Will Hollywood ever come up with another Clint Eastwood?

Christian Toto wonders how and where Hollywood will ever come up with another Clint Eastwood. He gives a quick history of Eastwood’s career as an actor, then as a director. Now, at age 89,

Enter “Richard Jewell.”

The upcoming film tracks the heroic security guard accused by the both the press and the FBI of planting a bomb during the 1996 Summer Olympics. In reality his quick instincts likely saved lives. The explosion killed one person and hurt dozens. That toll could have been worse had Jewell not hustled many out of the area after he discovered the bomb.

…The real Jewell, who died at the age of 44 in 2007, sued CNN, the New York Post and NBC for its biased coverage. The Eastwood movie’s trailer, in turn, all but shouts “Fake News.” The film, based on the Vanity Fair article “The Ballad of Richard Jewell,” stars Paul Walter Hauser as the title character.

Would any other American filmmaker tackle this subject, zeroing in on the media along the way? Studios are far more eager to cheer the press on screen despite the public’s crumbling trust in the institution.

Toto takes a look at a couple of would-be Eastwood successors, and then concludes,

He makes movies for the Everyman, regardless of the industry’s progressive winds. He’s an American original, a star whose connection with the movie-going public endures.

There’s no one in Hollywood who comes close to his ever-expanding legacy.

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