Invictus Press Conference with Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman & Matt Damon Pt2
Last Sunday London welcomed Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon for Invictus’s European Press Conference. Below is the second half of what took place, you can check out part 1 here. Invictus is in UK cinemas 5th Febuary.
I read that you try to take as little amount of takes as possible while making your film.
Clint Eastwood: I always try to do one, it doesn’t necessarily work out that way though. If that one take works I’ll take that, if the third take works I’ll print that. Sometimes I do like to have a few different set ups but I’ll try and make a decision right at that time, whether it’s good, bad or otherwise. I think once you start doing, thirty or forty takes, you can get lost somewhere and you don’t know what you are looking for, I like to think I know what I’m looking for, right or wrong.
As actors what’s it like working with Clint?
Morgan Freeman: I take Clint as my favourite director to work with because I respond very well to the one or two take director, he’s the most consistent in that area. Directors who as Clint said that need seventeen takes, I don’t think they know what they want, it certainly doesn’t help the actors sense or security when he has to keep going over and over things and you don’t know why, you think what am I doing, what do you want,.
Matt Damon: Yeah some people just collect a bunch of footage and edit it later. You definitely feel a lot more protected when the director is moving on, you feel like something is happening, so you know they are watching intently. Coppolla told me that Antonioni said to him, this is before the days of video village that as a director you should stand right next to the camera, look with your naked eye and if you see something that is real to you, you look up to your operator and if your operator gives you the look that yeah I saw that too, then you print and move on. Clint basically cuts on camera, I’ve worked with a couple of guys who do that and as Morgan said it gives you a real sense of security because you know you’re in very able hands and the director is watching the movie unfold, your getting what you wanna get and it doesn’t take seventeen hours to get it.
Clint Eastwood: I’ve always felt a lot of times when a person has to do twenty takes on something, it’s usually for one or two reason, either they don’t quite know what they’re looking for or also they don’ know what there next set up is so they’re using up the time and utilising the actors to kill time until some great idea comes to them, that becomes a bit of a problem, there not abusing the actors because they’re there to act but it’s a bit unfair, it will give them a big sense of insecurity as Morgan said, I’ve worked with people like that myself. In the old days a lot of people done it defensively because they felt they didn’t want to leave a load of extra film because they didn’t want the studio executives to come in and recur their film and restructure everything, so they would give them it as little as possible, there’s only one way of putting it together, that was done back in the thirty’s and forty’s when the execs had a tremendous amount of power
Looking over your films as a director which has been the biggest challenge for you and why? And which of your acting performances are you most proud of?
Clint Eastwood: When you’ve done as many films as I’ve done you just keep going, I never look back and think too much about them, I’ve done some work I’ve been proud of over the years but which is my favourite, I don’t know. I’ve had little jumps in my career, like Unforgiven and then when I tried to do something different, Letters To Iwo Jima I liked doing a lot, anything with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon (laughs). I like to get a chance too work with people I respect a lot. A favourite performance I don’t know. Once the films done and once something been performed, it’s up to someone else to make a judgement on it.
When you choose the subject do you trust in your instincts? How do you choose your films?
Clint Eastwood: Yes I do, I always trust my instincts, it was just a story that I liked, I didn’t approach it about a picture about Rugby, we obviously wanted to make the Rugby very good because that was an inspiration for Mr Mandela, to utilize it as a tool to unite his country. Morgan called me and said look I’ve got a really good script, he didn’t even tell me it was about Nelson Mandela, so I read the script and liked it very much, I’ve always been an admirer of Nelson Mandela, I was amazed by reading the script and the book because it seems so creative, such a creative way to unify a country, which was in really deep trouble, almost on the brink of civil war. Mr Mandela had been in prison for quite a few years, nobody knew what was gonna happen when he came out, then he came out with this kind of an imagination, I just thought this is something politicians around the world could learn a lot from, having a certain creativity and bringing people together, instead of just talking about it he was doing it, that was my reason for doing the picture, Rugby was exciting and that was fun, but even if it was Nelson Mandela and Texas Hold Em Poker I still would have done it because I admire the man.
