Clint Eastwood Directed A Short Movie That's Impossible To Watch Today

From television cowboy to one of the most instantly recognizable movie stars in the world, no one does it like Clint Eastwood. There's an irony to the man with no name, a character made famous by Sergio Leone's deeply influential "Dollars" trilogy, becoming so ingrained in pop culture that his signature squint alone transcends generations. Eastwood could have lived off his acting roles for the rest of his career. He was so popular that one of the highest grossing films of 1978 was "Every Which Way But Loose," a leisurely road trip comedy with Eastwood as a truck driver/bar brawler traveling the country with his trusty orangutan buddy. He's nothing, if not adaptable, proving countless times that he's also one of the industry's most restless talents by way of his expansive director's portfolio.

For the past five decades, Eastwood has taken a stab at just about every genre from behind the camera and shows no signs of stopping. 2024's "Juror #2" is an astonishing courtroom morality play that any filmmaker would be lucky to have in their repertoire, let alone in a studio's catalogue (looking at you, Zaslav). To think that Eastwood pulled a real powerhouse out of him at the tender age of 94 is nothing short of a miracle. It proves he's always had the drive to be one of the most prolific American filmmakers.

Eastwood's feature directorial debut would arrive in the form of 1971's "Play Misty For Me," a jazzy hangout psychological thriller by the sea with a star-making performance from Jessica Walter. It's a good first film that lays the groundwork for his laid-back temperament as a filmmaker. Although "High Plains Drifter" is considered Eastwood's sophomore venture, his actual directorial follow-up is a short that, unfortunately, isn't readily available to watch anywhere.

In the same year that Eastwood kicked off his directorial career, he also starred in his third collaboration with Don Siegel in "The Beguiled." Based on Thomas P. Cullinan's 1966 novel "A Painted Devil," the film is a lurid southern gothic psychosexual thriller in which Eastwood plays a wounded Union soldier named John McBurney, who shacks up in a Mississippi seminary school for young women while he heals from his injuries. The walking patriarchal menace transforms the house into a sweltering frenzy in his wooing of multiple girls, unaware of the consequences he hath wrought upon himself. You may remember that Sofia Coppola directed a stellar re-imagining of the controversial story back in 2017 that flips the story's perspective.

Coinciding with the release of Siegel's version, however, is a 12 minute documentary short that Eastwood directed entitled "The Beguiled: The Storyteller." There is shockingly very little information about it, barring the brief recollection of folks who have been lucky enough to see it. The rare short was never commercially released, which is strange considering it's something you would want out there to either promote the film or include as a nifty bonus feature on home media releases. One Letterboxd user claims to have seen it with a 35mm print of "Coogan's Bluff," Siegel and Eastwood's first collaboration, with the Chicago Film Society, describing it as a making-of featurette. The only reason we really know it exists in some form is a singular image of Eastwood holding what appears to be the film's script.

"The Storyteller" is a notable piece of Eastwood history because he very rarely directed anything that wasn't a feature film. The only exceptions to this are an episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories," the finale of Martin Scorsese's "The Blues" documentary miniseries on PBS, and the Diana Krall "Why Should I Care" music video. You can find most of Eastwood's work through streaming, PVOD or physical media, but it's frustrating that there's this one blindspot that ever so rarely pops out, if at all. Not even the Kino Lorber blu-ray from a few years back has it. Here's hoping Universal finds a way to get it out in the world someday.

"The Beguiled" is currently streaming on Prime Video.