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Spaghetti Westerns um had begun well

before Sergio Leon Germans and so forth

wrote westerns even though none of them

had ever been to the American West there

was a kind of a European

tradition and uh the Italians came along

and so they started making these

pictures often using slightly broken

down American stars or stars like Clint

who were on the

rise was a very

unpretentious I guess is the polite way

of putting it the genre I mean you know

it was mainly made for Europe and I

think leonis were really the first to

make any kind of impact in the United

States they were looked on a scance

because they so violated the long

American tradition of how Western

stories were

told is one of the things that that

Clint once said to me about that's what

he liked about him they were Breaking

All the Rules

Leon is the only director of uh

spaghetti Weston that made it in America

by the way there were dozens I produced

a uh spaghetti Weston

myself there were dozens of them but

almost all of them never played in

America only Le onlyi pitures because he

was Artful he was very very clever in

the making of his movies he made them

feel like real important pictures

by the way he shot it and the kind of

characters he

used The Westerns done by other

directors at the

time uh were cheap films I was the one

who started the Italian westerns and my

films were cheap

too uh the ones before seron so there

there was no

outstanding Western director B than Ser

Leon at that time and even

later because the Western General was um

considered as something cheap not worth

doing

it while s only loves loved them and I

love the

Western we were doing very small budget

films this wasn't the the high budget

attack Italian film the first fful of

dollars was a $200,000 film and that uh

maybe a few dollars more than that you

feel pardon the pun but uh they were

very shoestring they had a German money

in it and and and Spanish money and

Italian money and those three entities

were constantly arguing with themselves

about who would pay what they'd always

be arguing or reneging on the deal

and walking off the set it was it was a

great experience to look back on but the

time it was kind of it was kind of funny

I mean now it's very

funny I always thought at the time I

this thing will either do really well or

it won't do anything probably the latter

so I thought this thing's going to

really bomb out but I'm going to get a

trip to Italy and Spain I've never been

either

place if it if it did something if the

dice came up 7 or 11 I I'd be uh uh it

would be just a bonus

deal we must remember that he always had

a name in all three of these pictures

the man with no name was was actually a

marketing concept somebody United

Artists came up with when they decided

to bring out these three pictures in

relatively close order but in this

picture he's

blonding Clint brought a lot of costume

with him black jeans which he found you

know just in a Levi store somewhere his

gun belt was his rawh hide gun belt the

cigars were bought near to Hollywood

across from the farmers market in point

of fact he wasn't a smoker but when he

did have to smoke one he said they had a

really foul taste he said put you in the

right mood for the character and he

brought that sheep skin um jacket that

he wears under the sppy uh Robie was

Sergio I think he bought that in Spain

on the location actually but the the

sheep skin coat which he wears quite a

bit in all three of them was was was

Clint's addition to the costumery of

this

movie it was kind of all pieced together

and you never had duplicates and

triplicates of anything in case

something got lost in case something got

damaged we had nothing I had one hat if

I lost that hat I was I was a goner

there was no way to match up to anything

else so what I did is I took my wardrobe

home at night I took it back to the

hotel I took the hat and the Poncho

which we only have one of I just kind of

had to keep very very careful of track

of everything and that's about

it I was in California making another

another movie and the age of said

there's a there's a Italian director

wants to make a a western and he wants

you to be in it I said well how do

Italians make western oh he said yeah

spaghetti western I said spaghetti

western sound like like um Hawaiian

pizza I I never heard of it oh he says

he he'll make a good Western he's made

two others a fist full of dollars and a

few dollars more so I met Leon was a big

bear of a man and he said I I want I

want you to come to Italy to make the

movie he said see a piece of my movie

and I saw the credits of one of his

movies where his name appears and then a

gun appears and shoots his name down I

thought that's very interesting it shows

he has an ego but he's willing to be

shot down so I said yes where do you

want me he said I want you in Rome a

month from now and we're going to start

making the movie I I arrived in in

Italy the next thing I know I'm on a

horse being turned in by Clint East

would to get a reward for my capture

because of a vicious

Bandit and I had lines to learn and I

put on this costume and there I was in

the movie and I was playing this

character too

good let

me you play with the man tied up come

back come back and fight

bastard Eli is a well he's a very very

fine actor I was always a great admirer

of his prior to doing this film with him

and uh I mean even even afterwards make

it sound like afterward uh but he was a

just a great performer and very very

versatile actor but he always had a

tremendous amount of energy and he just

enjoyed himself eventually he enjoyed

building the character and putting it

together with my character which much

more on the stoic side though I'd play

my humor in more of a rye fashion his

was

more where we I thought we made a pretty

good combination you fy bastards come

here I kill you I kill

you such ingratitude after all the times

have saved your life well I enjoyed

Clint because

Clint didn't say much but he had a great

sense of observation and listening and

that's of great strength in movies he

doesn't seem to do much but when you

look up on the screen there it is and

it's

wonderful we fly to Madrid and we're

going to shoot in the southern part of

Spain in a place called Al Maria

Lawrence of Arabia they shot there and

there in southern Spain you had the the

water then you had desert then you had

mountains so it could be very

Western we were the only people in town

that spoke English no coner

know uh our serenas as they call them

there and would would spoke English you

just a small hotel everything was

Italian or Spanish rather and

uh people who spoke a little Spanish got

by and if you didn't you if you ordered

a milkshake you got a potato salad so

you had to learn really

quick Sergio didn't speak any English

and I didn't speak any Italian when I

first went over there he knew goodbye

and I knew Riva de and that's about it

Clint I don't know how he communicated

but I communicated with broken French

with Leone spoke pretty good French and

that's the way we we communicated but

after a month of shooting this movie six

days a week 12 to 14 hours a day we

learned to

communicate you remember the gun shop

where I put the gun together I said

Serge I don't know anything about guns

he said just take have fun

and what I admired about him is he let

me go through the whole thing of taking

a gun apart putting together and I put

things in like

this you

know and I shook the thing I did all

kinds of crazy things that I had no idea

were

authentic cut he says good I like that

finish a good movie director comes to a

set early in the morning and walks the

scenes through that he's going to do

that day

himself alone so he can think and

concentrate on then once he's got it he

relaxes somewhat you know the day is

from 9 to 5:00 and that's said it's not

like the old

days he was so concentrated on what he

wanted I mean there wasn't a moment of

film that he printed that wasn't exactly

what he wanted his pictures are

wonderful

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not a lot of coverage he sometimes would

do a shot three or four times because

they were so paranoid in the early days

especially not so much on The Good the

Bad and the Ugly because that was a co-

United Artist production and a fairly

large budget but in the early days

they'd do a couple takes because they

figured the lab would screw up the first

two or three or somebody would get

scratched or somebody would drop it it

was just all kind it was a very very

halfhazard

crew

Leon didn't do much directing he knew

what he wanted in his shot he knew how

to set it up he had a wonderful

cameraman named tonino deoli a little

man who was brilliant with a camera

Sergio chose tonoli as

cinematographer he's one it's

undoubtedly one of the best

cinematographers in

Italy in Italy the photographers are

great it's atavistic you know it dates

back centuries the talent these people

have I mean when they attack went into

high fashioned designing they took it

over they're incredibly talented you any

church you go into in Naples I mean in

Florence especially or Rome there's a

masterpiece of

painting hey Pablo don't you recognize

me it's me Toco on the set the actor

spoke the language he knew there's a

scene with my

brother I I don't know the right thing

he would watch my lips when I stopped

speaking then he would talk what about

our

parents and I understood enough Italian

he did it in Italian or French or German

whatever language they spoke they spoke

they didn't care if there were

extraneous noises like you say oh the

camera is making a little noise they

didn't care about that just as long as

the picture was clear you'd be doing a

scene in in your ey line off of the one

side of the camera or another you'd see

a couple guys back there playing frisbee

or making motions or telling jokes and

you hear people talking and uh it's uh

it's very very distracting and I I just

kind of forged over it it gave me a

reason to concentrate that much more

intently they just weren't used to the

quietness of a set where sound is a very

important

feature I'd make up a lot of stuff

anyway and so would Eli we' just do the

scenes and whatever that intent was and

then but you did have to keep track of

it because you're going to Loop it

later there's an actor who lived in Rome

named Mickey Knox who lives in Rome

lived in Rome and Mickey they gave him

the job of the

dubbing I would sit at a a small moviola

and go over the film or each the speech

back and forth back and forth and had to

fit in what I adapted in English into

the lips with Eli and Clinton was easier

than the others because they only spoke

English and many times they was good

enough I spent a whole morning on one

line just two words in Italian there's a

big closeup of a God saying to prisoners

of war from the south and they're

playing while they're torturing Eli the

music is supposed to drown out the

screams at one point they start to cry

the musicians the line in Italian is

pfor which means

louder

PE well I couldn't get it in PE for has

two

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labials I was stuck on it until I came

back from lunch and I thought wait a

minute I got

it more

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feeling KNX work was very important and

very effective for this reason

I don't give a goddamn what they do in

Andersonville while I'm in charge the

sink must have been perfect otherwise

the American audience would look there

was no sink and immediately the picture

would be qualified as a poor

picture you see in this world there's

two kinds of people my

friend those are loaded

guns no you

di you dick the major problem that I've

always had in translating and adapting

scripts from Italian English is the

humor it's different American humor is

not like Italian humor in many many

cases I had to find the American humor

and fit it into the

dialogue see you soon I

IDI

idiots it's for

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you I didn't think I was funny in places

people quote to me one line I said all

the

time when you have to shoot shoot don't

talk I didn't think it was funny I think

I was just shot a man and I said you

wasted your time I'm going to shoot you

that's all but for some reason it it

turned out oddly and people took took

pleasure out of this

man is actually a trism of movies

especially action movies that less

dialogue is more and has more of an

impact

why yeah H yeah we're going for a ride

where clinty was always arguing with

Sergio for Less dialogue and

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you he thought that this guy should be

really silent not have any Exposition

whatsoever keep his comments to almost

fragmentary sentences that's right

$2,000 yeah what little dialogue Clint

has tends to be very

memorable for example in Good Bad and

the Ugly when when he finally comments

on the Carnage of the big battle at the

bridge never seen so many men wasted so

badly that really zings out at you

because he has up to now made no comment

about the stupidity of the C conflict

hasn't said a word but when he finally

does speak that line it's very

potent a couple steps back I think in

good bad and ugly Clint's character is

sort of mysteriously darker than he is

in the others for example when he

decides to break up his partnership with

Eli there's no particular motive for

that he just up and does it

adios yeah maybe there's some backstory

we're not privy to but you know this

good scam they've got going it could go

on for a long time with it and it just

doesn't make much

sense on the other hand he's also one

the later passages of the movie more

Humane than than he's been in his

previous movies I

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think he's going a little bit more

toward Humanity on the one hand a little

bit more toward of kind of enigmatic

Darkness on the

other there's a little bit more range in

this character

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look

go

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go hey go go come

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