Director Clint Eastwood on American Sniper's 'Biggest Antiwar Statement' Gregg Kilday - The Hollywood Reporter
go to original January 25, 2015

From director Clint Eastwood comes “American Sniper,” starring Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

"The biggest antiwar statement any film" can make is to show "the fact of what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did," Clint Eastwood said at this weekend’s Producers Guild Award Nominees Breakfast, which took place at The Saban Theater in Beverly Hills.

The Warner Bros. film has become a flash point for heated debate since its wide release on Jan. 16, reeling in praise and sharp criticism for its portrayal of the Iraq War and Kyle, the decorated veteran.

"One of my favorite war movies that I’ve been involved with is Letters from Iwo Jima," Eastwood explained, "And that was about family, about being taken away from life, being sent someplace." He observed, "In World War II, everybody just sort of went home and got over it. Now there is some effort to help people through it. In Chris Kyle’s case no good deed went unpunished."

Eastwood further explained that as soon as he decided to make the film, he and the movie’s star Bradley Cooper first went to Texas to meet Kyle’s widow Tayla, “I thought I’d better meet the rest of the family and see what they looked like and that would probably dictate the casting and to see what Mrs. Kyle was like,” he said. “I went down there and met the mother and father and their grand-kids. It was of great value to [Bradley] because he could get into the history of the family and their feelings about the whole situation. It was a very pleasant experience from beginning to end.”

Read the rest at Yahoo! Movies

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