Clint Eastwood, Rallying 'Round 'Flags'

"It wasn't a 'combat' photo," says Clint Eastwood of the image at the heart of "Flags of Our Fathers," his new film. ". . . It emphasized the togetherness of the men." (By Carlos Puma For The Washington Post)

Could Doc Bradley not be Clint Eastwood himself? Could Doc the icon turned small-town undertaker be Clint the icon turned big-town director and auteur? Both were turned into icons almost accidentally -- in Eastwood's case, by the worldwide but completely unexpected success of "A Fistful of Dollars" in 1964 in a low-slung black hat, a serape, a cheroot and a gun. But somehow Eastwood realizes that his future isn't in that business. "If you're a celebrity," the star says, "the one thing you know is that it's not going to last." And though he prospers as an actor, he's clearly pining to get into something more substantial. And he becomes a director, and one might argue a much greater director than he ever was an actor.

Eastwood considers the parallel gravely and then says: "No. Next question."

But then he laughs at putting his inquisitor on, and deals with the issue.

"I didn't want it to be just an action picture. It's about people trying to get away from celebrity and it has lots of overtones for today and maybe for me. I was never comfortable as a celebrity; I was always one for turning away. I loved the acting but not the other stuff. I never spoke in front of an audience. I was never an extrovert. I was always more comfortable listening, so I can understand what it was like for those boys shoved into an unwilling celebrity. For the flag-raisers, it was an accident; and they were turned into celebrities. They must have thought, 'What the hell is this?' They felt everybody was gone, particularly Mike Strank, their sergeant, whom all loved and admired and is remembered by all those who knew him as 'a Marine's Marine.' In the one interview John Bradley gave, he was very reserved. He didn't want to put any importance to it. He always had that haunted thing; he didn't want to bring that to his children. He never seemed to want to go there. Sure, I like getting the tables up front, but in general I didn't enjoy the whole celebrity process. And maybe the reason I was driven to direct -- it was a way of being well-known, without your face being well-known."

Eastwood, in reading "Flags of Our Fathers," found the American-Japanese conflict so fascinating he decided to make a companion film, this time from the Japanese point of view.

He seems taken with Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commanding officer on Iwo Jima, who, almost like a B-movie stereotype from the '40s, had studied at Harvard, spoke English and had traveled in America, which he enjoyed very much and which he did not want to fight. Still, it was Kuribayashi who designed the brilliant interlocking defensive measures that turned the battle into such a bloodbath, and it is also he who is considered by most historians the author of the best defense of an island against invasion during the war. At the same time, another amazing figure was Baron Takeichi Nish, commander of the island's complement of armored vehicles; he'd been a hero of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as an equestrian, and, as Eastwood points out, was a member of "the equestrian crowd, Doug Fairbanks, Mary Pickford." Neither officer survived the battle (of the 21,000 Japanese on the island, there were only about 200 survivors).

"Kuribayashi was amazing; in his letters home, he tells his family he's probably not coming back, but at the same time he's completely involved with his family, and is telling his kids to study hard and his wife to get the roof fixed."

Eastwood hired the Japanese American screenwriter Iris Yamashita to write the screenplay (she had assisted Haggis on "Flags") and actors Ken Watanabe as the general and Tsuyoshi Ihara as the baron. Called "Letters From Iwo Jima," it will be released in Washington next year (and in New York and Los Angeles in December, in time for Oscar consideration). Eastwood uses some of the same footage, though "Letters" was shot immediately after "Flags" on Iwo Jima itself and also in a silver mine at Barstow, Calif. -- where the tunnels stand in for the network of passages between the Japanese positions.

"In the Japanese film, you almost never see the Americans, just as in the American film, you almost never see the Japanese."

Asked if he meant it to be a "Japanese" film, Eastwood replies: "I did it the way I saw it. It's just storytelling, my take on the materials. Maybe Kurosawa would do it the same way."

Full circle: He is in debt to the great director Akira Kurosawa because Kurosawa made "Yojimbo," upon which "A Fistful of Dollars" was based -- or, rather, from which "A Fistful of Dollars" was stolen.

Now, finally, with both movies done, it's time for a rest, though scripts keep coming in.

With his trademark dry wit and eyes squinting, Clint Eastwood says: "I'm kind of hoping I don't find anything. Worst thing that could happen to me is that somebody would send me a script I love."