"[W]ith just an hour before he appeared on stage, it still hadn’t occurred to Eastwood to use an empty chair as a stand-in for the president."

Clint Eastwood reveals. He'd flown in just that morning, reassured the campaign that "everything I would say would be nice about Mitt Romney," took a nap in the hotel, and then began thinking about what his remarks would be. He came up with 3 points: “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job." But he didn't figure out exactly how he'd say it. He got to the convention site "just 15 or 20 minutes before I was scheduled to go on," went through security, said hi to Archbishop Dolan (who sought him out), and was taken to the backstage area to wait for the cue.

“There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down,” Eastwood said. “When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.”

He asked a stagehand to take it out to the lectern while he was being announced.
“The guy said, ‘You mean you want it at the podium?’ and I said, ‘No, just put it right there next to it.’”...

Originally, he was told he could speak for six or seven minutes, and right before he went on, he was asked to keep it to five, but he said, “When people are applauding so much, it takes you 10 minutes to say five minutes’ worth.”

Also, there were no signals or cues of any kind, so “when you’re out there, it’s kind of hard to tell how much time is going by.”

He also said he was aware he hesitated and stumbled a bit, but said “that’s what happens when you don’t have a written-out speech.”

He went back to the hotel, ate some room-service dinner, and went to bed — apparently without checking the TV or the internet and not knowing we were all talking about him. He's seen it now, and he says the media folk who disparaged him "are obviously on the left."

Beautiful! I'm glad he waited a week to say that. And that he said it to The Carmel Pine Cone.