The last time Clint Eastwood saw Sergio Leone was in 1988. His Charlie Parker biopic, Bird, had just been released in Italy, to great acclaim, and he was visiting Rome on a press tour. While he was there, the great director called him. They hadn’t seen each other in years, not since the late Sixties, and for a long while Eastwood thought they’d fallen out. After three lucrative Spaghetti Westerns, Eastwood had bowed out of a fourth collaboration, called Once Upon a Time in the West, fearing the horse-opera boom would bottom out and take his burgeoning career with it. … Continue reading Clint Eastwood: How the West Was Won