Hollywood Flashback: When Clint Eastwood Saved the Day
The drama and intrigue of an attempt on a president’s life gripped moviegoers when In the Line of Fire debuted 31 years ago.
The thriller from director Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One) stars Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan, an aging Secret Service agent tormented over his inability to stop President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Frank finds himself in a battle of wits with a former CIA agent (John Malkovich) intent on killing the current president.
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Producer Jeff Apple was drawn to the idea of a Secret Service film based on a high school memory of seeing President Lyndon B. Johnson in person in Miami in 1965. “These guys jump out of the car with dark glasses and dark suits, and I was so amazed,” Apple tells The Hollywood Reporter.
During the early 1980s, he reached out to Robert Snow, then-deputy director of the Secret Service, who offered guidance and later helped provide access to White House filming locations. Apple enlisted scribe Jeff Maguire after a previous writer couldn’t crack it. Maguire remembers Dustin Hoffman, who was circling the project to star, suggesting the plot point involving JFK.
Shortly after a treatment was rejected by Disney as a potential TV movie starring Tom Selleck, the completed script spurred a bidding war and landed at Castle Rock for seven figures. Eastwood was immediately interested and during production stuck his neck out to help Maguire keep his job after Columbia brass wanted to add a big explosion at the end. “You won’t be having any more trouble from them,” Maguire recalls Eastwood assuring him.
Russo, who had a few supporting roles in studio films to her name, remembers that Eastwood was always supportive toward her but wasn’t necessarily given to small talk during the shoot. This was clear from the first moment that they met as the two co-stars were being driven to set.
“I’m the kind of person that has to fill every awkward moment with chatter,” the actress, who plays a fellow Secret Service agent and Eastwood’s love interest, says with a laugh. “I felt like I was in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He was a man of few words, literally sitting next to me. I’m thinking, ‘He’s not saying anything.’ I think he said, ‘Good morning.’ It was so uncomfortable, but that’s who he is. He wasn’t rude. He just doesn’t feel the need for chatter.”
Russo also remembers the pair coming up with an unusual agreement for their intimate onscreen moments. “Because we both loved garlic so much, we made a pact in the beginning of the film that we would both eat garlic,” she says of filming their bedroom scene. “That way we could cancel each other out.”
The film shot at real campaign events amid the Bush-Clinton presidential race, with the VFX team later altering the names on signs. Columbia released In the Line of Fire on July 9, 1993, and it collected $102 million ($222 million today). Not only did THR‘s review deem it a “superbly calibrated thriller,” but President Clinton became a big fan. It was the year’s seventh-highest-grossing picture and landed three Oscar noms, including ones for Maguire’s script and Malkovich’s performance.
The film’s themes gained renewed relevance with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. Says executive producer Gail Katz, “It reminded me of all the things we learned about how they shield the president, and [we saw] what they maybe did or didn’t do right.”
A version of this story first appeared in the July 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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