INNER EASTWOOD, VIA SCHICKEL.

Byline: Tom Nolan Special to the Daily News

Veteran film critic Richard Schickel admits there has been a lot of books about Clint Eastwood.

``But they're all kind of written out of clips, by people who didn't know him. So, I think he wanted a book like this to be done,'' the author smiles, referring to his recent book, ``Clint Eastwood'' (Knopf, 557 pages; $27.50).

``I guess you could say this: that from here on out, at least his biographers have an accurate book to steal from.''

Originally from Wisconsin, Schickel moved after college to New York for 30 years, where he reviewed and wrote about films, for Life magazine and then for Time. In the late '80s, he relocated to Los Angeles and began making movie-related documentaries, while continuing to review. He has offices in an unprepossessing building on Robertson Boulevard.

Sitting at his desk there, smoking a cigarette and stroking a wire-haired fox terrier, Richard Schickel, a husky man of 63, recalls how he first met Clint Eastwood casually around 1977 at the home of mutual friends. ``I think we liked each other,'' the critic says, ``but given the nature of our jobs, we were kind of careful.''

Schickel remembers being among those who initially were less than charmed by Clint Eastwood's early Sergio Leone-directed ``spaghetti westerns.'' ``Back in the '60s, I was more of a western traditionalist, I guess,'' he says. ``When I re-encountered those movies 10 or 15 years ago, I looked at them with entirely new eyes and said, `These are really wonderful films.' ''

Yet, it took awhile for Eastwood and his movies to win the writer over. The 1974 picture ``Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'' was a turning point, Schickel says. ``That's the first one, where I critically responded to him in a full way, where I said: `Ooh, this guy's good; this is interesting, what's he doing.' And the place where I think I made a critical commitment to him was `The Outlaw Josey Wales.' I thought, and still think, that was an outstanding western film; I put it on Time's 10-best list that year. And then I just sort of went along, you know. I thought `Escape From Alcatraz' was pretty damn good; I even thought the orangutan movies, (`Every Which Way but Loose,'' ``Any Which Way You Can''), were fun.'' Here's a guy who's doing much more than some other action hero, like Sly Stallone, say - someone who's going in a lot of different and interesting directions.''

The two men's acquaintance deepened when Eastwood agreed (for ``a pretty substantial contribution to charity'') to host a Schickel-produced television film about Gary Cooper and then when Schickel went to Canada to film an on-location documentary for Warner Bros., on the making of Eastwood's ``Unforgiven.'' By then, the critic was good enough friends with the star that he no longer felt it appropriate to review anymore Eastwood movies.

After learning that the actor-director turned down several offers to cooperate in the writing of an Eastwood biography, Schickel suggested he write such a book. ``And he agreed to it,'' Schickel says. ``He agreed in the course of one little lunch on the set of `In the Line of Fire.''

The suggestion came at a propitious moment, Schickel figures: `` `Unforgiven' was about to become the Oscar-winning thing that it was. And I suspect Clint - about 62 then - was thinking about summing up, a little bit?''

His subject participated in the three-year project to a surprising degree, says Schickel, through a great many in-person and telephone interviews. ``He really made himself incredibly available.'' There were no restrictions placed on the writer's researches. Eastwood had only the right to read and approve his own quotes, a right he felt no need to exercise.

Still, says Schickel (whose 13 previous books include works on Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Walt Disney, Cary Grant and Marlon Brando), it was sometimes tricky broaching certain subjects with his willing, but instinctively discreet, interviewee.

``It's difficult, because you're balancing a lot of needs. You're balancing his desire for privacy vs. his desire to get on the record. So, that leads to certain moments where there are pauses in the conversation, let's put it that way. But generally speaking, he would eventually answer the question - maybe two interviews later, you know, after he'd thought it over a little bit?''

Eastwood must have taken comfort from his biographer's reluctance to poke unduly into personal matters. ``I'm certainly not a gossip reporter,'' Schickel says. ``I think I'm not a very prying human being. I sort of feel like: live and let live.'' He did not attempt to speak with Eastwood's first wife (``Somehow I didn't think that was appropriate;'') and when former Eastwood intimate Sondra Locke didn't respond to his request for an interview, Schickel did not pursue the matter.

Given Eastwood's own natural reticence, Richard Schickel thinks the actor was rather frank with him. ``I think he was as open as he could be. I think he's a man who respects other people's privacy. You know that there were quite a few romantic entanglements of one kind or another, but he's not gonna name names particularly. He was pretty open about what happened with his first marriage, takes his full share of blame for it. I think ultimately, he was very open about his side of the story with Sondra Locke. In fact, I would say that in this book, for the first time, surface his feelings about that and his rather detailed recollections of the relationship and what led to its dissolution.''

Did the writer find Eastwood to be articulate about such matters? ``He is and he isn't,'' says Schickel, ``like all of us. I would not say that Clint is a great anecdotalist, the way some English actors are. I actually used to know Richard Burton a little bit in New York, when he was running in `Camelot,' and ... was he charming. He'd tell you these great stories, about famous actors he'd worked with and so on. But end of the day, you realized that was like a wall that was protecting you from any intimate knowledge of Richard Burton. And Clint is not like that. He doesn't have a wall of anecdotes.''

The long-term nature of the project worked in the writer's favor, Schickel says. ``People who just go and interview Clint, prior to the release of one of his movies - I don't think they get an awful lot. I was lucky, I could kind of circle back and say, `Well, I'll return to this on the next interview,' or the one after that. A kind of accretion happened there.''

Clint Eastwood emerges in Richard Schickel's book, as an instinctively intelligent man with a dry, ironic humor; a director understandably attuned to the needs of actors, whose on-set temper is displayed, only when the calm of his work is disturbed.

``He's essentially a nice man,'' Schickel concludes. ``He's always been a nice guy. `Dirty Harry' really is acting, you know; he's not that man - except maybe for the lonely parts, that curious isolation that he has.

``I think that's a big theme in Clint's work. There's not been a lot of women in his movies; prior to `Bridges (of Madison County),' man-and-woman has all been kind of perfunctory. Nor are his movies much heavily into male bonding, in the Howard Hawks sort of way. There is that curious sense of isolation, which again is I think why people think of him as enigmatic. But I think he's more isolated than enigmatic.''

Eastwood read the work in bound galleys and, Schickel says, ``He had no comment, except to say he was pleased to be associated with it.'' The actor has appeared with Schickel recently on PBS' ``The Charlie Rose Show'' and on National Public Radio's ``Fresh Air.''

Schickel feels his Eastwood book is very accurate and beyond that: ``I feel it's as good a sympathetic portrait as anybody will ever write on Clint, 'cause I don't think he's ever gonna do this again. And I don't think he's gonna sit down and write his own book, at any point. I mean, he's just not an `as told to' sort of a fellow, you know?''

The writer chuckles with obvious approval. ``I mean, Clint - he's not in the modern confessional mold, exactly. I don't think Clint's ever gonna turn up on Oprah!''

Richard Schickel laughs out loud at the very idea.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) ``I think he wanted a book like this to be done,'' says ``Clint Eastwood'' author Richard Schickel.

(2) The suggestion of a Clint Eastwood biography came at a propitious moment, Richard Schickel figures: `` `Unforgiven' was about to become the Oscar-winning thing that it was.''