Relax Your Face, Clint Daniel Kennedy (bio) DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood. TIME: August 2005. SETTING: Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, a rural township nestled in the lush temperate woods of the Delaware River Valley. During autumn, the trees make a portrait of fire. Shares borders with New York and New Jersey. Largely blue-collar demographic, mostly white, though proximity to urban centers like Newark, Philadelphia, and New York City renders the place more diverse than one might expect. In a few years, the Recession and the opioid crisis, interlocked like a zipper’s teeth, will cut through Dingmans Ferry. Unemployment, ODs, and suicide will trend in the opposite direction of the market. But Dingmans Ferry doesn’t know that yet. [Fade in] SCENE: A group of teenagers, myself among them, arrives at a party at the local ballfields. ________ Clint Eastwood has a signature facial expression—this distant, squinting stare, his eyes like canyons, his mouth like a slash of lightning-scorched earth. The stare appears at some point whenever he’s acting on screen. Probably when he’s directing, too, given his no-nonsense approach to work. My grandfather, Vito Roselli, had a similar stare. And a temper. The faintest spark triggered both. He cut an imposing figure at 6′2″, 230, with a frame sculpted by years of youth boxing. My grandfather adored his large family. He loved when we congregated for holidays and birthdays. Occasionally, though, when we were all together—and, from a child’s perspective, happy—I’d catch him clenching his teeth, his eyes lost in the corner of a room. He spent his career with the FBI. Worked organized crime and fugitive cases. As a young agent, he was stationed in Mobile, Alabama. William Faulkner’s younger [End Page 21] brother, Murry, was his first partner. My grandfather was a gifted story teller. He’d recount tales of mobsters and professional bank robbers, and the means by which he and his partners had apprehended them. I remember one about this wiseguy. If someone owed him money and failed to pay, he’d have them held down while their hand was forced into a tank of piranhas. The Rosellis had come to Brooklyn from Bari, Italy. Like many Italian immigrants of the time, they had little money. My grandfather used to remind me how lucky I was. He didn’t spend his childhood playing in the woods; he’d had a job on his father’s ice truck. I picture him as the protagonist of an Eastwood film. He had the impressive stature, the ironic anti-establishment streak, and that brooding stare. He was a work-hard, no-excuses type. Believed in individual formidability and the American Dream. He would’ve been a perfect fit for the ninety-one-year-old auteur’s dusky mise en scène and sharp, minimalist compositions. Sometimes, my mom says I remind her of her father. I take her words as a compliment and a warning. My grandfather and Clint are of a shared generation. They were admitted to a mythic theater—one divided into castes within—which screened a cinematic version of America. I don’t want to be stuck in that theater. ________ CHARACTER NOTES: Earlier that day, prior to the party at the fields, I passed my driver’s test. I’m supposed to be staying at a friend’s house. I swore to my parents I wouldn’t take the car back out once I got there. It’s not that they don’t trust me; they fear the pervasive auto deaths in our area. A car accident had already claimed one of my wrestling teammates. But I’m the only one of my friends with a license. After more than a little peer pressure from my brother, friends, and the girl I liked, I agreed to drive everyone to the party. SCENE: Cars line the dirt lot. I park my old Chevy Cavalier, which my grandfather helped me buy. Country and pre–Auto-Tune rap emanate from stereos (“Didn’t come here to hear somethin thumpin from the city” / “Hey homie if ya feel me, tell them tricks that shot me that they missed they ain...