Clint Eastwood is famous for playing tough guys who don’t take kindly to aggression (and, occasionally, nice guys who just want to watch sunsets). His son Scott, meanwhile, once almost got into a real fight. In a new interview with Insider, the younger Eastwood recalls filming the 2014 WWII film Fury, from future Suicide Squad director David Ayer. At one point things got so febrile between he and co-star Shia LaBeouf that star Brad Pitt had to break it up.
Eastwood had a small role as a sergeant who at one point hitches a ride with our heroes in their tank. The script called for Eastwood to spit inside the vehicle, but LaBeouf thought he was being genuinely disrespectful. One thing led to another and the two came to loggerheads.
“[LaBeouf] got mad at me and it turned into a volatile moment that Brad Pitt ultimately got in the middle of,” Eastwood told Insider.
Eastwood added that he doesn’t believe actors should go so Method that you enrage your co-workers. “I never think your process as an actor should ever hinder how people are treated on set,” he said. “It should always enhance the production, not take away and put people in a situation where it’s a shitty work environment or you’re rude or people have to be in an uncomfortable situation.”
This story has been told before. Pitt himself brought it up while talking to British GQ back in 2014:
“We were driving down the road, I’m in the turret, Shia is at the other turret, and Scott is on the back, spitting [chewing tobacco]. … And I’m starting to get pissed off, I’m starting to get hot, because this is our home, he’s disrespecting our home, you know? So I said, in the scene with the cameras rolling, ‘You’re going to clean that shit up.’ Shia clocks it, and you have to understand, we’ve been through severe boot camp already, we’ve been through a lot in this tank. Shia saw it and felt the same — he’s disrespecting our home. So Shia had the same reaction I did, and started having some words.”
After breaking up the fight, Pitt realized the error of their ways, saying, “when we got home at the end of the day and read the script, it said Scotty’s character is ‘chewing tobacco and spitting it on the back of the tank.’ He was just doing as instructed in the script! So we were the knobs in the end.”
(Via Insider and British GQ)