MOVIE

STORY BEHIND the

What can you tell me about High Plains Drifter? – W.

Clint Eastwood: actor, director...town-builder.

Cost-conscious bosses at Universal Pictures wanted to film the 1973 revenge Western, in which Eastwood stars as a mysterious gunfighter, in the studio’s back lot.

But the Dirty Harry actor, emboldened by the success of Play Misty For Me, his directorial debut, two years earlier had different ideas.

He insisted the film be shot on location, enlisting more than 50 technicians to construct an entire settlement, including 14 houses, a church and two-storey hotel, in the desert near Mono Lake, California.