GQ June 2008 (SP)
Jun 6th, 2008 | By admin | Category: General Articles, magazinesI’ve added scans from from the Spain Issue of GQ (Thanks to Reve). The article is the same and some of the pics are the same as the March issue of the New York Times. I’ve added that article below for reading pleasure.
The Muckraker
FROM ROMANTIC COMEDY TO POLITICAL DIATRIBE, GEORGY CLOONEY HAS GONE THE WHOLE NINE YARDS.
BY LYNN HIRSCHBERG
Your new film, ‘‘Leatherheads,’’ which you directed and star in, is about the early days of professional football. What attracted you to this project?
I like to direct. I consider myself more a director than an actor. And after ‘‘Good Night, and Good Luck’’ I realized that I was really good at juggling a hundred things at once. In fact, I needed to: when the hundred things stop, I get into trouble. After ‘‘Good Night,’’ every offer I got to direct was for an issue film. And I don’t want to be the ‘‘issues’’ guy. I want to be a director with longevity, so I picked ‘‘Leatherheads.’’ It was a complete departure — a romantic comedy with football.
Q: Did you watch a lot of romantic comedies to prepare?
A: I believe in stealing. I ripped off ‘‘His Girl Friday’’ and ‘‘The Philadelphia Story.’’ I was ripping off everything — I’ll send apology letters to everyone. I’ve sent an apology to Sydney Pollack already — there’s a scene I stole from ‘‘Absence of Malice’’ that is so close we had to change it.
Q: Did you play football as a kid growing up in Kentucky?
A: No. My school, which was a public school, was too small. You need 11 guys, and I think there were just 11 guys in my entire senior class. I played baseball — specifically, center field, which means that you are the captain of the outfield, which I liked.
Q: The movie is, in many ways, a celebration of small-town America. How important was it to you that you grew up in a small town?
A: It’s informed almost everything I’ve done. It was a great place to grow up because you could do anything you wanted to do. The town was our baby sitter. My dad was gone until late at night doing the news on local television, and my mom was working, too. I’d be at a friend’s house and I’d check in once in a while. It’s the only time in your life that you have intimate contact with how other people live. For instance, my family would say grace before every meal in a particular rhythm. At my buddy’s house, they did it double time because there were 12 kids and if you didn’t say grace fast enough, you didn’t eat.
Q: But you still wanted to leave Kentucky?
A: Badly. I was restless. My aunt Rosemary [the singer Rosemary Clooney] and her five kids lived in Beverly Hills, and I would hear of these exciting things they were doing. I remember that they went skiing in Switzerland. We didn’t live like that ever, and I was jealous. We may have been in show business, but it was down-and-dirty local TV. They were in Hollywood! I thought, That’s the life.
Q: Did your parents encourage you?
A: Absolutely not. My father and his sister went through a difficult time for many years when she was addicted to Percodan. My aunt’s addiction haunted me when I injured my back [during the making of ‘‘Syriana’’]. The doctors gave me a tub of Vicodin, but I didn’t take any. I thought, This is a bad time to decide to be a drug addict. It’s all timing: when I’m 80, I’m all for being a drug addict, but not now. Anyway, when I said I wanted to be an actor, my father told me: ‘‘This isn’t going to turn out well.’’ I’m glad I didn’t take his advice, but it was the right advice. Adversity is not a bad thing; I worked two times as hard to show them. And, even now, the feeling that this might not work out has not left me.
Q: Do you think doing lots and lots of television was helpful or hurtful for your movie career?
A: Absolutely helpful. Especially doing sitcoms. At a comedy show, everybody is involved in making the project better. You’re not just concerned with yourself. And then an audience comes in, and you learn to make instant decisions. And I learned about love scenes. I’ve probably played every romantic scene in television. I was on a show called ‘‘Sisters,’’ and I remember telling the producers what women want. The producers always wanted me to be the guy who said to the girl, ‘‘I’ll be waiting for you.’’ I told them that while all women say they want that guy, no woman wants that on the screen. I learned not to be the wuss. Mostly, TV gave me a chance at variety. I was lucky that I never became famous until ‘‘ER.’’ I wasn’t successful for years and years, and at the time, I hated that, but thank God I wasn’t a big hit on ‘‘The Facts of Life.’’ If that happens, no matter what your talent level, you never get out of that box.
Q: Did you try to get into movies?
A: Oh, yeah, but no one wanted to see me. I was making $40,000 an episode on some hour show, and I couldn’t get an audition for a two-line part in a film called ‘‘Guarding Tess.’’ During my first break from ‘‘ER,’’ I knew I had to do a movie. When ‘‘From Dusk Till Dawn’’ came around, I knew it was a lucky shot. I knew if I didn’t do it, the juggernaut would disappear.
Q: Did you always have it in the back of your mind to try and tackle more political films?
A: Yes, but nobody encourages you to do ‘‘Syriana.’’ They want you to be the glamorous guy. It was very hard to get ‘‘Syriana’’ made in 2004. The war in Iraq was popular when we were pitching the movie. People would only whisper that they agreed with me. Let’s be straightforward: there’s a huge part of the country that until 9/11 did not know the difference between an Israeli and an Arab. They thought the Middle East was just a bunch of guys with towels on their heads. ‘‘Syriana’’ was an attempt to show a world that’s still unclear to most Americans.
Q: You seem to like to make things hard on yourself.
A: If you’re successful, you feel more responsible for other issues. You think they’re going to take it away from you.
Q: That sounds so Catholic. Were you raised religiously?
A: I was an altar boy. I don’t consider myself Catholic anymore, but that religion remains deep in your soul. The last time I went to confession, I was 17. I’m 46 now, so I have some sins to confess [laughs]. Living in a small town, I knew the priest and the priest knew me. My friend Pete told me that he read in the Bible about a saint who put a pebble in his shoe for penance. So, I’d confess what I thought was important for the priest to hear, and then I’d fill my shoes with gravel and jump off the top of my bunk bed. I thought that covered it.
Q: Why don’t you run for elected office?
A: That would be a terrible idea. I would be the worst candidate. I’m supporting Barack Obama, and I don’t even think it’s a good idea for me to stump for him. They can pull out some old video of me saying something crazy, and then it suddenly becomes about defending something that I’ve said that has nothing to do with the campaign. I think Huckabee has been incredibly effective, but the least smart thing I’ve seen him do is stand there with Chuck Norris. It’s like, What — can’t you get your own fans? I’ve met Hillary several times, and I like her very much. I think the problem is sort of like this: I’m having a good year with ‘‘Michael Clayton,’’ but this is Daniel Day-Lewis’s year. He’s the actor that all actors are jealous of. I don’t have any understanding of that kind of acting. For me, it’s like a foreign object. And that’s Hillary and Obama.
Q: Hasn’t politics become more like Hollywood? So far, this election seems particularly camera-ready.
A: Since the Kennedy and Nixon debate, presidential campaigns have been Hollywood. You’re never going to vote for a candidate who has a high, squeaky voice. They consult on everything now: part your hair on the left because it’s more soothing; wear blue because it inspires confidence. Rather than win over the masses, they are trying to pick off demographics. That happens everywhere — in news, in movies and with candidates. It’s all the same.
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