American actor and director Clint Eastwood is famous for his impressive work in a variety of roles over the years. The 91-year-old star has been acting since the 1950s and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Eastwood’s film, Cry Macho is currently the #6 most popular movie streaming on HBO Max.
Cry Macho came out in 2021, but it wasn’t without its setbacks. The story for the film comes from a novel of the same name by N. Richards Nash. Now Nash, being a screenwriter and playwright, originally moved to have the Western narrative as a screenplay. After receiving a swift rejection, Nash modified the story into a novel. Ultimately, Nash ended up selling the original screenplay to 20th Century Fox due to the novel’s high praise.
A similar situation happened with the iconic Coen Brothers’ Western, No Country for Old Men.
Years later, Cry Macho never got off the ground. The production tied several actors to film while in the development stages including Robert Mitchum, Pierce Brosnan, and Roy Scheider. Clint Eastwood initially received an offer to star in the film in the late 1990s, however, he turned it down. Fast forward to the early 2000s, and Cry Macho almost got off the ground featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nevertheless, the Terminator star ended up putting the production on hold so he could run for governor of California. Once the news came to light that Schwarzenegger had a child outside of his marriage, he decided to give up working on Cry Macho altogether.
Clint Eastwood takes on Cry Macho
Clint Eastwood circled back to the project in 2020. Eastwood would serve as lead actor, producer, and director for the film. He brought his writer friend and colleague Nick Schenk along with him. Together, Eastwood and Schenk worked on popular films including Gran Torino and The Mule. Eastwood ran into his own problems during production such as delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, getting a 91-year-old man to ride a horse for the first time in 30 years made everyone a little nervous.
Luckily, Clint Eastwood and his team’s hard work on the film paid off. The story of Cry Macho follows the life of a retired one-time rodeo star named Mike (Clint Eastwood). Mike travels to Mexico City on a mission to locate the son of his former boss, Rafo (Eduardo Minett). When he arrives in Mexico City, Mike finds Rafo caught up in a life of crime and illegal cockfighting. Throughout the movie, the two men, young and old, form an unbreakable friendship. And to his surprise, Mike finds himself teaching Rafo what it means to be a good man.
Check out the official trailer for the 2021 American neo-Western film below.
