High Plains Drifter - Production

Production

Under a joint production between Malpaso and Universal, the script was created by Ernest Tidyman, an acclaimed writer who had won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for The French Connection. Holes in the plot were filled in with black humor and allegory, influenced by Sergio Leone.

Eastwood scouted locations for filming in a pickup truck while driving alone through Oregon, Nevada, and California. He had an entire town built on the shores of Mono Lake for the project, as he considered the area "highly photogenic". Over 40 technicians and 10 construction workers built the town in 18 days using 150,000 feet of timber. Additional scenes were filmed at Reno, Nevada's Winnemucca Lake and California's Inyo National Forest. Eastwood filmed High Plains Drifter in sequence. Filming was completed in only six weeks.

Eastwood has noted that the graveyard set featured in the film's finale had tombstones reading "Sergio Leone" and "Don Siegel", intended as a humorous tribute to the two directors. The character of Marshal Duncan was played by the stuntman Buddy Van Horn, a long-time stunt coordinator for Clint Eastwood, in order to create some ambiguity as to whether he and the Stranger are one and the same. During an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Eastwood commented that earlier versions of the script made the Stranger the dead marshal's brother. He favored a less explicit and more supernatural interpretation, however, and excised the reference, although the Italian, Spanish, French and German dubbings restore it.