There was a good decade-long stretch, from the 1970s into the 1980s, when Clint Eastwood was the most sought-after movie star in Hollywood. His name at the top of the cast sheet triggered an instant greenlight. There was just one catch: Eastwood developed his own material and made his movies through The Malpaso Company. The only time Eastwood loaned himself out after he'd become a cinema icon was for Wolfgang Petersen's crackerjack thriller "In the Line of Fire" — which paid off for everyone, as the movie was a box office smash and featured one of the star's finest performances.

As the 1980s approached, Eastwood was growing more and more interested in directing himself, but he still had a crowd-pleasing instinct that led him to make low-aiming comedies and actioners that he could entrus

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