SHORT TAKES : Eastwood Recalls Sergio Leone

Clint Eastwood, paying tribute to Sergio Leone at a film festival, said one of the joys of working with the late Italian director in the 1960s was that he lacked Hollywood’s ingrained self-censorship.

“Sergio was not afraid to attack things that were forbidden,” Eastwood said. “For instance, you couldn’t show a character getting shot. Sergio didn’t know that, so he went ahead and filmed it.”

The two met in 1963, when Eastwood accepted an offer to go to Italy and make “A Fistful of Dollars,” a Western modeled on Akira Kurosawa’s samurai movie, “Yojimbo.”

The only Italian word Eastwood knew was arrivederci , and the only English Leone knew was goodby , the actor told movie buffs Wednesday at the Sundance United States Film Festival. As a result, Eastwood said, “I just did my own thing, and Sergio went along with it.”

One of Leone’s trademarks was the extreme close-up, sometimes framing only a subject’s eyes.

“Actors love those tight shots,” said Eastwood, 59. “But I was younger then. Now I tell them to take the camera back.”