In the Line of Fire

The bar at Clint Eastwood’s Mission Ranch is jumping. It’s a Friday night, long about 10, and the crowd is pressed against the piano bar where someone is doing an incredible impression of John Denver. No, take another look, it is John Denver, one of the celebrity golfers in town for the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

Eastwood, chairman of the golf tournament, is in another room in the restaurant having a meeting. Mission Ranch, the dairy-cum-inn that Eastwood bought in 1986 and restored, is Malpaso North, his business address when he’s not in Hollywood. And lately, he’s not in Hollywood as much as possible.

“It’s hard to pry Clint away [from Carmel] these days,” said his longtime publicist, Marco Barla, when he invited us to the ranch to talk to Eastwood about his latest movie, “Absolute Power.” “He’s always loved it up there, but now it’s his life.”

“Absolute Power,” based on David Baldacci’s bestseller about a cat burglar who witnesses a murder involving the U.S. president, is a misnomer by the book’s judgment. The film’s key players--the president (Gene Hackman), his cynical chief of staff (Judy Davis), his Secret Service henchmen (Scott Glenn, Dennis Haysbert) and the thief (Eastwood)--all have power, but nothing remotely absolute.

“I don’t think there is any such thing as absolute power, unless it’s a dictatorship or some sort of monarchy,” Eastwood says over a quiet lunch the day after the impromptu Denver concert. “In our government, the president is the closest thing to that, but the process has its checks and balances.”

“Absolute Power,” adapted by William Goldman in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock, is a political potboiler and a matching bookend for “In the Line of Fire,” the 1993 White House thriller Eastwood did for Castle Rock.

In that hit, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, Eastwood plays a veteran Secret Service agent trying to protect his president while being harassed by a would-be assassin. In “Absolute Power,” which he directs, he plays a John Robie-style cat burglar who goes after the president while harassing a pair of Secret Service assassins.

“It’s a what-if story,” Eastwood says. “What if the president is in this situation where a crime is committed and it gets out of control, and people start trying to cover it up? What if there’s a witness, but the witness is committing a crime when he sees what the president does? I think the intrigue is a lot of fun.”

It is suggested to Eastwood that most of us face something close to absolute power every day, from people working 9 to 5. Ever try to rush a clerk at the DMV? Run a tollbooth? Tell a cop what he can do with his ticket?

“It’s true, everybody has a certain amount of power,” he says. “It’s what you do with it. People abuse power all the time, and it’s the most unattractive thing on the planet. Sometimes they abuse it just because they have it. When I was in boot camp, we called that RA--regular Army. . . . Some guy would get an extra stripe and start snapping at everyone.

“I had an incident where I had to have my rifle inspected to get weekend liberty. It was this old beat-up M1, it had all kinds of nicks inside the barrel. I used lighter fluid to make it shine, and this guy with almost no rank at all looks down the barrel and says, ‘It looks like crap.’ I said, ‘Let me explain.’ He said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it. No pass for you.’ ”

Incidents like that, Eastwood says, produce the kind of rebellious attitude he romanticized in his “Dirty Harry” movies.

“I had dozens of piddling things like that in the Army,” he says. “That’s why everybody wants to be Sgt. Bilko.”

“Relative Power” would be a bad name for a thriller, but that, and a dose of star power, are a fair description of the good life Eastwood leads in Carmel. He’s lived here for more than three decades, before directing his first film (“Play Misty for Me”) in its hills in 1971, and long before becoming its one-term mayor in 1986.

That political turn, by the way, was a response to a power play, too, Eastwood says. He’d bought an old building in downtown Carmel, right next to his Hog’s Breath Inn restaurant, with plans to tear it down. The town council turned down his architectural plans for a replacement without explanation.

“I went before the council and said, ‘Don’t just turn it down; tell me what’s wrong with it; I’ll change it.’ They said, ‘We can’t do that, you’ll have to go through the process again.’ ”

Instead, Eastwood started a lawsuit, compelled the council to state its objections and got his building finished. Then he ran for mayor.

“I figured if they’re doing that kind of thing with me, and I have the wherewithal to take them on a bit, what are they doing to people who can’t afford to fight them?”

Eastwood has detractors in Carmel, and there were objections to his plans for Canada Woods, a hilltop golf course and home development passed last year that is due to be completed by the end of 1998. That’s just one of the things keeping him around more. He also has a new wife, 30-year-old Salinas TV personality Dina Ruiz, a new baby, daughter Morgan, and 18 golf courses within 20 minutes.

And he has the Mission Ranch for entertaining, as he did on Super Bowl Sunday. More than 200 people, mostly Eastwood’s Carmel friends, but a few celebrities as well--Denver, James Woods, Barbra Streisand and James Brolin--packed into what they call the Little Barn to watch the Packers beat up on the Patriots.

“This is a nice affair, Clint,” someone else says.

“Yeah, this all turned out pretty nice, didn’t it?” he says. “Everyone seems to be having a good time.”

What’s the old saying? Life begins at 40? How about 66?

“It begins whenever you want it to,” Eastwood says.

If you have the power.