Thanks, Hocine! I've wanted to see that since it came out in 2007. We had a thread about it, here:
http://www.clinteastwood.org/forums/index.php?topic=6735The French-American writer Michael Henry Wilson, who wrote in French as Michael Henry, was a great connaisseur of Clint's films and did indeed interview him many times, mostly for
Positif. We included three of his interviews in the second edition of the collection I co-edited,
Clint Eastwood: Interviews, 2013.
When the first edition was published in 1999, I was responsible for the translations of the six French interviews it contained, including one by "Michael Henry." By the time we were preparing the new edition, his own collection had been published in French (as
Clint Eastwood, entretiens, 2007) and in English, as
Eastwood on Eastwood, 2010. To my surprise I found that the first interview in the English edition was, with very few minor changes, my translation from the 1999 edition of
Clint Eastwood: Interviews! I got in touch with Wilson via LinkedIn for permission to use it again, along with two others, in the new book.
In the end, we actually got together via phone to discuss it. He owned up to using my translation (since he hadn't preserved an original tape or transcription of the 1984 original), and readily granted permission to re-use it in the new edition, along with one more from his book (his translation), and a newer one (my translation, with his input) from
Positif. I remember discussing with him the difficulty of getting something as spontaneous as an interview into another language, in a coherent and idiomatic version, while trying to preserve both the substance and the "voice" of the original.
I'm going to watch that documentary tomorrow for a treat on Thanksgiving Day (as we celebrate it in the US)!
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