LEGENDARY actor Clint Eastwood has decried the rise of “political correctness” and believes the film Dirty Harry would never have been made in today’s climate.
The actor and director, 86, was speaking at the Cannes Film Festival during a planned presentation that included the 25th anniversary of his Western “Unforgiven”.
Eastwood didn’t talk about current political events, but while discussing his then-controversial 1971 film Dirty Harry, he waded into a topic he’s touched on before: so-called political correctness.
He said: “A lot of people thought it was politically incorrect.
“That was at the beginning of the era that we’re in now, where everybody thinks everyone’s politically correct.
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“We’re killing ourselves by doing that. We’ve lost our sense of humour.”
He’s currently preparing to direct The 15:17 to Paris, about the foiling of a 2015 ISIS attack on a train heading to the French capital from Brussels.
Three Americans, two of them off-duty members of the military, contributed to the subduing of the gunman. Eastwood said the film suited today’s “strange times.”
Eastwood has previously criticised political correctness. Last year he blasted the “p***y generation” complaining about Donald Trump – and told them to “f***ing get over it”.
Eastwood was honoured with several screenings of his films. During the staged conversation yesterday, the 86-year-old director said he would revisit acting “someday”.
The last time Eastwood appeared on screen was 2012’s Trouble With The Curve. Before that, he starred in his own 2008 film, Gran Torino.
Festival-goers mobbed Eastwood’s talk. Warner Bros. executives, including studio head Kevin Tsujihara, sat in the front row. Much of the conversation, moderated by Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, touched on Eastwood’s attitudes about moviemaking.
“If you have good luck with your instincts, you might as well trust them,” Eastwood said. “It’s an emotional art form. It’s not an intellectual art form at all.”
Today we reported that disgraced BHS fat cat Sir Philip Green was mingling with celebs and royalty at the famous film festival.
And last week a bomb scare sparked the evacuation of hundreds of people from the Debussy Theatre as they waited for a screening of the film Redoubtable.
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