CLINT TAKES A CHANCE 'BABY' NOT FOR OR AGAINST EUTHANASIA, JUST IN FAVOR OF DRAMA.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

For most artists, a career-crowning achievement is a singular work, arrived at through a combination of timing, luck and hard-won wisdom. Some of the greats never had one.

Clint Eastwood now has three. And the way he's going, we wouldn't write off the possibility of a fourth one.

Eastwood, who will turn 75 in May, started the ball rolling with his elegiac 1992 Western, ``Unforgiven,'' which won him Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. ``Mystic River,'' Eastwood's great American tragedy about grief, loyalty and love, arrived last year to much acclaim, winning Oscars for stars Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.

Now comes another dark drama, ``Million Dollar Baby,'' a father-daughter love story that is earning Eastwood more accolades - and some scorn. The movie has been nominated for seven Oscars, including nods for Eastwood as director and lead actor. But conservative pundits and activist groups are denouncing the film, saying its marketing masks a darker agenda.

And HERE'S WHERE YOU MIGHT WANT TO STOP READING if you haven't seen the film and plan to.

The movie tells the story of an aspiring female boxer, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), who convinces an old, gruff trainer named Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) to take her on. The two form a close bond, which, for Frankie, seems to ease the guilt (somewhat) he feels over his estrangement from his own grown daughter.

Maggie overcomes long odds and wins a shot at the title. But during the fight, a freak accident paralyzes her. Laid up in a hospital, she asks Frankie to help her die. Frankie agonizes over the decision. His priest tells him, ``If you do this thing, you'll be lost somewhere so deep you'll never find yourself again.''

Frankie ignores the advice. He believes he has no other choice. He disappears into the darkness and is never heard from again.

What happens to Frankie? Here Eastwood answers that question and talks about a variety of other topics, including the differences between storytelling and advocacy and why he decided to postpone a planned retirement from acting and star in ``Baby.''

Q: You're no stranger to having your movies interpreted in ways that suit people's agendas ...

A: And that's fine. That's the way it's supposed to be. People can say what they want.

Q: But with ``Million Dollar Baby,'' some feel you've crossed the line between storytelling and advocating what they call a ``pro-euthanasia agenda.''

A: Well, I've done a lot of shooting with .44 Magnums on the streets of San Francisco, but I wouldn't really advocate that.

Q: Back in the day, though, some said you were doing precisely that with the ``Dirty Harry'' movies.

A: They said I was advocating vigilantism, but that was just one guy with one point of view. It was a story, a police officer fantasy. But most police officers don't operate that way and can't operate that way, fortunately.

Q: Some people think that because Frankie makes a choice, the movie is telling you that this is the way it should be.

A: Initially Frankie tells Maggie, ``Absolutely not. Don't even think that way.'' That's his first reaction. But then it becomes tough stuff. And that's what dramas are made of since dramas were born, whether they were Shakespearean or Greek tragedies or whatever. You can't have an easy-road drama. There's no way to have a drama without conflict. And this is a very conflicting story and a very sad, touching story.

Q: Which is why you wanted to make it in the first place, right?

A: When I read it, I was terribly moved by it. And I thought if I could get that over to the screen, that would be nice. But getting back to what we were talking about earlier ... everything is speculative. I don't know what I'd do if I was faced with Maggie's situation. It probably wouldn't come out the same way. In fact, I'm quite sure it wouldn't. But nobody knows.

Everybody speculates what they'd do if a guy sticks a gun in their face in the parking lot. They like to dream that maybe they'd be John Wayne and take it away from them. But they'd probably take off all their jewelry and lay it on the ground. Again: You don't know how you're going to react until things happen.

It's the same thing with the pro-choice or pro-lifers. People make a lot of comments who have never been in that position and don't know what the circumstances are. You could do a million stories on that particular dilemma. But we are very judgmental right at the moment. And anybody who doesn't agree with you is almost like the enemy.

Q: Politically, the discourse these days doesn't leave much room for ambiguity. It's black and white, red and blue.

A: I think you're absolutely right. People can no longer have discussions of the pros and cons of things. Now everyone who doesn't agree with the other person is an idiot, and we see it in the politics of the country and some of these people - they don't make any allowances for the gray areas.

Q: Which are the most interesting areas for artists to explore.

A: Absolutely. But I listen to some of these guys on the radio, and you get these people on the left and the right, and the venom being spewed back and forth is really colossal. I think back over the years, it didn't seem to be that way. But maybe I'm nostalgic or forgetful of how things were.

Q: You've always dealt with themes of guilt and responsibility, and your last two films, ``Mystic River'' and ``Million Dollar Baby,'' have tackled these things through the prism of Catholicism. Does this signal some interest on your part in the church?

A: It's just coincidence. ``Mystic River'' had it because it was an Irish-Catholic neighborhood. Here, it isn't the church's dilemma. Our hero is having problems with his disappointments in life and plays antagonistic with the priest, but he's still going to Mass. He's still trying. He's just gotten kind of cynical about it. And the priest is a nice guy, and when push comes to shove and Frankie really needs solace, he ends up going back to him.

Q: And the priest tells him not to kill her. He says, ``If you do this, you'll be lost somewhere so deep you'll never find yourself again.''

A: What he says is emotional and spiritual, but it's not the church's dogma. It goes beyond the usual rhetoric. He's telling Frankie that if he goes through with this, he's going to be psychologically damaged forever.

Q: The priest doesn't sugarcoat the price Frankie would be paying. Which is why it's hard to see how anyone could think the movie is glamorizing or advocating euthanasia.

A: It's not a Kevorkian situation where it's a stranger he's helping. Frankie loves Maggie. He wants her to live, for selfish reasons. But she wants to die. That's the conflict.

Q: What do you think happens to Frankie at the end?

A: We don't know if he becomes that lost soul that the priest predicts or whether he goes on and has an existence somewhere. Morgan Freeman's letter, which turns out to be the essence of the whole film, doesn't make it clear. We just hope he has found some peace somewhere.

Q: It's heartbreaking, and all the more so, I think, by the fact that it's you playing the character. The audience brings its history of watching you with them to the movie. Since ``Unforgiven,'' you've been able - and willing - to play your age off the iconic image people have of you in their minds.

A: Getting old should be good for something. I've been there a long time, acting for over half a century. And once you get into your 70s, it rolls. You have the knowledge and experience, and you try to put it to good use. And you leave the running around to someone younger.

Q: Obviously you were working with a good director, but the acting Oscar nomination still had to come as something of a happy surprise.

A: (Laughs) Yeah, I was happy. It was fine. I can't say I'd be too blase about being nominated in that category. I haven't done a lot of the flash kind of stuff that sometimes attracts attention. I think that some characters demand that you reach deeper into yourself than others, and I reached as deep as I could reach with this character.

Q: Frankie would be a tough act to follow.

A: I had sort of made my mind up about retiring from the front side of the camera, but I came back on this one because the character and the inner conflicts were so great. It seemed like such a wonderful love story, a father-daughter kind of thing.

Q: And now you're going off to direct ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' about the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. What attracted you to that subject?

A: I've always been curious about the veterans of World War II. These people went through so much, and then they came back ... two of the men here had their lives wrecked by the whole thing, for different reasons. One fellow managed to get his life in order, but he never wanted to talk about it with his three children and his wife of 47 years; never wanted to talk about why he woke up crying in the middle of the night once or twice a week for the rest of his life.

Q: It sounds like another dark, demanding drama.

A: I've been going through a masochistic tendency lately for picking projects. (Laughs)

Q: Will you be taking your mom to the Oscars again?

A: She came with me in 1993, and she came with me last year along with my wife, Dina. And if she feels like she'd get a kick out of it, I'd love to bring her. We just celebrated her 96th birthday the other day. She's hanging in there pretty good.

Q: You're doing OK, too.

A: Well, thanks. I plan to keep on working until they throw me out.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com