Clint Eastwood's Unforgivable Character Originally Asked For Much More Prosthetic Work

When asked in Yahoo! Entertainment interview about the change in Munny's finger count, Peoples attributed it to a choice by Eastwood himself. "Yeah, his nickname was 'Three Fingered Jack.' I never took it out of the script, so I think Clint probably didn't want to do that," the writer said. Peoples guesses most of Eastwood's changes were for practical reasons, including choosing not to have Munny with three fingers on one hand.

"I mean, it's a lot of work and it also takes a lot of time! I liked it because it wasn't usual, and I think people at the era were much more battered than we are now. They lived very physical lives, so it was about trying to get a sense of the era. But playing with a three-finger prosthetic would have been a workout, and Clint achieved the era vibe without it."

Munny's fingers weren't the only thing changed for simplicity.

"If you look at this script from 1984, you'll also see that there's a lot of snow in it, and I think he knew the snow would have made the film a more outlandish production than he didn't want to."

Screenwriters are often very used to their original scripts being significantly changed by the time the movie hits theaters, so it makes sense that Peoples didn't take the change very personally, especially considering given Eastwood's overall loyalty to the script. The movie is fantastic and it won a lot of awards, so I think Eastwood's decisions to keep the production simple were the right ones. It's not a flashy story, after all.