Clint Eastwood’s complex life explored in new Shawn Levy biography

Clint Eastwood in 1962. The actor and director is the subject of a new biography by Shawn Levy. Photo / The Washington Post

In the introduction to Clint: The Man and the Movies, Shawn Levy sets out to differentiate his book from previous biographies of Clint Eastwood. The first he mentions, Richard Schickel’s Clint Eastwood: A Biography (1996), is, according to Levy, “a gentlemanly, even fawning account” that can be “awkwardly dismissive and forgiving” of Eastwood’s more odious behaviour. The second, Patrick McGilligan’s Clint: The Life and Legend (1999), is “overly harsh”, as it “thoroughly chronicles every misstep and flaw” in its subject’s work and private life. Levy writes that he aims to land his enterprise on a “middle ground” of “neither acquiescence nor denigration”.

He suggests, then, that the ideal biography presents the facts without too much moralising; he believes it’s “possible for a book to celebrate the man and his work and deeds while acknowledging the flaws – and worse – in him, his choices, and, yes, his films”.

What appears to be a bit of intellectual throat-clearing doubles as a shrewd hedge: Eastwood, now 95, is not an easy person to biographise. The many things that make him a fascinating figure – his numerous iconic roles, his prolific output, his right-wing politics, his sexual miscreancy, his alleged cruelty, his real estate acumen, his longevity – make him both a rich and risky subject.

The overarching narrative of Eastwood’s life and career isn’t inherently dramatic. Raised in a middle-class family in California, he worked diligently, caught a few lucky breaks, and entered and then never left the film industry, making movies for more than 60 years. Levy writes intelligently about the ubiquity of Westerns in postwar America, and he’s especially adept when tracing Eastwood’s creative trajectory, pinpointing the importance of lesser-known films such as Coogan’s Bluff (“the first character that clearly indicates the direction in which Clint’s career would soon go”), Tightrope (“such is the iconography of Clint in the early 1980s that it’s possible to accept that he might be a sex-driven serial killer in a way that no other major box office star could pull off”) and Invictus (“he was starting to jog a little, and it shows”).

Eastwood’s more than 60 screen credits are parcelled out in sections that all follow the same structure: brief mentions of a film’s release, a wrap-up of critical reception and then Levy’s own assessments, which are routinely insightful. Levy traces the origin of Eastwood’s economical philosophy of filmmaking all the way back to his experience starring on the TV series Rawhide, which he used “as his film school”. Here’s Levy on the complicated success of Dirty Harry in 1971: “Dirty Harry is a lot of things, but chief of all, even its most ardent detractors admit, it’s effective. If it’s propaganda, it’s entertaining propaganda; if it’s sadism, it’s candy-coated sadism.” Levy also captures the profound efficacy of Eastwood’s “masterpiece,” Unforgiven: “Is it a perfect movie? Perhaps not. But its imperfections live in choices, not lapses, and are thus matters of taste, not competence. It is thoroughgoing, potent, real, and true.”

But Eastwood is also compelling for the less-public aspects of his personality, and the book’s focus on the films – which, again, can be astute – sits uncomfortably next to personal incidents involving intense violence, rampant infidelity, petty vindictiveness and even coerced sterilisation. Eastwood is the kind of man who requires a “that he knew of” upon mention of his eight children by six women; who would run for and win the mayoralty of his adopted home of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, because the zoning board rejected an expansion proposal for his offices; who would get (by my count) four different directors (including Blake Edwards!) fired from movies he starred in (sometimes to replace them with himself); who twice dealt with breakups by having the locks changed on the partner who lived with him; and who slammed his truck into a sedan that was parked in his “clearly marked personal parking space”, an incident that gets a single paragraph and a half-hearted attempt at humour from Levy, who says Eastwood only did “what anyone might”. Ha ha? According to Sondra Locke, a longtime girlfriend, Eastwood convinced her to undergo tubal ligation even though she wanted children, only to subsequently himself have numerous children with different women. (Levy writes that Eastwood has “vigorously denied having any influence on her reproductive choices.”)

Levy trots out these facts but is largely inattentive to their significance. He does little to attempt to reconcile the more troubling aspects of his subject, aside from passing acknowledgment that times have changed or that all people are complex.

There are proliferating approaches to biography, but the standard form, exemplified by Levy’s book, is still to attempt a comprehensive treatment. The genre might be due for an existential reckoning. As difficult geniuses and problematic artists continue to become less mythologised and held more accountable, the works that chart their personal lives must somehow confront these aspects more productively, more purposefully, than mere reportage. Perhaps the standard model should fall by the wayside, replaced by smaller slices of life – separate books that approach a subject’s influences, personal life or psychology. Perhaps none of us can grasp and convey another person’s entire being. Maybe we should stop pretending we can.