Neo-Noir Hall of Fame

Tightrope, released in 1984, is one of Clint's most mature and well-made genre efforts. The story of a New Orleans homicide detective investigating a series of grisly sexual-based murders that highlight his own kinky perversions and seem to implicate him as the prime suspect, it's a gritty and stylish neo-Noir with psycho-sexual themes and a terrific and layered central performance by Eastwood, taking the de-mythologizing of his Cop persona drastically further than he had in The Gauntlet. However, if you look at the credits, it'll say "DIRECTED BY RICHARD TUGGLE".

Tuggle was a screenwriter who had worked for Eastwood and Malpaso when he adapted Escape from Alcatraz for the screen, the last movie Clint and his mentor director Don Siegel worked on together. Clint was impressed with his work, and when Malpaso started developing one of Tuggle's original screenplays, Tightrope, Clint decided he'd give the screenwriter a shot at directing the project. Eastwood had done this before, promoting all the way up to director from personnel within Malpaso: when he got Michael Cimino his debut with Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (1974) after he'd written on Magnum Force (1973), and longtime stunt-actor and coordinator Buddy Van Horn who helmed Any Which Way You Can (1980) and later The Dead Pool (1988) and Pink Cadillac (1989).

But after only two days of production, Eastwood felt Tuggle wasn't up to the challenge. He let him go and stepped in to complete essentially the entire film with his own direction (Clint had directed ten features by then). The filming went smoothly, it turned out to be an excellent film, but when it came to arbitration with the Director's Guild they determined, in a landmark precedent, that Eastwood could not receive directorial credit - no matter how much of Tuggle's footage was or wasn't in the finished film. Because Clint was not only the principal star of the film but also the executive producer, the Guild decided they'd err on the side of caution and protect the original director. Still to this day it is called the Directors Guild of America's "Eastwood Rule". It's meant to protect directors from having their credit taken by a producer after filming has begun. Understandable, there have been horror stories over the years (some resulting in the infamous Alan Smithee pseudonym credit), but in the particular case of Tightrope maybe they should have looked at the specifics rather than automatically over-protecting the original director?

So anywho, it is still and will always be officially credited to Tuggle (who only directed one other film afterwards: 1986's Out of Bounds, a routine thriller starring Anthony Michael Hall), but Tightrope was directed by Clint Eastwood. Thus the asterisk, and my inclusion of it when I rated his filmography as director.



Don't know how many of you have seen Tightrope (it was a cable TV mainstay for years), but it's well worth tracking down. It is available on R1 DVD, so it shouldn't be impossible to locate. I definitely recommend it, directorial controversy or not. In addition to Eastwood's fine work in front of the camera (there was serious buzz that he may get his first Oscar nomination as actor for it - though ultimately that didn't happen until Unforgiven), it also showcases strong work by diminutive but sexy Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold (Anne of a Thousand Days, Dead Ringers, Coma). And Clint's own real-life daughter Alison plays one of his character's daughters (son Kyle, now a successful Jazz musician, co-starred in Honkytonk Man). Alison has become an actress as an adult, starring in Clint's Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil as well as mostly straight-to-video stuff like Just a Little Harmless Sex and Friends & Lovers. She bared all in a 2003 issue of Playboy, and frankly that's well worth tracking down too.