Another year passes, and I reflect on one of the industry highlights.
Clint Eastwood was awarded the "Spirit of Independence Award" by his peers.
The "Spirit of Independence Award" was created in 2005 to honor an artist's commitment to their artistic independence in film.
It's hard to believe that squinty-eyed Clint has been in front of the camera for fifty years, at last count. The little Golden Statuettes are no stranger to him, either; of course, he is a two-time Oscar-winner (do you recall what films he won them for?) and three-time Golden Globe award-winner, as well.
Previous winners of the "Independence Award" have been talented man's man George Clooney and charismatic Charlize Theron.
Eastwood received his coveted honor at a private ceremony on June 28th, 2007.
My favorite Eastwood offerings are undoubtedly those in the "Fistful of Dollars" film series (director, anyone?) commonly-known as the "The Dollar(s)Trilogy".
The character the gruff macho leading man expertly played was known to filmgoers as "The Man with No Name".
One critic noted that "Fistful of Dollars" was basically homage to celebrated Foreign Film Director Akira Kurosawa; after all, "Fist" followed Kurosawa's - "Yojimbo" - almost scene-for-scene.
The plot of "Yojimbo" is the tale of a Samurai who comes to a town torn by two gangs of fighters. The wise loner cleverly plays the rivals off against each other, helps a family to escape, and in the end finishes off pretty much the whole town and leaves with all the money.
Replace a Samurai with a gunslinger, and the Japanese village with a small western town, and you have "A Fistful of Dollars".
Also borrowed were Kurosawa-style sets, the quiet confidence of the lead character (the deadly "man with no name"), the innovative use of music to uniquely replace dialogue - and, last but not least - Kurosawa's slow motion photography.
Previously, a handful of Italian westerns were produced, but most were along-the-lines of the old-style Hollywood Westerns, turned out by the major studios for decades.
After "A Fistful of Dollars" was released, however, rapid-fire copy-cat productions of the new "spaghetti-westerns" were turned out by many reputable directors, usually musically-scored by either Ennio Morricone or Bruno Nicolai - of "Fist" fame.
Who could forget the haunting theme song of the first box-office hit?
I was lucky to have been on a movie set a couple of times when Eastwood was directing. The man is fairly low-key - an actor's director - for sure.
His cast is given a lot of free rein to explore their roles; occasionally, he'll step in to give a couple of pointers, true - but generally he's prone to let the "characters" find their own way.
Eastwood has no ego about his own on-camera work as an actor.
Generally, when it's the director's turn to emote, he steps shyly in front of the camera - almost embarrassed - does one take, then - in that distinctive voice of his - rasps, "let's move on".
He's a gentleman, too.
Curiously, as I was drafting this post, I happened to notice in the daily newspaper that the Castro Theatre, in San Francisco, is screening three of Kurosawa's films tonight, Friday January 4th - "Yojimbo", among them at 7 p.m.
I plan to take it in, how 'bout you?
With thanks to fistful-of-leone.com