It is no surprise that Austrian newspaper Kurier’s Clint Eastwood interview went viral over the weekend. An audience with a 95-year-old film legend containing stern words about the current state of cinema was always going to go like a rocket. Particularly during the industry’s dregs season: the thin period post Cannes and pre the summer proper, with Mission: Impossible fever fading fast and Lilo & Stitch ruling the box office – a success from which only so many stories can be spun.
Further evidence of this thinness comes from a quick scan of the news stories run over the past week in some of the trade magazines – Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Screen International – who must keep producing them, regardless of actual material. These include a write-off of an interview in which Michael Cera says he didn’t think Jackie Chan knew who he was when they first met, Renée Zellweger revealing that she shed a tear shooting the Bridget Jones film that was released last February and – an exclusive, this – a report that Bill Murray will appear at a film festival in Croatia. Against this backdrop, Eastwood telling younger directors to buck up is, basically, Watergate.
