“Everybody asked me not to make this movie”: Clint Eastwood listened to no one and had the greatest success in his career

Clint Eastwood owes one of the biggest successes of his early career to his single-minded belief, because no one else believed in it! And this feature film is the action comedy Hard, Soft, Crazy, which was released in December 1978 in the United States and in April 1979 in France.

This somewhat unknown film tells the story of how Philo Beddo decides to take part in bare-knuckle boxing in order to escape. When the singer Lin, with whom he is in love, disappears without a trace, Philo, aided by his friend Orville and his orangutan named Clyde, sets out to find her. But his way will not be without a fight!

How did he end up playing with the orangutan?

Either way, here’s one of the best westerns of all time!

In 2003, Clint Eastwood spoke in an interview guardian In which he confided that everyone advised him not to make this film in which he was going to play a monkey:

Yes, I have made some strange choices in my career. This film, my agent, everyone was actually begging me not to do it. It was after Detective Harry, I’d done a lot of thrillers and adventure films and they said, ‘That doesn’t look like you,’ and I said, ‘So what – what does it look like me? I do not know’.

But then, why did you do it against all odds?

“In my opinion, this gave me the opportunity to reach the younger generation, to make a film that children could see (…). And in this film there was something surprisingly “hip” – this strange boy confides in an orangutan and has his girlfriend kidnapped: everything seemed a little different.

How to shoot an orangutan?

“It was great, it was like working with a six-year-old. They have to be at the level of a seven-year-old and only have the attention span of a child, so everything needs to be taken first.”

The film’s success upon release was incredible: grossing over $100 million worldwide, prompting Eastwood to appear in a sequel with a more straightforwardly titled feature film: It’s going to knock (1980)! This time it brought 70 million, which at that time remained one of the biggest successes of the actor in cinema.