Clint Eastwood Still Stands By His 1980 Western That Audiences Passed On

All movie stars are hyper-sensitive about their image, but few, if any, have toyed with their persona more daringly than Clint Eastwood. After establishing himself as a Western icon and due process-flouting cop, Eastwood wasted no time in testing how much tweaking of that image his audience would accept. In his directorial debut, "Play Misty for Me," he played a disc jockey who gets stalked by a fan (Jessica Walter) after engaging in a casual romantic relationship with her. Keep in mind that Eastwood did this after portraying a wounded Union soldier in his commercially disappointing gothic Civil War thriller "The Beguiled," and that both of these movies were released theatrically in 1971 before "Dirty Harry." Eastwood didn't give a rip. He just wanted to make movies and play characters that interested him.

By the end of the 1970s, Eastwood could do no wrong by his fans. They lined up for his "Dirty Harry" flicks, his revisionist Westerns (most notably, what Eastwood considers a career high with "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), and his orangutan-infused redneck comedy "Every Which Way But Loose." Eastwood had moviegoers' pulse, so he took another risk in 1980 by directing and headlining "Bronco Billy," a whimsical character study of a sharpshooter whose traveling Wild West show is struggling to remain relevant in an age where such old-timey attractions are losing their appeal. For Eastwood, the film repped an opportunity to play to a family audience for once and, perhaps, lament the fading appeal of Old West mythmaking.

It was too early in Eastwood's career for him to eulogize this slice of Americana, but he did wind up making an appealing ensemble dramedy about damaged people and/or sinners looking for a second chance. His audience didn't go gaga for this, but Eastwood still holds "Bronco Billy" dear.

In a behind-the-scenes interview for his 1982 action flick "Firefox," Clint Eastwood was asked about the box office underperformance of "Bronco Billy." Though it was hardly a bomb, having grossed $24.3 million at the box office against a $6.5 million budget, it was a quiet single in a career that had been dotted with triples and home runs for over a decade. Critics were generally kind, but his fans were all about "Any Which Way You Can," his second orangutan-go-round (which came out later in the year).

Eastwood shrugged off the public's indifference to "Bronco Billy" in his inimitably casual fashion. As he put it in the interview:

"It was a favorite project of mine. I liked the film. It had some. [...] there was some purity, a certain fighting against the cynicism of our day. There was a certain element of it that I always enjoyed the story. Maybe it was old-fashioned, maybe too old-fashioned, but it was a good film for me. It received a lot of attention from people that maybe didn't like the other films. You can't do the same thing all the time. [...] I'd still be in Italy doing Westerns like I started. There's a time to move on and try something else."

"Bronco Billy" found its proper medium in 2019 when it debuted to good reviews as a stage musical in Los Angeles. There is a let's-put-on-a-show enthusiasm to "Bronco Billy," which sets it apart from most of Eastwood's work. It's a sweet movie that lets the star poke fun at his image rather than cruelly subvert it. It's a low-key charmer. It is not, thank god, "The Rookie."