Clint featured in Entertainment Weekly

[jjgonski]

Just a note that Mystic River is featured in this week's Entertainment Weekly magazine.  It's gives Clint a fair amount of praise and tells how Kevin Bacon was just dying to work with Clint.  Overall, I think they give the movie a positive review.  It's the feature movie for the month of October.

[MC]

As mentioned, there's a lot of positive attention paid to Mystic River in EW's fall movie preview issue. The two-page spread includes a solid article and a great picture of Penn and Harden. See the transcribed text below (I omitted a few sentences of story synopsis):

Some actors will go to any length to work with Clint Eastwood. In 2000, Bacon was attending France's Deauville Film Festival to promote Hollow Man when he heard that Dirty Harry was also in town. On the night of Hollow Man's premiere, Bacon walked into the theater, then immediately snuck out the back door and tracked down the Unforgiven Oscar winner at a restaurant 45 minutes away just to shake his hand and make an impression. He then raced back to the screening. "I made it just as the lights came up," recalls Bacon. "It was a wild night."

But it paid off. After finishing last year's Blood Work, Eastwood turned his attention to adapting Dennis Lehane's best-selling novel Mystic River and tapped Bacon to join the troika of actors who play the film's deeply damaged male leads ... "The script was so scary and poignant," says Harden. "The innocence of childhood, the innocence of community. It works as metaphor on a  large scale, and it works as a story about a specific reality."

Eastwood, 73, shot the drama last fall in Boston with his typical no-frills, no-fuss economy ("He makes you realize when you work with him how much bulls--- there is on most movie sets," says Bacon. "There was zero bulls---.") But adapting the novel was not without struggle. Screenwriter Helgeland -- an Oscar winner for 1997's L.A. Confidential -- was daunted by Lehane's psychologically dense narrative and sheer number of characters. (He solved the latter problem by short-shrifting two key female characters, but Eastwood asked him to beef them back up.)

Even more difficult was getting the $25 million budget he wanted for the dark drama. "I won't name names," says Helgeland, "but one studio said they weren't interested in dramas anymore. That was echoed down the line." (Eastwood and Warner Bros. found a believer and cofinancer in the Warner-based production company Village Roadshow.) Yet Helgeland believes the challenges made for a more inspired director: "It made him give it something extra. When no one loves it, you have to love it a little harder."

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Proving all those studios were wrong. Will audiences shy away from a dark drama too?

There's also an "Oscar Watch" section included with the fall preview. Here's what they have to say about Mystic River:

OCTOBER: The Clint Eastwood-directed Mystic River began earning early momentum at Cannes as a potential Best Picture and for Sean Penn's lead performance...

[Philo Beddoe Jr]

But adapting the novel was not without struggle. Screenwriter Helgeland -- an Oscar winner for 1997's L.A. Confidential -- was daunted by Lehane's psychologically dense narrative and sheer number of characters. (He solved the latter problem by short-shrifting two key female characters, but Eastwood asked him to beef them back up.)

That is a rare and amazing thing to do. It is so common for film makers to cut important characters out of filmed novels for the sake of economy.   Clint really shows a lot of respect for the original novel.

WKC.

[Matt]

From the article MC posted:

"I won't name names," says Helgeland, "but one studio said they weren't interested in dramas anymore. That was echoed down the line." (Eastwood and Warner Bros. found a believer and cofinancer in the Warner-based production company Village Roadshow.) Yet Helgeland believes the challenges made for a more inspired director: "It made him give it something extra. When no one loves it, you have to love it a little harder."

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Proving all those studios were wrong. Will audiences shy away from a dark drama too?

This explains why there hasn't been one movie that I've wanted to see in a theater all summer.  I love dark dramas, and I know there's plenty of adults out there who don't care for the kiddie stuff that's been littering the theaters lately and will enjoy seeing it too.

Thanks for posting, MC.  (I edited your post to remove  the bold print and put the article inside a quote so it would be easier to read.)

[Brendan]

I bet yah its Sony or FOX that doesnt want dramas anymore.

I like action movies and I like dramas, but I would really love to see alot more dramas out there. Its nice too just sit back and relax every now and then and see a nice story told to you with out explosions and guns.

I know Mystic River will do that.  

[jjgonski]

I can only say that I am very excited for the movie to be coming out.  When Clint makes a drama, it's not like most dramas.  There always seems to be some kind of suspense to the story as well.  I think that I am looking forward to this one, more so than Blood Work.  Just the cast itself it quite impressive.  Maybe it will bring plenty of non Eastwood fans to the theater and make it the hit of the fall.

 

[D'Ambrosia]

As far as I can always remember EW has always given Clint his due...