Clint Eastwood was making it up on the spot.
The acting legend said his instantly infamous 12-minute turn at the podium of the Republican National Convention was totally extemporaneous — and he came up with the idea of debating an empty chair just moments before he went on.
“It was supposed to be a contrast with the scripted speeches, because I’m Joe Citizen,” he told his local newspaper, the Carmel (Calif.) Pine Cone.
Mitt Romney had made a pitch last month for Eastwood to speak, but even as the actor/director left his Pebble Beach home for Tampa last week, campaign staff was trying — and failing — to find out what he would say that night.
“They vet most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me — because I don’t know what I’m going to say,’ ” Eastwood, 82, recalled.
But he had a general idea: “President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
“I had three points I wanted to make,” he said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job.”
“But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it,” he told the paper in his first public comments about his speech.
He conceded that even as a former mayor of Carmel, Calif., he hadn’t given many speeches.
“I really don’t know how to,” he admitted.
As a mayor, “I never gave speeches. I gave talks,” he said.
Eastwood arrived only 15 or 20 minutes before he was to go on and was taken to a green room where New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan found him to say hello.
He was waiting for his cue when inspiration struck.
“There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down,” he said. “When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea: I’ll just put the stool out there, and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.”
He acknowledged his speech was “very unorthodox” but said the crowd “really seemed to be enjoying themselves.”
He conceded he struggled to get his thoughts across, but “that’s what happens when you don’t have a written-out speech.”
He said he was asked to speak for five minutes, but “when people are applauding so much, it takes you 10 minutes to say five minutes’ worth.”
Afterward, he was unaware of the roasting his speech was getting from TV pundits because he was backstage getting thanked by Romney and Paul Ryan.
“They were very enthusiastic, and we were all laughing,” Eastwood said.
He dismissed the avalanche of media, Twitter and blogosphere criticism.
“Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know,” he said. “I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for the people in the middle.”