Clint: The Man and the Movies

<p><strong><em>New York Times </em>"Editors Choice," <em>Los Angeles Times </em>"Must Read Book for Summer," and a <em>New Yorker</em> "Best Book of the Year So Far"</strong></p><p><strong>"This is the biography of Clint Eastwood we've been waiting for." — Sir Christopher Frayling, author of <em>Sergio Leone</em></strong></p><p><strong>From the acclaimed film critic and <em>New York Times</em> bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, a revelatory portrait of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in movie history and an imposing icon of American culture for six decades.</strong></p><p>C-L-I-N-T. That single short, sharp syllable has stood as an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, on-screen and off-screen, for more than sixty years. Whether he’s facing down bad guys on a Western street (Old West or new, no matter), staring through the lens of a camera, or accepting one of his movies' thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture), he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old-school stripe <em>and </em>one of the most accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint.</p><p>To read the story of Clint Eastwood is to understand nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure has so completely and complexly stood inside the changing climates of post–World War II America. At age ninety-five, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions.</p><p>We picture Clint squinting through cigarillo smoke in <em>A Fistful of Dollars </em>or <em>The Good, the Bad and the Ugly</em>; imposing rough justice at the point of a .44 Magnum in <em>Dirty Harry</em>; sowing vengeance in <em>The Outlaw Josey Wales </em>or <em>Pale Rider </em>or <em>Unforgiven</em>; grudgingly training a woman boxer in <em>Million Dollar Baby</em>; and standing up for his neighbors despite his racism in <em>Gran Torino</em>. Or we feel him present, powerfully, behind the camera, creating complex tales of violence, morality, and humanity, such as <em>Mystic River</em>, <em>Letters from Iwo Jima</em>, and <em>American Sniper</em>. But his roles and his films, however well cast and convincing, are two-dimensional in comparison to his whole life.</p><p>As Shawn Levy reveals in this masterful biography—the most complete portrait yet of Eastwood—the reality is richer, knottier, and more absorbing. <em>Clint: The Man and the Movies </em>is a saga of cunning, determination, and conquest, a story about a man ascending to the Hollywood pantheon while keeping one foot firmly planted outside its door.</p>