If the Warner Bros. logo was a badge, as opposed to a shield, Clint Eastwood would be the man behind it: the tough, rule-bending guy who sticks to his guns, à la Harry Callahan. So why is the studio doing him dirty on “Juror No. 2,” Eastwood’s 40th — and quite possibly last — stint in the director’s chair?
At 94, the star is just seven years younger than the studio with which he’s been associated since 1971. That was the year he shot “Dirty Harry” with his filmmaking mentor, Don Siegel, and it was also the year that Eastwood made his own directing debut, “Play Misty for Me,” both for Warner Bros. He’s strayed from the studio just a few times since 1975, calling WB home for nearly half a century, during which he’s earned four Oscars — and more than $4 billion at the box office.
Fast-forward to this year, and Eastwood’s latest film, “Juror No. 2,” is now in theaters, but good luck finding it, unless you live in one of the country’s biggest cities — as opposed to the Heartland, where his fanbase is strongest and would likely give the film a decent turnout (despite the star remaining strictly behind the camera on this one).
Warner Bros. gave “Juror No. 2” a tiny theatrical release in the U.S., reportedly opening the film on just 31 domestic screens — though the studio withheld both the precise count and the resulting box office figures. That’s a sad send-off to one of WB’s most bankable assets: a man whose modestly budgeted projects often brought in a multiple of what they cost at the box office. This from an “artist-friendly” studio whose reputation was long tied to the directors it supported. (In recent years, Christopher Nolan, Ben Affleck and Zack Snyder have all left WB’s orbit.)
To be fair, “Juror No. 2” was produced for the studio’s streaming platform, Max, which has yet to announce the film’s release date on the service. According to my contacts, it was only after “Juror No. 2” was selected as the closing night film at the Los Angeles-based AFI Fest last month that plans pivoted to a Nov. 1 theatrical release. Whether by contractual obligation or newfound confidence in the film is not clear, but insiders were adamant: The limited run was an upgrade, not a diss.
Though it initially looked like that’s all the theatrical exposure Eastwood would get, as of yesterday, the film is now set to expand slightly (reportedly to 15 more screens) this Friday. A film like “Juror No. 2” will play just fine on Max, but on the giant Imax-scale screen of the TCL Chinese Theatre at AFI Fest, I found it positively gripping to watch. The demand is clearly there to see it projected.
In other territories, WB’s international divisions have given “Juror No. 2” a wider rollout. The film earned $3.1 million in its first weekend in France, which makes a certain amount of sense. The French were the first to treat Eastwood like a major filmmaker, thanks largely to Pierre Rissient, the late press agent who’d championed Eastwood since his first appearance at Cannes in 1985 with “Pale Rider.”
At the time, Americans still viewed him through the lens of his star persona, much as they still do Kevin Costner. (Incidentally, the two actors’ collaboration in 1993’s “A Perfect World” ranks among Eastwood’s best films.) But it’s not like they haven’t come around, despite a few setbacks in recent years — whether it was the underperformance of his previous film, “Cry Macho,” or that embarrassing talking-to-a-chair stunt he pulled at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
These days, Eastwood is seen as a national treasure by domestic audiences and critics alike (“Juror No. 2” now stands at 92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Plus, opening the movie in theaters qualifies it for Academy Awards.
Back when he started at WB, Eastwood didn’t care about such things. “I will never win an Oscar and do you know why?” Eastood biographer Patrick McGilligan quotes the star as saying in “Clint: The Life and Legend. “First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, because I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy. Thirdly, and most importantly because I don’t give a fuck.”
That might have been true in the 1970s, but it was no longer the case 20 years ago, when I had a chance to meet Clint Eastwood. More than meet. The legendary actor-director had agreed to an unusually generous in-person interview at the Malpaso offices on the Warner Bros. lot, where he sat beneath a giant subway poster for “Dirty Harry,” looking every bit as intimidating as the snarling detective on the wall above him.
Eastwood’s production company can be found in a Spanish-style bungalow a stone’s throw from the Eastwood Scoring Stage. Its primo placement — plus the fact the studio named a building after him — speaks volumes about the value WB puts on one of its most treasured talents. (Just because other streamers pump out middling “content” doesn’t mean we should interpret a Max-only release as a snub. WB is still trial-and-erroring a strategy for audiences’ fast-changing viewing habits.)
Looking back on that long-ago sit-down with the star, it’s now clear that I was meeting Eastwood at a turning point in his career. The star had built his reputation on Westerns, B movies and even a pair of hit buddy comedies that found him acting opposite an orangutan (“Every Which Way but Loose” and “Any Which Way You Can”). In 2004, however, he had the Oscars in his sights. He wanted another Best Picture trophy — several, if he could swing it.
Eastwood had won the top prize a dozen years earlier for “Unforgiven” in what felt almost like a too-early lifetime achievement award, but had otherwise remained largely off the Academy’s radar (unless you count Meryl Streep’s nomination for “The Bridges of Madison County”). In 2004, when we met, that was changing. He was coming off the Oscar-winning “Mystic River” — still my favorite of Clint’s films — and ready to campaign his gut-punch sports drama “Million Dollar Baby,” a dead-serious right-to-die thinker disguised as a boxing movie.
Sure enough, “Baby” went on to earn him two more Oscars. And that was just the beginning. For the next dozen years, Eastwood went on picking “respectable” projects with the express purpose of collecting Oscars: the one-two combo of “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” (the latter scored), “Gran Torino” (which earned a César, but not an Oscar), followed by “Invictus,” “Hereafter” (yikes) and eventually “American Sniper” (as close to the bull’s eye as Clint came again).
Behind half those projects were renegade choices that made them anything but safe bets. Some, like “Baby,” tackled risky positions on controversial issues. Eastwood told “Letters From Iwo Jima” from the Japanese perspective — in Japanese — as a critical reverse angle on his more overtly patriotic “Flags of Our Fathers.” His less-than-flattering “J. Edgar” biopic confronted the notorious FBI director’s rumored homosexuality. He made his first musical, ”Jersey Boys,” well into his 80s, and cast three real-life heroes as themselves in a dramatic reenactment of a thwarted terrorist attack, “The 15:17 to Paris.”
In some ways, making “Juror No. 2” for a streaming-only audience could be seen as Eastwood’s latest gamble. It’s already an unusual film: a compelling courtroom drama with a weirdly tough-to-swallow premise. Nicholas Hoult plays a recovering alcoholic who killed a woman in a hit-and-run accident, but doesn’t realize it until he’s tapped to serve on the jury of a murder trial where the defendant stands accused of his crime. Does he come clean, or does he try to rig the verdict from the inside to save his skin?
As with so many of Eastwood’s movies — like the one where he played a burglar who witnessed the death of the President’s mistress, or the cat-and-mouse crime thriller where his aging FBI agent got a heart transplant “gifted” from the serial killer he’d been tracking — the implausible setup might trip you up.
Go with it, and there’s a meaty moral dilemma to propel the rest of the film, one that falls squarely among Eastwood’s recurring themes: a hypothetical scenario where the legal system breaks down, revealing the burden that puts on flawed citizens. The thought-provoking film could be a solid performer for the director, if only WB gave it a chance.
To some, it looks like the studio has turned its back on one of the prize stallions in its stable — a theory that’s distressingly easy to believe, given the unconscionable way Warner Bros. buried “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme.” But that doesn’t quite track in this case.
When I met Eastwood 20 years ago, he was actively courting Academy recognition — and he got it. Not everything he made was brilliant, but name another director in his 70s who could turn out a film a year at that level (not Woody Allen, not Robert Altman, only Ridley Scott comes close), and he kept right at it well into his 90s. Racking up Oscars no longer appears to be Eastwood’s aim, and yet, I tend to prefer him when he’s not actively courting recognition.
Eastwood already had my respect when we sat down, and that merely increased when the industry veteran explained his laid-back approach: the way he trusts his actors, shooting a minimal number of takes and embracing the little accidents that might arise in the process. I thought of that while watching Toni Collette (who plays the prosecuting attorney) stumble over a couple of her lines in “Juror No. 2,” since her otherwise terrific performance feels all the more real — and no less powerful — for being imperfect.
The way the theatrical business now works, it would cost nearly as much to market “Juror No. 2” as it did to make (estimated around $35 million). That’s one reason mid-range movies are so hard to find at megaplexes these days, but are making a bit of a comeback on streaming. It doesn’t fit the profile of awards movies either, but you never know. If Andrea Riseborough could get nominated for “To Leslie,” there’s no harm in qualifying a movie built on solid performances.
Sure, the timing is strange, but the studio effectively let the overwhelmingly positive reviews out of the AFI Fest premiere do the low-cost job of alerting the world to the film’s existence. What they didn’t seem to count on was there being such demand to see the film on the big screen.
That’s a shame, given Eastwood’s track record, but at least he stands a shot. You never know, in a wide-open Oscar race, he just might be feeling lucky.
