By BRUCE HEADLAM


CARMEL, California - Even at the age of 78, Clint Eastwood reaches out to shake your hand with a firmness that still intimidates .

He arrived for the interview at the Mission Ranch restaurant here as if he owned the place, and it didn’t make any difference that, in this case, he does.

It’s been 20 years since Mr.Eastwood was mayor of Carmel, but clearly he’s still the king around here. Unlike the taciturn characters he plays on screen, he’s voluble, chatting and laughing with his staff with a sharpness and enthusiasm that make him seem far younger than his age. Mr.Eastwood’s on familiar ground in another way. The Oscar nominations are coming up next month, and he has two films in contention,“Changeling,”with Angelina Jolie, and his newest,“Gran Torino,”being released this winter worldwide.

In “Gran Torino” Mr.Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran, retired Ford assembly line worker and fulltime bigot who sits on his porch in Detroit watching his block being taken over by Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia. When a gang pressures a teenager living next door (played by Bee Vang) into trying to steal Walt’s vintage Gran Torino automobile, the aging veteran gets pulled reluctantly, then violently, into the lives of his neighbors.

The Oscar talk - he has never won as an actor - is in the air. He claims not to care deeply about awards. When asked whom he makes films for, Mr.Eastwood said, “You’re looking at him.”Calculated or not, that stance seems to charm the Oscar voters, who have rewarded his movies richly in the past 15 years, including two best-picture awards.

“Gran Torino” is the 29th full-length movie Mr.Eastwood has directed, so perhaps it’s an accident of memory that his name first conjures up the impression of the squinty guy on a horse.

Mr.Eastwood bought the script for“Gran Torino”in February, then shot the movie over the summer at a guerrilla filmmaker’s pace, finishing in 32 days. The fast clip, Mr.Eastwood said, helped him with the Hmong members of the cast, most of whom had never acted and many of whom didn’t speak English.“I’d give them little pointers along the way, Acting 101,”he said.“And I move along at a rate that doesn’t give them too much of a chance to think.”

It also doesn’t give Mr.Eastwood too much time to worry about Hollywood. After shooting, he returned to Carmel, where he lives with his wife, Dina Ruiz, and manages his investments, including an ownership stake in the Pebble Beach golf course company. He worked with his two film editors in an 1862 farmhouse on the Mission property for a week or so. Between sessions he sat at the piano and picked out a score: he has written music, including full scores, for many of his films. He even sings one of his own melodies over the film’s final credits, his voice burned down to a whisper.

What“Gran Torino”shares with the“Dirty Harry”movies is the sheer force of its incorrectness. Walt expresses his disgust for the Hmong and just about every other racial group in a steady stream of obscenities.

For Mr.Eastwood the raw language is central to Walt’s story.“If he comes in and just befriends these people and doesn’t have any hurdles - any personal hurdles to overcome - that doesn’t make for a very interesting character,”he said. But Mr.Eastwood also confesses to some sympathy for Walt’s choice of words in a way sure to irk the Hollywood types who have finally embraced him despite his libertarian politics.

“A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness,”he said.“You’re showing a guy from a different generation. Show the way he talks. The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so” - here he paused and narrowed his eyes - “sensitive.”

More so than any other leading man, Mr.Eastwood has been willing to play his real age. At 78 he is perhaps thinner than he once was, but in that sinewy way that reveals strength as much as diminishes it. After Walt beats up one gang member - hey, he’s still Clint Eastwood - the next scene shows him out of breath, struggling to open his front door.

There were reports on the Internet that this would be his last role, a rumor he says is not necessarily true.

“Somebody asked what I’d do next, and I said I didn’t know how many roles there are for 78-year-old guys,”he said.“There’s nothing wrong with coming in to play the butler. But unless there’s a hurdle to get over, I’d rather just stay behind the camera.”