on a book by James Bradley, the son of one of the men in the famous photo, is a story of friendship, love, sacrifice and manipulation, which questions our need to create and celebrate heroes, sometimes at a cost to those who are lionized.
"There's never been a story about Iwo Jima, although there've been pictures using it in the title," Eastwood said after sitting down where the bank of microphones and recorders could pick up the low, raspy velvet of his voice. "It was the biggest Marine Corps invasion in history, the most fierce battle in Marine Corps history. But what intrigued me about it was the book itself, and the fact that it wasn't really a war story.
"I wasn't really setting out to do a war movie," Eastwood said. "I've been involved with a few as an actor, but I like this because it was just a study of these people. And I've always been curious about families who find out things about their relatives after the fact, and the kind of people they were. I've talked to many vets of this campaign and many other campaigns. And the ones who seemed to be the most in the front lines and have been through the most, seem to be the ones who are quietest about their activity."
Eastwood's film focuses on three such men — the survivors of the flag-raising detail who were immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945, in an image that grabbed page-one play around the world and helped rally an American public that had begun to grow weary of the drawn-out war. The battle-worn youths suddenly found themselves plucked out of combat, returned to the States and put on display by a government public-relations machine eager to fan rekindled victory fever and fuel the Seventh War Bond Tour. But two of the men didn't wear their new celebrity comfortably, feeling the real heroes were those who had died and were still dying on Iwo.
"And I guess Adam Beach's character sort of sums it up when he's on the train and says, ‘We shouldn't be here,'" Eastwood said.
The film also studies the compromises, disappointments and tragedy the three men suffered after the glory faded.
Beach, who plays Ira Hayes, the flag-raiser who had the most difficulty returning to a sober civilian life after his bout with fame, was doing some hero-worshipping of his own when asked about working with Eastwood.
"The best thing a lot of us loved was that he liked to be behind the camera sometimes, holding it," Beach said. He recalled sitting in a boat during the filming of the Marine landing, and looking up to see the director aiming a camera at him from another boat nearby.
"And you're like, ‘Ah, damn, get in character,' you know? But he's trying to find those real moments, and then all of a sudden, the boat pulls up and you look and it's him, dressed in fatigues with the camera, and he's about to leap into the boat. And a couple of actors and guys go, ‘Oh, let me come and — ' He's like, ‘No, get out of here.' And he pulls up his long legs, carrying this heavy camera like it was nothing. It's like he's a gymnast ... . He knows he's not gonna fall in the water. For a man of his age, he's not supposed to do that. So he really surprised us."
As a director, Eastwood is also known for shooting quickly and economically, nailing scenes in one or two takes and moving on, usually finishing a film under budget and under schedule. And yet the on-set atmosphere is laid-back and amiable.
"If you'd asked me 10 years ago, I would've thought of Clint as an actor," said Barry Pepper, who plays Sgt. Michael Strank. "And then you realize he's one of three directors in history — Milos Forman and (Francis Ford) Coppola — that have won two best picture Oscars as a director. Even the most seasoned veterans ... they're all just in awe of him.
"Generally, on a $90 million war epic, the chaos factor is gonna be massive, the potential is there," Pepper said. "When Clint would speak, he never raised his voice beyond that almost inaudible, raspy, wonderful voice he has, and everyone within earshot within a hundred yards, the din of work would just drop, because nobody wanted to miss a beat, nobody wanted to be left in the dust with this guy. They knew that he would just shoot it without them and just move on."
Ryan Phillippe (Navy Corpsman John "Doc" Bradley) remembers a quieter, more sensitive side of the man, like the night Eastwood sat down at the piano after a catered cast dinner at Phillippes' home and treated the guests to a particularly moving piece of music he was working on for the film.
"He ends up staying until two in the morning," Phillippe recalled. "It was just an amazing moment in my life. And we all had had some wine, and so it was that much more emotional. It was pretty incredible."
But the man who started out in film as Rowdy Yates, the ramrod and reluctant hero of TV's "Rawhide" in 1959, isn't that keen on talking about the strides he's made toward becoming one of Hollywood's most revered renaissance men, equally at home behind a .44 magnum, a Steinway or either side of a Panaflex camera. In that way, he's kind of like the real heroes he depicts in "Flags of Our Fathers."
When someone suggested his more recent films have shown greater sensitivity than his earlier work as an actor and director, Eastwood was quick to argue, "Well, they're
all sensitive."
"I think as I've matured in life — if that's a way of saying
‘aging' — I've reached out to different sides of different stories and different stories that were appealing to me. Maybe they were appealing to me as a young man, but the pressure was on as a young man to start out in movies with a lot of action and that sort of thing.
"But as I got to this stage in life now, where I'm sort of retreating to the back side of the camera, I just felt that it's time to address a lot of different things that maybe were closer to me, rather than fantasy characters that I might have been involved with."
When a reporter suggested someone should film "The Clint Eastwood Story," the filmmaker's face creased in a thin-lipped smile of amazement.
"Doing a movie about me?" he laughed incredulously. "No, no, I don't, uh, feel my life is that interesting. Maybe that's why I became an actor."
