“Get Rid of It” This Movie Made Clint Eastwood’s Career, But No One Wanted Him to Make It

News culture “Get Rid of It” This Movie Made Clint Eastwood’s Career, But No One Wanted Him to Make It

Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days

When no one wanted this script in Hollywood…

The creation of a film goes through many stages, and sometimes it is enough for one of them to block the rest for a nugget never to come to light. This is precisely what could have happened to an excellent film Clint Eastwood if the American director had not decided to take matters into his own hands against the advice of almost the entire industry. It all started in 1976, when a certain screenwriter named David Peoples writes a script for a dark and violent western. Baptized The William Munny Killings originally, then The Cut-Whore Killingshe struggled to convince even the slightest Hollywood producer to give him a chance. However, David Peoples’ script ended up in the hands of big names in the industry.

Before he landed in Clint Eastwood’s office, he actually passed through that of a certain Francis Ford Coppola. The latter then tried to do something with it for a while, but finally abandoned the project. One thing led to another and it then found itself in the hands of Sonia Chernusa screenwriter who has worked closely with Clint Eastwood in the past. Even if the latter gave him the script, she still accompanied it with a more than dissuasive memo:

We should never have accepted waste like this inferior work. I can’t think of a single good thing to say about him. Except maybe “Get rid of it”.

…while Clint Eastwood made it into an Oscar-winning film

Suffice to say that with such an opinion given by someone as respectable in Clint Eastwood’s eyes as Sonia Chernus, the American director did not even deign to read the script before putting it in a drawer. But several years later, the latter needed a new screenwriter, and he remembered this old script unloved by the rest of the industry. Eastwood then ended up reading it… and he immediately fell in love with it. Against the advice of the rest of Hollywood, he therefore chose to direct it and play the lead role in it. This film is the one we know today under the name Unforgiven, or Ruthless in French.

Released in 1992, Ruthless is a film that tells the story of William Munny (played by Clint Eastwood), a former killer whose reputation only speaks of bad things, who nevertheless sets out in pursuit of a criminal. Despite the fact that the entire industry considered his script atrocious, it was hardly changed by Eastwood during the entire production period, much to the surprise of its author himself. At the time of its release, Impitoyable achieved the feat of bringing together no less than $159 million at the box office, a phenomenal success for the time. Better yet, he won 4 oscars (Best Film, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Supporting Actor) and David Peoples’ script was even nominated in the Best Screenplay category. Even if he did not win the statuette, suffice to say that it is a nice revenge for all those who would not have bet a penny on his story. It took 16 years between writing the screenplay and the release of the film, but we can say that the wait was worth it.