Making his first press appearance since that headline-grabbing Republican National Convention speech, Clint Eastwood laughed off his rambling, off-the-cuff missive to an invisible Obama. “It didn’t get the response I wanted,” joked the 82 year-old actor and filmmaker at a press conference for his upcoming baseball flick Trouble With The Curve, “because I was hoping they’d nominate me.”
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Eastwood explained what he’d been trying to convey when he improvised an exchange with an empty chair on the RNC stage: “My only message was [that] I wanted people to take the idolizing factor out of every contestant out there. Just look at the work, look at the background, and then make a judgment on that. I was just trying to say that, and did it in kind of a roundabout way which took a lot more time, I suppose, than they would have liked.”
Ahh, politics in Hollywood. I was pretty hard on Eastwood myself and I still think it was stupid, but I’m sure he had good intentions as he says here. Perhaps a new rule is in order, don’t make up your speech on the spot, and in any event, don’t make up a stupid stunt like interviewing an empty chair that can become such a laughingstock by the opposing side.