Speaking out for the first time since he did that weird chair thing at the Republican National Convention last week, Clint Eastwood, the former one-term mayor of Carmel, California, told his hometown paper the Carmel Pine Cone he had no idea what he was going to say right up to the moment he took to the stage — and beyond.

"They [the Romney campaign] vett (sic) most of the people," Eastwood said, "but I told them, 'You can't do that with me, because I don't know what I'm going to say.'"

Indeed, his remarks were vaguely "mapped" after a quick nap at his hotel room shortly before heading over to the convention. The "Invisible Obama" improv skit hadn't even occurred to him until he was backstage and about to go on.

"There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down," Eastwood told the paper. "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 then asked a befuddled stagehand to take the stool out and set it near the lectern.

Eastwood knows he went a bit long — "when you're out there, it's kind of hard to tell how much time is going by" — and that the bit became something of a laughingstock, but it was a resounding success nonetheless.

"President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," he said. "Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that's what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle."

[photo via AP]