Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. 

Today we discuss Clint Eastwood, the director and the movie star. Our B-Sides are Breezy, White Hunter Black Heart, Blood Work, Flags of Our Fathers, and The Mule. Our guest is the impeccable Mitchell Beaupre, Managing Editor at Letterboxd. 

We talk about Clint’s Casper cameo and how that was probably the first thing all three of us saw him in a movie, John Wayne’s disdain for Eastwood’s on-screen persona, his uncanny direction of actors as well as his smart casting (ahem, The 15:17 to Paris notwithstanding) of actors. Often, if Clint is in one of his own movies, he will surround himself with talent as good (if not better) than himself.

There’s significant appreciation for his underseen Honkytonk Man, there’s honest discussion of his ambitious performance in White Hunter Black Heart (playing a version of filmmaker John Huston), and we three reappraise his Flags of Our Fathers nearly twenty years after its underwhelming release. It’s way better than you remember!

Additional topics include Spielberg’s protégés (from Phil Joanou to Kevin Reynolds to Brad Silberling), Breezy’s beautiful rendering of the post-60s counterculture depression, and Blood Work’s silly (and wonderful) twist ending.