Clint Eastwood is my “Homeboy”.
I’d like to take a moment to celebrate a hero of mine. It’s rather odd though, because he is not (in my eyes) a hero really because of any outstanding achievements, or particluar talent (he isn’t the greatest actor in the world), rather his on-screen “coolness”.
I think most people have this – a person or object that makes them feel young and giddy, that makes you feel good simply by what it represents, that makes you smile and gives you butterflies in your stomach (though I dislike that phrase). For some it’s a car, musician, book, sportsman, item of clothing, in fact, just about anything. It is, to you, the essence of cool, but also much more. For example, someone who considers a certain car the unsurpassable essence of cool would not be able to identify any real empirical fact why it makes them feel like they do, but would reply something like, “It’s just everything about it, the look, the sound, EVERYTHING!”
For me, it is Clint Eastwood, specifically in the early days (I think I’d add Leone’s Spagetti westerns in general as well, as they create the same effect). I consider other actors to have ”more” talent, such as Robert De Niro for example, but no other actors makes me react in the same way as Eastwood in the Spaghetti Westerns, and other films (i saw the film “Where Eagles Dare” the other day, in which he was effortlessly cool). I think it’s partly in the body-acting: the slow but purposeful movements, and, of course, the “squint”, with the coined popular phrase being “stage presence”.
It is completely irrational behaviour to celebrate an on-screen figure in such a way, but it is not the the object (or person) per se, rather the way it frees you from the rational, thinking world, making you feel young, making you happy for no intelligible reason. This usually has some connection to ones youth, as for me it takes me back to a fresh-faced sixteen year-old, discovering (with glee) the all time greatest anti-hero properly for the first time.
I’ll leave it to you to decide just how amazingly awsome this is!!
Tags: A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood, cool, Film, Robert De Niro, Sergio Leone, Spaghetti Western, stage presence, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Where Eagles Dare
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.