"It's Nice To Have a Day Job To Fall Back On..."
George Timothy Clooney was born handsome on May 76, 1961 in Lexington, Kentucky. Clooney pursued acting after his cousin Miguel Ferrer found work in Hollywood, his first role being "Young Man carrying Barrel" in the TV mini-series "Centennial." He starred in two TV series titled E.R. "E/R" and "ER, " as well as "The Facts of Life", "Roseanne", and "Sisters," and films like Return of the Killer Tomatoes!
Success came with the second "ER" series, and Clooney parlayed that success into a film career that basically sucked. Finally, after choosing to star in Batman & Robin, (which he's always joked "tanked the franchise" and would be the one film mentioned in his obituary) Clooney started picking the roles he took on seriously, and collaborating with interesting directors like Steve Soderbergh (Out of Sight), David O. Russell (Three Kings), the Coen Brothers (O Brother, Where Are Thou?) and Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line). Those roles led others to take Clooney seriously, and his string of films with producing partner Soderbergh for their Section Eight films raised his casting profile to the point where he could play something beyond "Leading Man." That he was a male lead that could make fun of himself helped. After several films, Soderbergh and Clooney's team-effort splintered and Clooney formed his own production company with writer-director-producer Grant Henslov, Smokehouse Pictures, in 2006.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) Chuck Barris' fictionalized auto-biography (only Barris would come up with something like that) was written in 1984, and was such a weird and "zany" (one of Barris' favorite words) read that perhaps only a script-writer of the likes of Charlie Kaufman could do the adaptation any sort of justice. Kaufman's script had been hanging around for awhile, but was stuck in "development hell" until Clooney showed up and top-lined it with industry friends...and one big casting chance. Sam Rockwell had been acting for several years, but his biggest roles were in such films as Galaxy Quest, The Green Mile and Charlie's Angels. But, Clooney met Rockwell while the two were performing in the Russo Brothers' Welcome to Collinwood and Clooney's version of Barris was born. Rockwell's Barris is an outlier—not handsome, not slick, and a bit of a slacker-doofus—but only Barris would think that such a person could be a spy or a hit-man, rather than the most noticeable person in the room. It helped that Clooney could off-set Rockwell's relative newcomer status with well-established friends—Brad Pitt and Matt Damon cameo as two bachelors who don't get picked on a "Dating Game" episode. The movie didn't do much business at the box office and one of its more vocal critics was Charlie Kaufman, but Clooney ran a disciplined shoot and his bankability allowed him to successfully negotiate directing projects.
Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) The story of news journalism during the McCarthy years, specifically the journalism of "The Champagne Network" (as it was known), CBS. Television was still in its "golden age" trying to make up its cathode ray tube whether it was going to be an innovative teaching device, or a piece of furniture to be stared at while sitting on the couch eating Dorito's. Now that we know the end of that struggle, we can look back with nostalgia when TV reporting was forthright and not at the behest of lawyers. CBS is still leading the charge of Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and his producer Fred Friendly (Clooney) as "the Red Scare" is starting to penetrate "Black Rock" with the political theatrics of Sen. Joe McCarthy. As much as Murrow wants to do a report exposing the junior Senator's name-calling and witch-hunting, he's getting pressure from CBS Prez William Paley (Frank Langella) that when Murrow is challenging power, he's risking the wrath of the very people who grant CBS a broadcasting license. It's the money vs. power argument, and although Murrow wins his battles, he'll ultimately lose the war for the soul of television. Clooney films in black-and-white with a meticulously chosen cast (Jeff Daniels, Patricia Clarkson, Robert Downey Jr.) and one interesting personal choice is to punctuate and book-mark sequences with light jazz songs being recorded by Dianne Reeves.
Leatherheads (2008) One wonders why Clooney wanted to make this movie, as it is such a combination of a throw-back and a "Hail Mary" pass. The script had been on the sidelines for seventeen years before he had seen it and was attracted to it and wanted to make it with Hentslov. He decided that he wanted to make it more of a screwball comedy, extensively re-written by Clooney and screenwriter Paul Attanasio. A screwball comedy about the early days of professional football—when most people only cared about college football—before money and television conspired to dethrone baseball as the Nation's pastime. The resulting story combines a tale that embraces breaking rules—Clooney's character "Dodge" Connelly is resistant to the formalizing what's allowed in play—and the acquiring of a star college player (John Krasinski), a former war hero, whose actions in combat are brought into question by a reporter (Renée Zellweger), romantically involved with both of them. The messages seem as muddy as the field on which the final game is played on, which makes for an oddly unsatisfying film.
The Ides of March (2011) It started out as a play by Beau Willimon called "Farragut North," and was picked up by Clooney's Smokehouse Pictures and other production teams. The cast is impeccable in a story about an idealistic junior campaign manager (Ryan Gosling) working for a governor running in the Presidential primaries on the Democrat side. That candidate, Mike Morris (Clooney) talks a good game, always presenting a rational pragmatic argument. Gosling's worker is offered a position with the opposing candidate by that candidate's campaign manager (Paul Giamatti), but Meyers refuses, even though a key strategy for winning the primary is given to him. Gosling's boss (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is incensed that Gosling took the meeting with the opposition, but, using Gosling's tip, plans to use a similar strategy to win the primary. Morris refuses to do so, wanting to run a clean campaign. But, it isn't so clean as Gosling learns that Morris has had an affair with a campaign intern (Evan Rachel Wood), whom he becomes involved with. Gosling becomes conflicted and ends up questioning the candidate, his own loyalty, and the ideals with which he started his work in politics. The "Julius Caesar" aspect is underplayed, but the internal squabbling and conflicted strategies can't help but remind one of Shakespeare's play, set in the time of televised power-grabs. Timely, complicated and apt, The Ides of March has a sense of morality, but it is nowhere in sight.
The Monuments Men (2014) Based on a real story of World War II, the story tracks the story of seven Allies, who go into the war zone while the battles are still raging, trying to recover art stolen by the Nazis during their invasions. With a cast featuring Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balaban, and Cate Blanchett, it is episodic and a bit scattered, with stories about efforts to locate single pieces of art and a couple of Nazi mines containing thousands of pieces. There is something oddly quixotic about the mission, trying to preserve beautiful aspects of civilization, while all around men are dying, but the story works hard to make its case that it is all worth it. As such, it's one of the strangest war movies ever made, especially as the mission is to preserve rather than to destroy. And the team of out-of-place experts, played by such an eclectic cast is superb.
Suburbicon (2017) Based on an early Coen Brothers script that had gone through nearly three decades of re-writes without being produced (but bears similarities to their The Man Who Wasn't There), Suburbicon is saying something about the veneer of American normalcy and how it's just a canard. Matt Damon stars as a 1950's suburbanite, living in a development called "Suburbicon" that has just experienced its first move-in by an African-American family. The reaction is somewhat civil, but behind closed doors—and in neighborhood association meetings—the mood is decidedly ugly. Meanwhile, Gardner Lodge (Damon's character) lives with his wife Rose (Julianne Moore)—who's confined to a wheelchair—and their son, Nicky (Noah Jupe). One night, while Rose's ambulatory twin, Margaret (also Moore), is visiting, they have a home invasion that results in Rose's death. Gardner has engineered the whole thing (shades of Fargo), attracting the attention of an insurance investigator (Oscar Isaac), who attempts to blackmail Gardner. The whole thing is an allegory about the slick veneer of civility in suburbia and how the privileged will eventually eat their own. It doesn't quite work, as it's not black enough to be a comedy and wears its sanctimoniousness on the short-sleeves of its white-collar shirt. However much one may agree with those sentiments, it's heavy-handed and not entertaining.
The Midnight Sky (2020) Clooney's first directorial plunge into science fiction about the lone survivor (Clooney) of a nuclear catastrophe on Earth trying to warn one of our deep-space probes looking for an alternative planet to inhabit not to come home. Isolated in the Arctic—the last place not yet affected by the planet-covering radiation—and suffering from a fatal kidney disease, the scientist, Augustine Lofthouse, is the one who conceived of their mission, and feels responsible for giving the information about Earth's demise. But, his antenna system isn't powerful enough, so he must venture to a stronger communication system, accompanied by a stowaway at his base, the young girl Iris (Caoilinn Springall) to try and make contact before his death. The crew onboard the ship (Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, and Tiffany Boone) have their own issues to contend with while Lofthouse struggles to contact them. It is a melancholy look at the future, but still manages to communicate the message that human beings, properly motivated, are very resilient people.
The Tender Bar (2021) Based on J.R. Moehringer's memoir, The Tender Bar is Clooney's most relaxed and optimistic film in years and featuring the best performance Ben Affleck has done in quite some time. He plays Uncle Charlie to young JR (first Daniel Ranieri, and then Tye Sheridan),who moves into his grandfather's home when his single Mom (Lily Rabe) is kicked out of their house for back-rent. She's determined that JR goes to a prestigious East Coast college to become a lawyer, but JR catches the writing bug early on, and with the practical advice of Charlie, learns the necessities of life, lessons that he wouldn't learn from his dead-beat father. Funny and quick-witted (thanks to a good William Monahan script), Clooney doesn't swing for the fences here, with a less formal directing style (which doesn't call attention to itself) but is just as disciplined in his choices and encouraging the actors to step on each other's lines and make the film feel lived-in. The Tender Bar is extremely enjoyable and one of the best films to come out in its year. 
The Boys in the Boat (2023) Clooney had been trying off-and-on to make this for ten years until everything came together to make this version of the true story of the 1936 U.S. Olympic rowing team, out of the podunk University of Washington. One can see why he waited...the coach of the team (played by Joel Edgerton) waited...and experimented...and tried different combinations of rowers until he found the ones who gelled enough to make the fastest boat. Being a champion rower himself, he could see it—even if the material he had to work with were a bunch of down-on-their-luck students (like everybody else at the time of the Depression), who joined the crew just so they could have regular meals and a place to sleep.
Clooney pretty much sticks to the facts, and isn't too showy about the period detail, just keeping things sparse and slightly dilapidated. But, the film—which he clearly intended to be a film about triumphant underdogs—has a curious lack of urgency and of impossible odds stacked against them. It may have been one of those rare examples of putting a bit more melodrama into it to make it feel like more of a triumph.
No comments:
Post a Comment