Van Horn Gets a Handle on Directing Clint Eastwood

Director Buddy Van Horn is two for two. Though separated by eight years, both of his films have been blockbusters.

His first, “Any Which Way You Can,” featuring Clint Eastwood and a boisterous orangutan named Clyde, grossed more than $63 million at the box office in 1980. His second, “The Dead Pool,” with Eastwood doing his fifth turn as Dirty Harry Callahan, has grossed nearly $30 million in its first 17 days.

Seated in his office on the shady north side of the Burbank Studios, the robust 6-foot-2 Van Horn nestled a mug of coffee between both hands as he considered his current success.

“People have asked whether there was any pressure in either duplicating the success of my first picture or the popularity of the previous ‘Harry’ films,” Van Horn said. “There wasn’t really. I approached ‘The Dead Pool’ like any other job I had to do.”

As with “Which Way,” which was itself a sequel to Eastwood’s “Every Which Way but Loose,” Van Horn did not campaign for the opportunity to direct.

“Clint just said, ‘Have a look at the script. If you like it, you can direct it,’ ” Van Horn said. “I liked it.”

Van Horn, a stunt coordinator and second-unit director, has worked with Eastwood on 21 films since 1968. He has staged complex, risky sequences for Eastwood’s action-oriented films and he had the advantage of being well versed in Eastwood’s much-discussed, much-envied style of cost-efficient production.

“Buddy was always extremely well organized and did a very good job on the first film,” Eastwood said, in a phone interview. “We also share the same tastes, in terms of getting the story out there before the camera. Taste is an elusive kind of thing you really can’t explain to someone. It’s just there or it isn’t.”

Van Horn is aware that his close association with Eastwood has led some people to assume that he was merely the titular director on “The Dead Pool.”

“It’s not hard to imagine why,” Van Horn said. “Clint’s directed most of his own films in recent years. . . . So it seemed to me there was always that question: ‘What did (I) really do on “The Dead Pool” or on the previous film?’ But I think my influence is evident.”

Van Horn’s specialty, of course, is action. He started out in the early ‘50s as a rider and Western stuntman before becoming one of the industry’s leading stunt experts. Along the way, he worked with such screen legends as John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin and Gregory Peck.

Between films with Eastwood, Van Horn also found time to coordinate stunts for several other major productions, notably Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter.”

“The Dead Pool,” like the four previous Dirty Harry movies, is studded with action and pyrotechnics. Van Horn evenly counts them off: “car pursuits, collisions, shootouts, fistfights, explosives--just about anything you can think of.” And none attributable to process shots or optical effects.

“It was all done in front of the camera,” Van Horn said. “That’s the way I learned how to do it.”

As far as some major critics are concerned, Van Horn also distinguished himself with the performances. Syndicated critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel called the characters “eccentric” and “compelling.” Time magazine applauded the film’s “snazzy repartee.”

Eastwood has gotten the usual mix of critical praise and denigration that inevitably greets the tight-lipped, squinting, thug-bashing San Francisco cop first introduced in “Dirty Harry” in 1971 and reprised in “Magnum Force” (1973), “The Enforcer” (1976) and “Sudden Impact” (1983).

The one-term mayor of Carmel gave a more tongue-in-cheek performance in “The Dead Pool” than in any of his previous outings; he comes off as more of a feisty old warhorse than a civil vigilante. Though the shadings may be slightly different, the character is still vintage Harry to Van Horn, who acknowledges being an unabashed admirer.

“I like Harry. He’s a form of independence and responsibility you don’t see much anymore,” Van Horn said. “Yeah, he’s tough on crime, but he’s not some single-minded vigilante. There’s a lot more to it.”

Van Horn recalled the plots of “Magnum Force,” where Harry went against a gang of vigilante cops in his own department, and “Sudden Impact,” where he had to stop a gang rape victim who was methodically gunning down her assailants.

“What Harry’s about to me is justice,” Van Horn continued, “and in pursuit of justice he displays unwavering integrity. I think that’s what appeals to audiences most of all. I mean, shoot-’em-ups come in all sizes. There’s something about Harry that endures. But you also have to remember that Harry is a character, a little larger than life, whose exploits are related in a presumably entertaining way.

“My job on the picture was to make the whole thing entertaining.”

Van Horn said he declined directing offers after “Which Way” because of his indifference to the scripts offered, and is hoping that his current hit brings more promising material--with or without Eastwood as the star.