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One of Austria’s leading newspapers has severed ties with a Hollywood reporter after admitting she repackaged old comments by Clint Eastwood and presented them as a supposedly exclusive interview.
In an apparent journalistic coup, the Vienna-based daily Kurier published a Q&A with Eastwood last Friday and it was picked up around the world over the weekend due to the Oscar-winning actor’s outspoken criticism of Hollywood’s “era of remakes and franchises”.
On Monday, however, Eastwood released a statement saying he had never spoken to Kurier’s interviewer and that the exchange was “entirely phoney”.
In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, Kurier’s editor, Martin Gebhart, denied that the quotes had been made up, saying the author of the article had “convincingly explained that she had spoken to Eastwood 18 times at round tables,” referring to group interviews commonly held at festivals.
However, Gebhart conceded that presenting material from several such encounters with the press as an exclusive interview did not comply with his newspaper’s “quality standards”, and he said it would not work with the reporter in the future.
“Even though no quotes were fabricated, the interviews are documented, and the accusation of fabrication can be refuted, we will no longer work with the author in the future because transparency and our strict editorial standards are paramount to us,” he said.
The author of the piece, Elisabeth Sereda, a US-based Austrian journalist, has regularly written on Hollywood celebrities for Kurier and other Austrian media. A member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, she is listed as a voting member on the website of the Golden Globes.
In recent months, Kurier has published Sereda-bylined interviews with several high-profile actors including Pamela Anderson, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jude Law.
Sources close to Law said no interview between the British actor and the Austrian journalist had taken place and that the only time Kurier could have obtained direct quotes would have been at a press conference at the Toronto international film festival last year where Law spoke to promote his survival thriller Eden.
Sereda has been approached by the Guardian for comment.
Intended to mark Eastwood’s 95th birthday, the quotes featured in the Kurier piece attracted worldwide attention.
“I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote films like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea,” the actor was quoted as saying. “My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home.”
In his statement to the trade publication Deadline, Eastwood said: “I thought I would set the record straight. I can confirm I’ve turned 95. I can also confirm that I never gave an interview to an Austrian publication called Kurier, or any other writer in recent weeks, and that the interview is entirely phoney.”
