Eastwood Honored at Venice Film Fest

August 31, 2000 -- VENICE, ITALY — Sharon Stone came to this ancient city of canals and gondolas to present Clint Eastwood with the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award for a distinguished career.

Eastwood, who is the subject of both a retrospective and a documentary, in turn opened the festival Wednesday with the European premiere of his latest U.S. hit, Space Cowboys. With Eastwood were his "musketeers," as he called them: Cowboys co-stars Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner.

Ch-ch-ch-changesEastwood, who was addressed as "Mr. Clinton" by foreign journalists at the opening day press conference, was praised for having reached age 70. "You had to remind me it was 70," he joked. "It is an honor to be working that long, and I hope we've learned something new every day, about filmmaking, about life.

"You keep changing and evolving, and if you don't, you start decaying — and that would be an unhealthy thing."

Added the ever-sarcastic Garner, "I do find as I get older I know a lot less than I did. I'm still learning, and we still think we're young, so don't remind us."

Garner took offense when one critic commented that the NASA flyboys the four portray in Cowboys seem basically like "children with big toys." But Eastwood said, "Let's face it, acting is like being a child, and children do it the best. The whole technique of acting is to be a child again and use your imagination. It's great fun and that's why the four of us keep doing it year after year."

Sutherland's Banana ShakesSutherland showed that he kept that youthful spirit while making Space Cowboys. "I've never been on a roller coaster in my life," he revealed, "and when Clint told me this was what [my] character did, I asked him if I should go try one.

"He took me to Magic Mountain, [an amusement park] north of Los Angeles," said Sutherland. "We went on a thing called The Viper, and before I got on, I thought, 'I should do something [to show that my character is] at home here.'

"There was a basket of fruit nearby, so I took a banana, and I came to the crest on the ride and ate the banana. And we did it again. We did it four times and at the end of the fourth time, I passed the camera and I projectile-vomited four bananas. I was a mess."

Mayor Dirty HarryEastwood was also asked about current politics and, most interestingly, how he got into politics as his hometown's mayor back in the '80s. The veteran actor said, "I became interested in local politics in Carmel [Calif.] because the council at that time was punitive towards the people. If they could start pushing people around, people that couldn't defend themselves, they needed to go."

Eastwood continued, "So I ran with a few other people, we got them out, and I did a two-year term. I went on for strictly local politics and had no further ambitions — contrary to some predictions that I might go into state politics. It was an interesting moment in my life and I don't regret it at all.

"Unfortunately, the state of politics in America doesn't encourage people from the private sector [to run], and you're going to be scrutinized when you run for national office," he related, smiling. "I don't suppose I'd like that." — Stephen Schaefer