You don't tell Clint Eastwood to stay on the teleprompter

Understandably annoyed that some shmuck from the campaign was asking him to run jokes by him minutes before a free performance, the perennial back-up Oscars host was now in my face, staring me down. “You want to get me angry right before I start the show?” (At that moment, I began to sympathize with the title character in Throw Momma From the Train.)…

In the end, my fears were not realized: the event went fine, Crystal edited the joke (final version: “Did you hear Rudy Giuliani told New Hampshire voters he roots for the Red Sox now? This is the worst idea since his combover!”), and we evaded a week’s worth of sensational news stories about a prominent Clinton supporter attacking Giuliani with ethnic jokes.

The point? Stars have minds of their own and can be difficult to control. If getting a 5’6” comic to modify his remarks before an event was this tough, imagine trying to tell stubborn, old Dirty Harry to stick to the Teleprompter.