The Outlaw Josey Wales
Short description
The Outlaw Josey Wales is a Western set in Missouri near the end of the American Civil War. Josey Wales, a farmer, loses his wife and son when a band of Union guerrillas led by Captain Terrill attacks his home, and he is left for dead. After burying his family, he joins Confederate fighters to pursue revenge. When the war ends and his comrades choose to surrender rather than keep fighting, Wales refuses to lay down his arms. He heads west as an outlaw, hunted by soldiers, hired men and bandits, and although he would rather ride alone, a group of disparate outcasts attaches itself to him, and he takes on their protection.
Clint Eastwood directs and stars as Josey Wales, with Chief Dan George as Lone Watie, Sondra Locke as Laura Lee, Bill McKinney as Terrill, John Vernon as Fletcher and Paula Trueman as Grandma Sarah. The screenplay is by Philip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, and Robert Daley produced for Warner Bros. Pictures and Malpaso Productions. It is the fifth of the forty films Eastwood has directed, following The Eiger Sanction and preceding The Gauntlet.
Made for about four million dollars, the film took roughly thirty-two million worldwide, a strong return. It holds a critics' rating of eight out of ten from forty-five reviews, while audiences give it 7.8 out of ten on IMDb and 7.5 out of ten on TMDB, so critical and viewer assessments are close.
What's left behind the scenes
- Chief Dan George often forgot his lines due to his age, so during filming, Clint Eastwood would instinctively begin to articulate the lines himself and had to be pulled back, otherwise the take would be ruined. According to Eastwood, he asked other crew members to help George memorize his lines, but when it came time to film, he told George to forget the memorization and simply tell him, for example, about a man 'who rode across the hills.' George, who turned out to be a natural storyteller, delivered everything perfectly.
- Philip Kaufman began filming the movie, but on October 24, 1975, he was replaced in the director's chair by Clint Eastwood. Following this, the Directors Guild of America issued a ban preventing actors or crew members from replacing a director in the event of their departure. Since then, this ban has been known as the 'Eastwood Rule.' To some extent, the mutual dislike between Eastwood and Kaufman was explained by the fact that both had invited Sondra Locke—who also starred in the film and was married to Gordon Anderson—to dinner on the same evening. Some actors and crew members were unhappy with Kaufman's replacement by Eastwood, believing that Kaufman had actually done much of the work for which Eastwood later received all the credit. For instance, they claimed that it was Kaufman who chose the locations, approved the costumes, and specifically cast Dan George as the Chief after seeing him in Arthur Penn's drama 'Little Big Man' (1970).
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