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Clint Eastwood Is 90! (And Other Things)
This is a good time for a Titus Techera digest since I’m alone among conservatives banging the drums–Clint Eastwood turned 90 and is still working. I’m not sure why this man isn’t celebrated, his movies talked about, and work imitated, but here’s my National Review essay on Eastwood‘s turn to civic virtue and manliness over the last dozen years or so. Here are podcasts on Gran Torino and Unforgiven!
My most recent essay is over at American Mind, on self-mastery as the needful thing for young men in these crazy times of the lockdown. While this essay was in editing, many young men turned instead to rioting of the most shameful kind in so many places.
Back to movies: Since last week was Memorial Day, I wrote about Patton!
This week, I reviewed Woody Allen’s autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, which is a wonderful account of poor Jewish people coming up in Brooklyn in the ’20s and afterward. It also shows the imprudence of liberalism when it comes to comedy.
Or if you’re interested in scholarly writing on movies, here’s my review of Robert Pippin’s book on, among others, Hitchcock.
The last podcast was on Dark City and the next one is on Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, coming tomorrow. If you’re interested in our previous five Kurosawa podcasts, here they are!
Stay away from the riots and pray for the country–I fear it will get worse soon…
Published in Culture
I remember when Eastwood turned 60, they asked him how it felt to be middle-aged, and he said “I’m not middle- aged! How many 120-year-olds do you know?”
The first time I was old enough to vote I was going through language school in Monterey, CA and Clint Eastwood ran for mayor of the adjoining town of Carmel. He owned a restaurant and was ticked off about excessive regulations on sidewalk dining, so he stepped into the civic arena. I was very happy to cast my vote for him!
Man’s serious. Not afraid of saying he’s old. If people had similar confidence, the youth-mania would subside gradually…
I went to Carmel a few years back, looks like a wonderful place!
At 90 he’s still kicking a$$ around the block.
Morning Titus,
Super articles on Patton with VDH and especially on Allen. What are the stumbling blocks to Allen coming to some sort of self awareness?
Hey, Jim! Thanks for the kind words. Allen’s too old, for one, has been for a long time. For another, when he grew up, everything prestigious, everything admirable was liberal. Except Bob Hope &, I guess, Johnny Carson. Conservatism was treated like the disease of the dumb, at any rate…
But to think more broadly–ask yourself, why don’t conservatives reward Clint Eastwood? Japan has given him the highest honor; France has, too; liberal Hollywood has thrown quite a number of Oscars & nominations at him, for decades. Obama gave him a humanities award! Why didn’t Bush give him the Medal of Freedom? Why isn’t Trump doing it? Why wasn’t he invited to some kind of conservative gala to honor his very long, very patriotic career? Where’s the big bestseller book on Eastwood’s films for all Americans, but especially for conservatives?
So how can artists turn toward conservative America, when even international stars are treated this way? Allen made movies about urban America, about the things he knew, a modest guy in a way. This could have had an all-American interest–he could have broadened his views–but conservatives don’t care. The fault is with us far more than with the artists-
Afternoon Titus,
I agree with every word, that the fault is with us. This is what Bronze Age Perv, means when he says the Republicans have become passive. And when he asks. “What have you conserved?”, he asks us a question that leads me to want to do a post mortem on conservatism. A short answer is that conservatives don’t see story tellers, actors, poets as their heroes. It is a definition problem, conservative heroes are politicians, economists, thinkers, founding fathers, athletes. Conservatives don’t have the same celebrities/heroes as the popular culture. I agree that conservatives could engage in politics and citizenship in a more active fashion, conservatives could be better citizens. Conservatives often define their lives in terms that leave out political activities. It is a blind spot, maybe coming from a rationalization that American politics will oscillate from liberal to conservative without spinning to far off and we will be basically in the center forever. In “God and Man at Yale”, Buckley was thinking that if the Alumni knew that in every humanities class God was mocked and in every Econ class, socialism was championed, the alum would be horrified and take their money elsewhere. Well…70 years later, we have a cultural narrative that holds that there is systemic injustice and that this injustice was built into the system from the beginning to serve the elites. Conservatives don’t know enough about culture to understand how important narrative is, that you recognize that story telling is important is a start. Maybe we could have a GoFundMe for the Techera Movie Studios, as long as I don’t have to use PayPal, I will be glad to jump in.
Yeah, we’ll have to do something about this.
I promise you, I’m constantly proposing things to people in a position to say yes or no. Building the reputation & meeting people is hard: People don’t want it. Of course, it doesn’t have to be me. Maybe I rub people the wrong way. But people who can make reputations & get to popularity, art, & careers–they have to say yes to someone.
I’m not a fan of BAP, because he’s crazy. But everyday I’m faced with the kind of rejection, contempt, & silence that made him that way. In my case, I know conservatives are good people & I know that people in positions of influence or even authority are just clueless. They’re not evil–they’re blind. But Jim, such people can go away or change their mind, & it will be too late or soon enough. This is the way things are…
Evening Titus,
I see your problem, it’s marketing. First on a billboard say, “Formerly ‘Monumental Pictures’ now Techera Studios, If we can bring a little wisdom to your humdrum lives then all our hard work won’t be in vain for nothing”. With that billboard on Hollywood and Vine you can’t miss.
I know you are working! It is hard for folks to be the first to do something, they say that all institutions drift left over time, so creating a conservative Google, Twitter, FaceBook would be hard. To be a conservative academic, writer, poet would be sticking your neck out. Life is hard enough as a creative person and you want me to be conservative on top of that. Since I am not on twitter, I know of BAP second hand, however we need to take these strange times as a sign, (even if they are not a sign). It would be useful to rethink things like, just in time inventory, and maybe reconsider, just in case inventory. In practical terms we don’t have to go all Westover family and bury gasoline and make essences but we can see that not only do our understandings of practical things like supply lines need to be reconsidered but theoretical things need to be reconsidered. Why has conservatism, if it founded on basic “truths” failed to persuade, and become so rigid and blind to new information.
You have made many good friends, that network will ripple out and be productive.