Trivia / The Outlaw Josey Wales

• Actor-Shared Background: Both Geraldine Keams and her character, Moonlight, are Navajo (although how Lone Watie, who is Cherokee, is supposed to understand her speaking Navajo is not explained).
• Completely Different Title:
  • In Sweden, the film was called "Mannen utanför lagen", meaning "The Man Outside the Law".
  • The German title was "Der Texaner", meaning "The Texan".
  • Denmark: An Eye for an Eye
  • Finland: Outlawed
  • Greece: Avenger Outlawed
  • Italy: The Ice-Eyed Texan
  • Japan: Outlaw
  • Spain: The Outlaw
  • Taiwan: Western Law Enforcer
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Clint Eastwood named this as his favourite film of his own.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Josey Wales is 32 years old in the novel, while Clint Eastwood was 46 at the time of the film's release.
  • Laura Lee is 22 years old in the novel, while Sondra Locke was 32 at the time of the film's release.
• Directed by Cast Member: One of the most controversial instances of this trope ever. Clint Eastwood starred in and directed the movie, but was originally only supposed to do the former; this movie came right about the time he decided he wasn't too hot on working under other directors, resulting in original director Philip Kaufman being fired at his insistance.
• Real-Life Relative: Clint's son Kyle Eastwood played Josey's son.
• Romance on the Set: Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke became an item while making this movie.
• Those Two Actors: This was the first of six movies that Clint Eastwood made with Sondra Locke.
• Uncredited Role: Michael Cimino and Phillip Kaufman worked on the script uncredited.
• Wag the Director: In a weird way, the Trope Maker. Early in filming, Clint Eastwood decided that he could do a better job than the original director, Philip Kaufman, was doing. He therefore arranged for Kaufman to be fired and took over the directorial duties himself. This disgusted the Director's Guild of America enough that they created a new rule known as the "Eastwood rule" stating that whenever a film's director is fired, their replacement has to be someone with no previous connections to the film, and also has to be a full DGA member with at least one film or TV credit to their name. This is why, nowadays, actors are forced to Wag the Director rather than just outright firing them and directing themselves. More commonly they just hire someone willing to take orders.
• What Could Have Been:
  • What would the film have been like had Phillip Kaufman not been fired from the director's chair?
  • After the movie, Eastwood had plans to develop the other books in the Josey Wales trilogy. The closest we got was Michael Parks' directing and starring in The Return of Josey Wales, which was based on the second Josey Wales book.

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