"Million Dollar Baby" poised for a knockout

NEW YORK — At 74, Clint Eastwood says he still gets excited when he finds a good story. "I may not jump as high," he says, settling into a suite at the Hotel Pierre on Fifth Avenue, "but I still feel like jumping."

The current cause for his joy is "Million Dollar Baby," a movie he didn't even know he was going to make when he attended February's Oscar show as a Best Director nominee for "Mystic River."

If early reviews are an indication, he'll be back in his tux next February — this time as a nominee for both Best Director and Best Actor. "Million Dollar Baby," adapted from a book of short stories by former boxing "cut man" F.X. Toole, has received gushing reviews. Roger Ebert has declared it a "masterpiece."

"It's not a boxing story"

The movie focuses on the father-daughter relationship that develops between Eastwood's Frankie Dunn, a world-weary Los Angeles boxing trainer, and Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), the 33-year-old waitress he reluctantly agrees to train for a career as a pro boxer.

If you have the image of a female "Rocky," you're thinking like the studios that kept turning the project down. "I told them, 'It's not a boxing story, it's all about hopes and dreams,' " Eastwood said on a recent stop in New York for the "Million Dollar Baby" premiere at the Museum of Modern Art.

"It's a love story and the boxing is just there."

While boxing clichés are never far away, Eastwood refuses to embrace them while holding his focus on what is easily the most intimate human drama of his career and his most intimate performance.

In the late scenes where Frankie's love for Maggie is tested, we see Eastwood at a level of vulnerability he had never previously approached.

The third act of "Million Dollar Baby" is going to be the talk of this Oscar season and is likely to put both Eastwood and Swank on the lead-actor ballots.

Financial obstacles

Eastwood's filmmaking efficiency has long made him a subject of awe among other filmmakers and studio executives. He makes his pictures quickly (this one took 38 days) and with bargain budgets (this one cost about $30 million).

Yet, when he and producer Al Ruddy were shopping "Million Dollar Baby" to the studios, they got blank looks where they should have gotten blank checks.

Eastwood said the same thing had happened with "Mystic River."

"People were saying, 'Please, bring us something,' then I bring them something and they say, 'Oh, no, not this.' "

When Warner Bros., Eastwood's handshake backers for the last three decades, balked at the "Million Dollar Baby" script, he said, "Well, I'm going to make it, whether I do it here or somewhere else."

That prompted the studio to pony up half the budget for the U.S. distribution rights. The rest came from indie production company Lakeshore Entertainment.