The Clint Eastwood Interview Scandal Is Weirder Than You Think
On Monday, June 2, legendary actor, director, and Dirty Harry himself, Clint Eastwood, accused an Austrian news publication of publishing a "phony" interview with him. If your first thought is that some unscrupulous AI-generated interview has put words in Eastwood's mouth, that's actually not the case. The reason why this interview was "phony" wasn't because Eastwood never said any of those things; it's just that he didn't say any of these things recently.
The widely circulated article, published by the Austrian publication Kurier, featured some quotes from Eastwood in which he decried the "era of remakes and franchises," and made other disparaging remarks about Hollywood. The thing is, he did say these things, but not in a new interview. The problem was that Kurier published several old quotes from various interviews dating back to 1976, and presented the quotes as a new interview.
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All the quotes come from the archives of the now-defunct Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The author of the article, Elisabeth Sereda, told IndieWire that "he [Eastwood] is certainly familiar with the HFPA — having given more than 20 interviews to the group dating back to 1976.”
Kurier has since retracted the article, noting that though the statements were documented to be authentic, that nonetheless: "The article was formatted as an interview, not a portrait. This was intended to create the impression that it was a new interview."
So, Clint Eastwood is right: He didn't give a new interview to Kurier for his recent 95th birthday. But, he's also a tiny bit wrong. He did say some of this stuff a long, long time ago.
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