About the Book
Clint Eastwood has forged a remarkable career as a movie star, director, producer and composer. These newly discovered conversations with legendary journalist Paul Nelson return us to a point when, still acting in other people's films, Eastwood was honing his directorial craft on a series of inexpensive films that he brought in under budget and ahead of schedule. Operating largely beneath the critical radar, he made his movies swiftly and inexpensively. Few of his critics then could have predicted that Eastwood the actor and director would ever be taken as seriously as he is today. But Paul Nelson did.
The interviews were conducted from 1979 through 1983. Eastwood talks openly and without illusions about his early career as an actor, old Hollywood, and his formative years as a director, his influence and what he learned along the way as an actor—lessons that helped him become the director he is today. Conversations with Clint provides a fresh and vivid perspective on the life and work of this most American of movie icons.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Jonathan Lethem - I Never Sat in a Movie Theater with Paul Nelson
Filmography
Introduction - The Good, the Bad...
The Telephone Call - January 1983
The Conversations - October 1979 to October 1983
Flashback - December 1979
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Source Materials
About the Author :
Kevin Avery's writing has appeared in publications as diverse as Mississippi Review, Penthouse, Weber Studies, and Salt Lake magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and stepdaughter. His first book, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, is published by Fantagraphics Books.
Review :
Kevin Avery has performed a great service to film lovers by bringing to light Paul Nelson's remarkable interviews with Clint Eastwood. Nelson was an appreciator of Eastwood in the seventies, before he had won wide critical recognition. In these fascinating and wide-ranging conversations, the actor-director discusses with complete candor both the art of his films and the realities of filmmaking in Hollywood.
Paul Nelson was the first serious film aficionado who, way back in the early '70s, turned me on to the importance of Clint Eastwood as an actor, filmmaker and American icon. He showed me the S&W Magnum .44 he kept under a pile of sweaters in his closet. ‘Same as Dirty Harry,' he said, explaining that if he was going to write about men with guns he had to know how it felt in his hand. We were both devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald and hoping that Clint Eastwood would play Gatsby in the upcoming film, which, of course, he didn't. The repartee between these two straight shooters is more revealing of the inner workings of Hollywood and the creative process of Clint Eastwood than anything I've ever read before.
This is a quick read and a fine portrait of a megastar halfway through an iconic career.
Review on blog The NEW Place on Damen Ave: A Book Well Worth Reading http://mpjedi2.blogspot.com/2012/01/book-well-worth-reading.html?m=1
Comprehensive and packed (from cover to cover) with solid one-to-one interviews ... The conversations between Eastwood and Nelson are so relaxed and informal; you almost feel the urge to engage in the wonderful exchanges.
As arranged and annotated by Kevin Avery, the transcripts convey a story which neither man planned to tell at the time- the story of an encounter between two very private, oddly delicate sensibilities that could only have occurred at one specific moment.
Author interview in Talking with Tim http://talkingwithtim.com/wordpress/2011/12/14/kevin-avery-on-the-life-and-writings-of-paul-nelson-and-conversations-with-clint/
Author interview on WAMC-Northeast Public Radio http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1885531
Book mentioned in Power Pop http://powerpop.blogspot.com/2011/12/literary-notes-from-hood.htm
Reading these interviews almost makes you feel sorry for Nelson, who never had the chance to be the first to herald Eastwood as the auteur he would eventually become. Fortunately, Conversations With Clint shows that he was, at least, the first to recognize it.
Author interview on radio blog Movie Geeks United http://www.blogtalkradio.com/moviegeeksunited/2011/12/22/movie-news-and-reviews
Author interview on Mr.Media http://www.mrmedia.com/?p=3656
Article by Robert Christgau on Paul Nelson and Ellen Willis in the Barnes and Noble Review, in which he mentions the book.
One of the best film books of the year is also one of the most unusual. http://onespot.wsj.com/politics/2011/11/28/be5bf/conversation-about-conversations-with
Noted American film critic Glenn Kenny reviewed Conversations With Clint on his personal blog http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/11/conversation-about-conversations-with-clint.html
Mentioned in Rock-Critically Correct: The College Hill Independent http://students.brown.edu/College_Hill_Independent/?p=6070&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Interview with the author featured in Technorati http://technorati.com/entertainment/music/article/kevin-avery-on-the-life-and/
...[a] fascinating selection of writings.
Tweet from the interactive editor at BBC Radio 5, Nigel Smith- "Attention film fans! You must read 'Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews' by @kevin_avery. Superb!"
Reviewed in The New Vulgate.
Out of nowhere comes a great book on the Clint Eastwood of 30 years ago, when, more than just a big star, he was a divisive symbol of American populist justice. Their fluid, far-reaching conversation should have been put in a time capsule. Happily it was.
"The interviews--they're more like conversations, not mere question-and-answer sessions--shows us an Eastwood who is (in marked contrast to many of his iconic characters) articulate, thoughtful, friendly, and outspoken. Reading his thoughts on a wide variety of subjects--religion, the genesis of his own directing style, Dirty Harry, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, and much more--we feel, for pretty much the first time, as though we've seen Eastwood the man and not just Eastwood the movie star or acclaimed director...this treasure trove of new material brings altogether fresh insight into the man and his career."--Booklist
Author article in Dazed and Confused.
The interviews- more like conversations, not mere question-and-answer sessions- show us an Eastwood who is (in marked contrast to many of his iconic characters) articulate, thoughtful, friendly, and outspoken. Reading his thoughts on a wide variety of subjects- religion, the genesis of his own directing style, Dirty Harry, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, and much more- we feel, for pretty much the first time, as though we've seen Eastwood the man and not just Eastwood the movie star or acclaimed director...this treasure trove of new material brings altogether fresh insight into the man and his career.
Mentioned in starred Library Journal review of Kevin Avery's other Paul Nelson book, Everything Is An Afterthought.
Eastwood consistently provides subtle insight into the life of an actor and his decision-making process, speaking frankly about what he saw in roles or projects, and what he thought of the results.
Excerpt and foreword by Jonathan Lethem published in the Los Angeles Review of Books
Nelson failed to finish or publish any features based on these lengthy interviews, which are valuable for their insights into Eastwood's mind and developing art during a crucial transitional period. Highly recommended for any reader interested in Eastwood's films. http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/892304-264/xpress_reviewsfirst_look_at_new.html.csp
Amazing... One of the great things about the book is Eastwood's detailed discussion of the nature of the influences that led [Eastwood] to direct, and the allusions that come to mind for him while making films. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/10/clint-eastwood-and-pauline-kael.html#ixzz1bQRPC542
Eastwood sounds less like the monosyllabic Dirty Harry character he was most famous for playing at the time than like a brilliant, thoughtful, articulate- talkative, even- director and actor.
"At a time when most critics didn't take Clint Eastwood seriously, he had no admirer more prescient or loving than the late Paul Nelson. And Nelson—still insufficiently appreciated for his stubborn indifference to fashionability, but a smoke-wreathed legend to his 1970s colleagues—will never have a posthumous rescuer more devoted and scrupulous than Kevin Avery. Unguarded, searching, and occasionally very funny, the uniquely intimate interviews collected in Conversations With Clint morph as we read into the ideal script for a lost Eastwood movie on the nature of friendship. I'm sure Paul would be pleased that the alternate title that kept springing to mind was that of a John Ford Western: Two Rode Together."--Tom Carson, critic for GQ and author of Daisy Buchanan's Daughter
"This is what happens when an artist interviews an artist: Nelson's acute critical engagement with Eastwood's films yields more insight from the moviemaker than any reader could have hoped for. Can a collection of interviews be called poignantly brilliant? This one is." --Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
"I found that Conversations with Clint is invaluable reading, not just because it's a uniquely in-depth series of interviews with someone who always had a sense of himself as an enduring figure. It also takes us inside the head of Paul Nelson—the interviewer himself—whose states of mind complete the story. The best interviews have always been two-sided—a conversation—and Conversations is just that: a compelling look at an extended eyeball-to-eyeball encounter, complete with blinks and flinches." --Elvis Mitchell, host of KCRW's The Treatment
Press release syndicated on Turner Classic Movies Movie News website http://www.tcm.com/this-month/movie-news.html?id=413290&name=Conversations-with-Clint-Paul-Nelson-s-Lost-Interviews-with-Clint-Eastwood
"An amazing find! Hip journalist Paul Nelson's lengthy, detailed, casual yet riveting, long-believed lost conversations with the iconic director-producer-star Clint Eastwood, who has had one of the most extraordinary careers in the history of the American screen. A must for any true film lover." --Peter Bogdanovich, director, writer, actor, critic
"Paul Nelson's resurrected ‘lost' interviews represent deep-dish Clint. Nelson recognized the magnitude of the actor-director's talents earlier than most—Eastwood had only made it up to Sudden Impact in 1983 by the time of the final interview—and they clearly had an easy rapport. The result sees the star opening up on his early struggles, how he learned from observing on Rawhide, his close collaborations with Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, money, politics, celebrity, and why he prefers early Bergman and Kurosawa to their later films. Clint has given many interviews, but this is one of his best, definitely of great interest to anyone who takes his work seriously." --Todd McCarthy, critic for The Hollywood Reporter
