Million Dollar Baby
© James C. Hess
Not quite sure what was meant or implied by this comment I waited for an explanation. It went as follows: A person's house should be his home. My house, indeed, is my home. The furniture, the art, the books, the design, the layout are, individually and collectively, reflections and representations of me.
Over the years since I moved into my current home seemingly countless changes and alterations, additions and remodelings have been executed to make these living spaces more so. Several years ago, for example, I realized I could not see the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies from the living room because the living room is on the east side of the house. So I contacted a photographer I know and had him take a series of photographs of the mountains I so love. He then assembled them into a triptych and had them framed by an woodworker we both know, with the final product carefully hung on the north wall of the living room, thereby allowing me to see the timeless geological sentinels whenever I was in the living room. This effort, in turn, resulted in several pieces of furniture and furnishings made of materials acquired and harvested from the mountains and nearby areas. This, in turn, required an alteration of the living room itself, and, in turn, the kitchen. Individually, each of these spaces is a reflection and representation of me. Collectively, they reveal certain truths about me as a person.
Which is what appealed, apparently, to the visitor to my home. When they had at last a complete tour of my home they went away, quite happy and pleased, because they had, for a time, been allowed inside of my otherwise very private life.
When you think about, giving proper consideration and due contemplation, a given film or movie is like a house made a home. When you think about it a director is the person who occupies this given space, making it welcoming and appealing by way of certain deliberate and very subjective touches and alterations. In doing so, the director in question sets into place reflections and representations of himself.
And when you think about it a given film or movie is, in fact, a piece of a given director, surrounded by those who have helped, readily, to make his life what it is.
Clint Eastwood's life, then, first as an actor, now as a director, has been quite full and wonderful, appealing and very welcoming.
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