Actually on the third day of screenings for the 2003 New York Film Festival, and the sixth of twenty-six features,  Mystic River is the Main Attraction. Sunny if seasonably chilly at one o'clock, a whole hour before curtain time, there's excitement that can be felt and the line is already extended. Two, really, the short one for A-list Full Access Pass-holders, the much longer stand-by one for us peons with Limited Access hanging from lanyards. The Walter Reade Theater is mercifully big, and with so many in groups of two or three, a single seat is easy to find, next to a N.Y.-based Washington Post reporter.

Afterwards, there will be sharp differences of critical opinion on Mystic River -- such divergences as, observed Mark Twain, make for horse races -- but the jammed expectant audience sits quiet and engrossed, for there is no restless stirring even during a slowish quarter-hour about twenty minutes from the end at 137 minutes.

Excitement is then in the air, a felt crackling as lights go on, cameramen jostle to the orchestra area fronting the stage, and a small line materializes to file up the right-hand (stage left) steps. Applause as, our left to right, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Clint Eastwood, Marcia Gay Harden, novelist Dennis Lehane and scriptwriter Brian Helgeland ascend and take their seats, Robbins least formally dressed but only the film's director/co-producer wearing a tie and casual sports jacket.

Laurence Fishburne and next-door Juilliard School alumna Laura Linney do not attend, so there is a majority of actors who have also had success on the other side of the camera, directing. Fielding questions, they alternately take sips from water bottles, while a grey and gaunt-looking Eastwood prefers popping small bits into his mouth once in a while (peanuts? Sen-Sen? TicTac? licorice lozenges?). Taller than expected but not heavyset, Robbins leaves early -- Letterman calls -- but the Q&A is not all that long, anyway, so many upraised hands must go unrecognized.

Acknowledging great rapport among the cast, Eastwood implies that that situation fit in well with his minimalist directorial style. "I begged a lot," he laughs, "and I got the best cast in the world," to which Bacon adds that what "he got [were] the only three guys left who had their own hair."
Kidding about their boss' tough-guy image, Penn remarks that although several of them have themselves directed, "we grew up knowing who's in charge . . . [Pause, a significant look, and laughter]." Speaking about this theme of wearing multiple hats, Robbins adds that it is usually the actors who haven't ever directed but want to, who are the problem, whereas, for his own part, this was one of those irresistible rôles other people didn't think he should do.

Reportedly having optioned the Lehane best-seller immediately upon reading it, when directly confronted with why this particular novel, Eastwood drew laughs with a simple three-word "I liked it." (Elsewhere he has spoken of "a riveting story," of complex, interesting, defined characters who are "real people . . . under very tough circumstances," "participants [whose] lives have been altered many years after the fact.") Somewhat surprisingly, candidly, he further admitted to a longtime fascination with what he termed "the stealing of innocence, . . . of one's life, the most capital crime there is."

There is an indefinable filmic symbolism, some sort of communal involvement, in the closing Columbus Day scene (in which author Lehane appears briefly as a politician during the parade), but remarks about other possible implications were disappointingly naïve, even granted the spur-of-the-moment nature of the press-conference beast. For example, Eastwood planted seeds early on in volunteering that, just prior to that parade, otherwise cool, composed Annabeth's (Linney) sexually charged, aggressively pushy overtures to husband Jimmy (Penn) are somehow out of Lady Macbeth (and we do soon see all three wives, for the first and only time). Earlier, asked about the initial cross prominently center-screen on a leering sodomist's ring and balanced by the enormous final cross tattooed on Jimmy's muscular back, revealed only in that "Lady Macbeth" scene, he responded that such things had nothing to do with spiritual matters "but you can put it in there." 

Meaning what? And especially off-putting in light of the recent highly publicized Church scandal in Irish Boston, the film's setting. In any case, those New England autumns are fickle, and given Eastwood's insistence that shooting be done on location -- "as much a part of this as the actors.  I never considered any other." -- crew and cast were thankful that Mother Nature behaved well, providing just enough rain and falling leaves for authenticity.

The remaining three actors affirmed they had enjoyed good interplay with the community, working with and within it, and Harden even went up early to immerse herself in the feel of the place. The book and screen's East Buckingham, it was revealed, is actually a combination of aspects of four real neighborhoods.

Those present seemed to have enjoyed working with each other and with Eastwood -- Harden and Linney have previously appeared in films both starring and directed by him, Space Cowboys and Absolute Power, respectively.  Nearly at the conclusion of the short press session, Bacon spoke of the project as ideal for multiple actors, since "getting a script that has one good part is unusual, to get a script with three is astounding." But the director quickly expanded this company of three, for "young Brendan [Thomas Guiry] is another of the great parts in the movie, I think."

Other commitments pressed, Robbins is already gone, it's been a long week and promises to be a long day. Minus the photographers' blinding flash barrage that had ushered them in, but to applause and thank-you's, they leave. Followed by us.

While cameras are recording someone's vision of life, casts and crews make the magic of make-believe; and out there on the set, the Man With No Name Who Became Dirty Harry Callahan was Penn's "who's in charge." But it's hard to be absolute King at home, too, and Dina is waiting. Rather than on pintos and up the cloudy draw to Tucumcari hard by Diablo Cañon, in the back seat of a motorcar, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Eastwood, Jr. are driven east through smoggy air and concrete canyons.

(Photo © 2003 Warner Bros. Pictures. All Rights Reserved.)