I’ve been so busy binge-watching TV shows lately (and writing trivia books) that I’ve fallen WAY behind on seeing movies. This week I finally checked out the latest from the Clint Eastwood filmography, “The Mule,” which he directed and starred in last year.
Clint plays Earl Stone, a rock star horticulturalist (but all-around bad husband and father) who falls on financial hard times. In order to finally try to show up for his estranged family by paying for his granddaughter’s wedding, he finds himself himself a little side gig — running drugs for a cartel. Bradley Cooper’s a DEA agent hunting him down.
It’s aggressively fine. (How many times does the guy need to learn the lesson that he should have made his family a priority? At least once more, but after this threesome at a drug lord’s estate.) But it got me thinking about just how many movies Eastwood has directed.
I’ll freely admit that I’m not into Westerns and therefore have a gaping Clint Eastwood-shaped trivia hole. That being said, you gotta love a 40-plus year filmography to pull from for a quiz.
Without further ado, a five question quiz about Clint Eastwood’s directorial filmography:
- What 1997 film based on a best-selling nonfiction true crime book about the trial of Jim Williams was shot at locations around Savannah, Georgia, that were key to the case, including the famed Mercer House and the Bonaventure Cemetery?
- Eastwood directed a pair of companion films that were released two months apart in 2006. Name these two movies that tell the story of a significant World War II Pacific theater battle, one from the Allied side, and the other from the Japanese point of view.
- Despite a prolific directing career in the 1970s and ’80s, Eastwood wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for Best Director until 1993, when he won for what film?
- Eastwood won his second directing Oscar in 2005 (he also got a Thalberg Award in 1995) for “Million Dollar Baby,” which also won Best Picture. The film also snagged statues for what two actors in the categories of Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor?
- In what film, Eastwood’s highest-grossing ever at $350 million, does Bradley Cooper star as Chris Kyle, a Navy S.E.A.L. who struggles to adjust to civilian life after several tours in the Middle East?
Answers up after the trailer for “Space Cowboys,” a fairly ridiculous movie about four old astronauts (Eastwood, James Garner, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland) who get the call to finally go to space because they’re the only people left who know how to fix some busted Russian satellite. I saw this in the theater in 2000 because the trailer featured an *NSYNC song. I’m not at all embarrassed by that choice.
Answers:
- “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”
- “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima”
- “Unforgiven”
- Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman
- “American Sniper”
Want more movie trivia? Try our “Ghostbusters” quiz on for size.