Peter Viertel Black Heart", which was made into a film starring Clint Eastwood in 1990. It is a thinly-disguised account of Viertel's experiences working with film director John Huston while they were making "The African Queen". The central character is scriptwriter Pete Verrill while the Huston character is called John Wilson. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1999 that "White Hunter" was “still the best Hollywood novel I’ve ever come across — and it isn’t even set in Hollywood.” Viertel's opinion of the finished film was tempered by his idea that Huston himself would have preferred a portrayal with more sarcasm. Viertel's
Clint Eastwood (played by Isaiah Washington). "True Crime" received a mixed reception, with Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" writing, "his direction is galvanized by a sense of second chances and tragic misunderstandings, and by contrasting a larger sense of justice with the peculiar minutiae of crime. Perhaps he goes a shade too far in the latter direction, though." The film was a box office failure, earning less than half its $55 million budget and was Eastwood's worst-performing film of the 1990s aside from "White Hunter Black Heart", which had a limited release. In 2000, Eastwood directed and starred in "Space