Alison's wonderland - interview with Alison Eastwood who joins father Clint Eastwood in his new movie - Interview

Interview, Dec, 1997 by Graham Fuller

Alison Eastwood didn't sashay into her father Clint Eastwood's new film, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - she had to audition for it . . .

. . . Now, having breathed the perfumed, poisoned air of the dark Savannah saga, she's going to launch her own movie of a bittersweet American dream - the brief life of '30s bombshell Jean Harlow. It sounds like the twenty-five-year-old Eastwood is a chip off the old block. Some block . . . some chip

Down, down went Alice . . . not into a subterranea of Duchesses, Mad Hatters, and White Rabbits, but into a phantasmagoria of sex, voodoo, drag queens, and MURDER - all bubbling away beneath a veneer of '80s-style antebellum languor.

For Alice, read Alison Eastwood, twenty-five-year-old actress daughter of Clint and Maggie Eastwood (who were divorced when Alison was seven). Having previously acted with Clint in Tightrope (1984) and Absolute Power (1997), Alison came on board his film of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil long after he himself had signed to the project, as she explains here.

Each Eastwood looks dead right for the film of author John Berendt's massive-selling expose of Savannah's seething gothic inner life. As a director, Clint has an impassive way of letting febrile stories - Bird (1988); White Hunter, Black Heart (1990); The Bridges of Madison County (1995) - tell themselves. As an actress, Alison is an unknown quantity: She comes to the role of the Savannahian Mandy, love interest of the movie's narrator-hero (John Cusack), with no apparent baggage but her own brand of dreamy cool, and she should slip in smoothly beside the likes of Kevin Spacey, Jude Law, Jack Thompson, and the Lady Chablis.

She's not going to settle for girlfriend roles, however, and is currently developing her own vehicles: a biopic of Jean Harlow and a film of Moliere's Misanthrope. I woke her up one morning with a phone call.

GRAHAM FULLER: Your dad's the director of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but knowing him, he probably didn't give you your role in the film because you're his daughter. Did you read for him?

ALISON EASTWOOD: [yawns] Oh, excuse me. Yes. Last Christmas I was on holiday with him, and he said, "I have this script. Would you read it and tell me what you think?" So I read it and liked the role of Mandy, but I never asked him if I could read for it, and he didn't lead me to believe there was a part for me. A couple of months later, my agent called, saying, "You have an audition in a few days for this movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." I said, "Oh, that's my dad's film." And she goes, "Yeah, I know, isn't that weird?" So I went in and read for it and was put on tape. He wasn't there, but I called him afterwards and said, "I'd just like to hear what you thought." He said, "Sure, I'll let you know," but I didn't hear anything for six weeks. Then I got a callback and went in and read again, but I didn't hear anything for another month. I was really happy with what I did, but figured it wasn't going to go any further. Then my agent called and said, "You go in next week for fittings." I was ecstatic. I called my dad and said, "This is going to be great - I can't wait to work with you." Then it dawned on me: I had an incredible amount of work to do.

GF: What challenged you about playing Mandy?

AE: The biggest challenge was to be true to my instinctual choices as an actress. I'm just starting out in this business, and oftentimes as an actor, if you're not 100 percent confident about yourself, you tend to hold back or stay in a safe place. I wanted my performance to be natural, to have some color and strength, yet be vulnerable and funny. I had to make sure I pushed my mind aside and just let my heart tell me what to do.

GF: When you read the script and the book, what were your feelings about the Savannah they portrayed?

AE: I chose not to read the book until I got there, because I wanted to read it while I was drinking in the atmosphere. It's a wild place. It's charming and quaint, and it's got that Civil War vibe to it, and that Southern hospitality - but it's also got this darkness to it. I could never quite put my finger on what was going on there, but at night I definitely sensed it's got an underbelly. I enjoy that dark side because I have a dark side too. It's that whole yin-yang.

GF: IS there something twisted about the town?

AE: I don't know if I would use that particular adjective, but there was definitely something . . . I want to say seedy, but that's not a nice word.

GF: Is that dark quality something you recognized from growing up in Carmel?

AE: Absolutely. I think that "good and evil" are in every person, every town, every city. Everyone knows there's some dark shit going on in L.A., but it s less obvious in places like Carmel or Savannah, and you have to spend time there before you realize that beneath the sweetness and the happy-go-lucky facade, there are some strange goings-on.

GF: Whet did you learn for yourself while you were in Savannah?

AE: This may sound corny, but I started to understand how the truth of the work can set you free and make you happy. You can discover a lot about yourself just by being there and being present.