Movies - TV
Clint Eastwood Copied A Secret Service Trick To Keep His Crew Calm On Set
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Despite the tough guy persona created during his early career, Clint Eastwood became more mellow the older he got and is known for his preference to keep his sets quiet and relaxed. The director explained in a 2006 interview that he hates background chatter and found a solution to the noise issue through one of Eastwood’s U.S. Secret Service contacts: Secret Service headsets.
Eastwood explained, “I like to have fun. I like everyone to be in good humor. And I try to keep it quiet. I like an atmosphere that isn’t loaded with tension. I don’t like sets where people are yelling at each other.” The director believes that actors can start and stop a scene without making a big production when the set is quiet.
The idea came to Eastwood during a trip to the White House when he witnessed Secret Service agents having quiet conversations off in shadowy corners. He said, “Why the hell do you go on a movie set and people have open radios squawking and people yelling, ‘Hey, Al, put the light over here!’ We’ve got all this technology; certainly, we can be as technologically sound as the Secret Service.”
The director brought the same headsets used by the Secret Service to his next film to ensure that on-set communication could continue without being a disruption. The silence on the sets allowed Eastwood to capture genuine moments from the actors without them being fully aware that the camera was rolling in a way that noise-filled sets couldn’t.