American Rebel (26 page)

    
E
arly in 1979, after a year of negotiations, Clint thought he was ready to agree to a divorce settlement. He would pay Maggie a lump sum of $25 million and allow her to keep the big house in Carmel and have the kids live with her; Clint would be able to freely come and go with them, something he insisted on. While he was never around all that much, he still loved and felt close to them. He kept his brand-new $100,000 Ferrari Boxer. He then assigned Locke the job of finding a new house for them, promising her that “it would be theirs forever, together in retirement.” There was, reportedly, no anger or vicious-ness between Clint and Maggie. A coolness coated the wall between them, but for the sake of himself as much as (he claimed) the kids, and to keep the prying press off both his and Maggie’s necks, he was determined to melt it.

For that reason, and because Maggie’s lawyer was demanding 50 percent of everything Clint had earned while they were together, he suddenly reversed his stand and no longer pressed for a final divorce. Instead, he felt a longer separation was needed so that both could have time to think, giving an ironic meaning to the newest Clint Eastwood-inspired catchphrase, “every which way but loose.”

Spanish movie poster for
Bronco Billy,
1980

T
here was no part for Sondra Locke in Clint’s next movie,
Escape from Alcatraz
, his thirty-fourth feature film in twenty-five years. The virtually all-male adventure was based on the true story of Frank Lee Morris and John and Clarence Anglin’s 1962 escape from the notorious island prison located in San Francisco Bay. While Clint was in production, Locke looked for a new house where they could live together. She did not say what if anything she intended to do about her husband, although he was, at this time, living with another man.

The film was based on J. Campbell Bruce’s 1963 nonfiction book
Escape from Alcatraz: A Farewell to the Rock
. Richard Tuggle, the editor of a small magazine devoted to health, had initially bought it to break into the movie business. Tuggle wrote his own screen adaptation and, when he was satisfied it was good enough, sent it to the one director he thought might like it enough to make it.

Tuggle had a lifelong fascination with prison stories, both true and fictionalized, and considered Don Siegel’s
Riot in Cell Block 11
(1954) the best of the genre; film producer Walter Wanger had conceived it after being released from prison for shooting a man he suspected was having an affair with his wife. While incarcerated, Wanger found the living conditions so appalling, he wanted to expose them to the public. The result was one of the toughest and most brutally realistic prison dramas ever filmed.

Late in February 1978, when Tuggle sent the script to Siegel via his agent, Leonard Hirshan, at William Morris (also Clint’s agent), Hirshan sent it on to Siegel, who liked it but was tied up on another project,
Das Boot
, and had to pass. Then a severe illness struck one of the top executives at Bavaria Studios, in Germany, and
Das Boot
, already in production, had to be halted. Early in March Hirshan went back to Siegel and asked him to reconsider the project. Siegel told Hirshan he thought it would be perfect for Clint. Hirshan did and
then sent it to Daley (annoying Siegel, who felt his relationship was strong and personal enough that the script should have gone directly to Clint). Clint read, loved it, and wanted Siegel to direct; he wanted to star in and produce it through Malpaso.

But Siegel, rather than taking an option on the script, had bought it outright for a cool $100,000 with the irreversible proviso that he would direct. He made an offer to Clint and Malpaso (and presumably Warner). Clint balked over the issue of who would have the final cut. Siegel (still miffed at Hirshan for not sending the script directly to Clint, or for not completely understanding the deal) heard nothing from either Clint or Hirshan about the terms he wanted. He then angrily took his offer off the table and moved the project to Paramount. The joint heads of that studio, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, had saved Paramount from going under by developing a highly successful TV unit and a series of in-house sitcoms. Now they were looking for the right project to restore the studio’s big-screen glory. They thought
Escape from Alcatraz
was the perfect choice. They made the deal and looked for a star in their own stable to play the lead.

None proved either interested or available. (Paramount especially wanted Richard Gere but he was not excited by the project.) Eisner then urged Siegel to reconcile with Clint and try to bring him to Paramount. Siegel was reluctant, but he had felt underappreciated at Warner: like Clint, he blamed the studio’s lack of a sufficient pre-awards-industry campaign for his not even being nominated for
Dirty Harry
. He bit the bullet, visited Clint at his Malpaso office for sandwiches and beers, and mea culpa’d his way into signing a joint venture between Malpaso, Siegel Film, and Paramount, with options for all parties to join in future projects together.

Moving to Paramount, even just for this picture, was a big deal for Clint. For the first time in nearly a decade his big summer 1979 release would carry Paramount’s name and its familiar circle and mountain logo. It was not only a victory for Paramount but also a slap in the face to Warner, which had enjoyed a steady stream of Eastwood holiday fare every year since
Dirty Harry
.

Clint had stayed away from Paramount for so long because of his grudge over the production delays and excess spending on
Paint Your Wagon—
two of the primary reasons he had formed Malpaso. He knew he was taking something of a risk returning to the studio, but this time
he was at a far higher level of power in Hollywood, and his defection, as it were, from Warner might shake that studio up and remind them how valuable he really was to their bottom line.

Production on
Escape from Alcatraz
began in October 1978, and as Siegel had feared, the set turned into an ongoing battle between him and Clint for control over every aspect of filming. Clint apparently prevailed; Siegel left the production in anger before the completion of its all-important final cut. Clint, his longtime editors Ferris Webster and Joel Cox, and Jack Green, his cameraman, put it together.

Not surprisingly, the finished product looked less like a Siegel film than any of his four prior collaborations with Clint. In Siegel’s projected final version, the film had ended inside the prison, giving it an air of grim reality. In Clint’s a flower is left behind, indicating that the three escapees make it—the triumph of the outlaw over his society of imprisonment. This crucial change altered the entire meaning of the film. Both versions were dark: Siegel’s reflected the inescapable reality of Alcatraz, while Clint’s suggested the greater blackness of the escapees’ lives on the run, suggested by the black, murky waters that surround and engulf the flower. In this as in all Clint films, survival is sometimes harder and therefore more dramatic than death. (Clint dies in only three films in his entire career:
The Beguiled, Honkytonk Man
, and
Gran Torino.)
Asked by
Time
magazine about the darkness and the mood of the film and if it had any personal relevance, Clint responded with a succinct, end-of-conversation “I don’t know.”

Although Clint did not officially direct the film (Siegel is credited as producer and director), its moody, grim level of intensity and the clear and imposing presence of his dark personality on-screen clearly identifies it as a Clint Eastwood film.

Upon its release in 1979,
Escape from Alcatraz
received mostly rave reviews, some of the best of Clint’s career. Vincent Canby of
The New York Times
led the way, omitting any mention of Siegel while emphasizing the importance of Clint: “This is a first-rate action movie. Terrifically exciting. There is more evident knowledge of moviemaking in any one frame than there are in most other American films around at the moment. Mr. Eastwood fulfills the demands of the role and the film as probably no other actor could.” Frank Rich, writing for
Time
magazine, called it “ingenious, precise and exciting.”

Clearly Clint had hit a critical nerve with
Escape from Alcatraz
,
although audiences proved less interested. The film’s initial domestic gross was a relatively modest $34 million, about a third of what
Every Which Way but Loose
had taken in.
^*
It also grossed less than one-fifth of that year’s biggest film, Richard Donner’s
Superman
, a Warner Bros. hit that made a star out of its title hero, Christopher Reeve, a role that Clint had repeatedly turned down. His disappointment at
Escape’s
soft box office, and his lingering ill feelings about how Siegel had put the deal together, especially buying the rights before coming to see him at Warner, made
Escape from Alcatraz
their last collaboration.
^†

    
I
f Clint as Frank Morris had to escape from an inescapable prison, Clint as Clint found real life even harder. Despite reported pressure from Locke for him to finalize his divorce from Maggie, Clint continued to drag his feet, perhaps ambivalent about ending his marriage to Maggie. Approaching fifty, Clint had found a new health regimen, and he was now said to be an enthusiastic devotee of the Life Extension program by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, who theorized that human beings were capable of living to 150 years of age while retaining their physical and mental powers. The program required exercise and a regimen of pills and vitamins that the couple promoted.

“During [1978] Clint began a new obsession, to consume vast amounts of vitamins and amino acids,” according to Locke.