The Day I Met Clint Eastwood

In a meeting my son calls awesome, we talked about what he called his antiwar films, the violence inherent in humanity, and why society is at odds with itself.

Clint Eastwood as the “Man with No Name” in a still from Sergio Leone’s 1966 masterpiece, the spaghetti Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

After watching “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” with my 13-year-old son two nights ago, I had to tell him, “You know, I interviewed Clint Eastwood . . . twice.” His reply? “Awesome!” And I have to admit, it was pretty awesome for me as well. It was January 2011, the same year my son was born, also, mercifully, the year the last U.S. soldiers left Iraq and the war officially ended. Eastwood was a spry 80 then, working on his latest picture, a film called “J. Edgar” starring Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover. We talked a lot about America’s wars, and how, in his words, it's hard not to think about the “poor slob” fighting for the other side. He’s called his bload-soaked 1976 Civil-War era Western, “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” an “antiwar” film, and much of his 2006 movie, “Letters from Iwo Jima,” tells the story of that epic World War II battle…