Gallery Update 08/11/08

Just did a large gallery update.  Included Adverts, Candids, Magazines, and more.  Click here to see the latest updates dated 08/11/08.  There’s five full pages of thumbs.

Randy Newman mentions George

Randy Newman, who worked on the Musical Score for Leatherheads, had this to say about working with George.

It’s a gratifying sideline with one glaring downside: “You have a boss. When he likes what you do, you’re a little puppy dog, and then the next day, you think he’s an idiot again.”

When scoring this year’s Leatherheads, Newman butted heads with director George Clooney. “I wanted to put strings over a shot of Renée Zellweger standing in a doorway,” he says. “It would have glamorized her, but Clooney had never directed a picture with a traditional score, and he was not comfortable with it. New directors somehow think it’s cheating to use music, as if they didn’t shoot the scene well.”

Leatherheads to be shown at Durban International FF

South Africa ’s longest running film festival, the Durban International Film Festival, has announced that its 29 th edition will take place from 23 July to 3 August 2008. Among the listing is George’s latest directing project Leatherheads. To read the full listing go to the DIFF official site.

Times and locations:

27 July-LEATHERHEADS PF – PANORAMA FEATURE
114′ USA 2OO8 22h15
Location: STER KINEKOR MUSGRAVE

and

30 July- LEATHERHEADS PF – PANORAMA FEATURE
21h15, 114′ USA 2OO8
Location: ELIZABETH SNEDDON THEATRE

Magazine: Hollywood Life Vol XIX No1 Spring 2008

George Clooney

The Hair, The Teeth, The Humor: Clooney’s winning trifecta is on full display here (the dyed coif is slicked to perfection) as Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly, a dapper, charming football hero looking for touchdowns – and love.

Lowdown: The film is set in rural Michigan in 1925, during the messy birth of the NFL. A pesky newswoman (Zellweger) is looking for a story at all costs. The playbook is full of love triangles, etiquette penalties, and one-up-man ship, with some awkward fumbling in very tight pants.

It’s all in the Details: The shape and make of the game ball was agonized over and tested via constant scrimmaging in the offices of the preproduction studios, while the uniforms were meticulously handmade and patterned after the original deal under the masterful tutelage of legendary costume designer Louise Frogley (Bull Durham, Traffic, Good Night, and Good Luck). To get their worn effect, the uniforms were repeatedly washed in 12 washing machines and dryers filled with hundreds of golf balls.

Look Out For: A breakout performance (he actually outshines Clooney at times!) by John Krasinski as Carter Rutherford, a war hero and fair-haired gridiron stud.

OCD: While Historical accuracy is usually pretty lax in the realm of comedy, art director Christa Munro (Erin Brockovich, Good Night, and Good Luck) insists, “We were absolutely dead on with everything, and part of it was because George wanted it that way.” She adds: “So instead of removing the light poles on the football fields at $35,000 a pop, and tearing down the cityscape behind the scoreboard , we just CG’d out the last 75 years.” As for the tight pants? “No Comment.”

Ky. museum to get Clooney’s ‘Leatherheads’ uniform

A Kentucky museum dedicated to George Clooney’s late aunt just wanted the actor’s helmet from the movie “Leatherheads.” Turns out, the museum for singer and actress Rosemary Clooney will get the leather headgear and the rest of the football uniform.

“This will be a nice addition,” curator Steve Henry said. “In the future we are hoping to accumulate at least one costume from each of his new movies.”

Clooney’s uniform will be placed among his aunt’s memorabilia. Henry said the new display at the Rosemary Clooney House Museum is scheduled to be unveiled June 7.

“We were at the premiere of ‘Leatherheads’ in March and were told the entire football costume, from the cleats and socks to the helmet we had originally asked for, was ours to have for the museum,” Henry told The Ledger Independent of Maysville.

George Clooney is a Kentucky native. He stars alongside Renee Zellweger in “Leatherheads,” a romantic comedy set in the world of 1920s professional football.

Henry, a former Kentucky lieutenant governor, and his wife, former Miss America Heather French Henry, bought and converted Rosemary Clooney’s house into a museum after she died.

Source: LINK

Disappearing act

To many the idea is preposterous, but George Clooney insists that audiences will eventually tire of his face. Hence his desire to move his career behind the camera, he tells Bob Tourtellotte

Ten years from now, George Clooney reckons people are going to be so sick of seeing him on movie screens that he may give up much of his acting career.

But don’t think Clooney, 46, the suave leading man in many blockbusters in a career spanning more than 20 years, is leaving Hollywood anytime soon. He is turning increasingly to directing.

Clooney says he is more successful than he ever dreamed he would be, most recently starring in last year’s Oscar-nominated drama Michael Clayton and the football comedy Leatherheads, which he also directed, and which opens in New Zealand next week. “Ten years from now, I imagine people will be fairly sick of seeing a lot of us who are on camera now,” Clooney says, “My hope is I’ll be directing more. That is my goal.”

Leatherheads, co-starring Renee Zellweger, marks his third film as a director after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.

Clooney said he may begin work on a fourth directing job, tentatively titled Suburbicon written by No Country for Old Men brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, at the end of this year.

“I like doing it. It’s really creative and fun and a place where I want to put most of my focus.”

It was roughly 10 years ago when Clooney first read a screenplay for Leatherheads. He was a popular television actor on hospital drama ER, but he had suffered through two poorly received movies in Batman and Robin and The Peacemaker. The turning point came in 1998 with a starring role in drama Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderbergh, that won over film critics and moviegoers.

It was Soderbergh who imagined Clooney in the lead role of Leatherheads. He plays Dodge Connelly, an aging star of professional football, circa 1925, whose looks and charm help him woo women but do little to keep his team on firm financial footing.

Just after Dodge calls it quits for lack of money, along comes college star and war hero Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski) to lure fans and put Dodge back in business.

They both fall for a woman reporter (Zellweger), but true to movie-style romance, only one can win in the game of love.

Unlike the political drama Good Night, and Good Luck and the legal thriller Michael Clayton - both nominated for the best film Oscar - Leatherheads is not going to win any awards.

But after acting in the oil and politics drama Syriana and last year’s serious-minded Clayton, Clooney (the actor) figured it was time to perform in a film that was fun. Clooney (the director) wanted to show he could make a comedy after proving his deft hand at drama.

“I needed to do something completely different or I was going to become the `issues director’,” Clooney said. “That sort of ends your career really quickly when the issues change.”

So, he “dusted off” the script he had read 10 years earlier and shaped Leatherheads into the type of comedy he wanted to make - light-hearted and certainly not issue-oriented.

Clooney says the toughest part of making the movie was acting and directing himself in the football scenes, because often the actor in him would be too bruised to go on, but the director in him knew he needed another take.

With his character required to feature in a number of physically demanding sequences, the was also keenly aware of the march of time.

“I’m 46. I realised if I don’t make this film now, I’m never going to do it,” Clooney said.

“I was also going to play football. And it hurt. The first day I got hit by a 21-year-old and it hurt.”

Clooney said the experience of directing a film and starring in the lead role had been an eye-opener that he was unlikely to repeat.

“I wouldn’t by design direct a film where I would play the lead ever again. It was a dumb move in some ways,” he said, citing the awkwardness of having to direct co-stars while starring in the same scene as them.

“It’s tricky because there’s an enormous amount of narcissism that comes into play,” Clooney said. “You’re breaking the trust between two actors particularly when you’re doing the lead and directing.

“If you and I are doing a scene together I’m not supposed to be judging you as an actor. While a lot of actors will suggest how to do something, in general it is the director who performs that role. So you’re breaking that trust.

“As an actor it’s easy because I know exactly what I need from a scene. But it’s embarrassing when you’re sitting across from Renee and she’s doing a fantastic job, but you know that the camera has come in too close, too soon and you have to say ‘Cut!’.”

But after a long career of mostly acting, he was doing what he wanted - directing.

“The truth is I’m infinitely more successful than I ever thought I would be,” he said. “I really didn’t think I was going to be in this position, so I get to push the envelope and do the things I want to do - for as long as they let me do it.”

LOWDOWN
Who: George Clooney, actor-director
Born: May 6, 1961, Lexington, Kentucky
Key roles: ER (1994); From Dusk Til Dawn (1996), Three Kings (1999), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Perfect Storm (2000), Oceans Eleven (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Oceans 12 (2004), Syriana (2005), Good Night, And Good Luck (2006), The Good German (2006), Oceans 13 (2007), Michael Clayton (2007)
Latest: Leatherheads opens May 29.TEN years from now, George Clooney reckons people are going to be so sick of seeing him on movie screens that he may give up much of his acting career.

4:59AM Thursday May 15, 2008
By Bob Tourtellotte
This story was found at: LINK

(Credit and Thanks to Merlin!)

Captain Clooney calls the shots

An AK-47 assault rifle hovers just centimetres from George Clooney’s head. The finger nervously twitching on the trigger-guard belongs to a teenage boy. One false move and it will be curtains for Clooney.

This isn’t a moment from the movies. This horrifying incident actually occurred earlier this year, when the 46-year-old actor-director was travelling through southern Sudan in his capacity as a UN messenger of peace and was stopped at an isolated checkpoint.

“When you go through these checkpoints, there are kids with AK-47s in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “They’re just young children, and they go through the car and take what they want.

“We hid all the tapes and stuff, but they held guns on us and stole what they could. It happens all the time. The problem wasn’t that they were out to get us from a political standpoint. It’s the fact that they’re 14-year-old kids with guns. It’s dangerous. Life is cheap there; I guess we took a bit of a risk.”

Clooney is no stranger to risk. When it comes to his career, his willingness to take a gamble has paid huge dividends.

Consider his two most recent projects, Michael Clayton and the coming Leatherheads, his third directorial outing.

The former saw him nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar, with co-star Tilda Swinton winning the Academy Award for best supporting actress, and yet the film would not have been made unless Clooney had been willing to take a punt. The script had languished in development for eight years and was to be directed by first-timer Tony Gilroy.

Similarly, with Leatherheads, a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of American football in the 1920s in which Clooney plays the male lead, he again showed courage.

The story had interested him for more than a decade and while several distinguished screenwriters — including Out of Sight’s Scott Frank, Quiz Show’s Paul Attanasio and True Crime’s Stephen Schiff — had failed to revise the original screenplay, written by two Sports Illustrated journalists back in 1992, Clooney took it on.

“Playing Dodge Connelly in this movie was something that had interested me for a while,” he says, “but playing a professional football player was something that I’d soon be too old to contemplate.”

The risk he took was accentuated by the fact that he’d suffered a serious injury while shooting Syriana, the 2005 CIA thriller that won him an Oscar for best supporting actor.

Strapped in a chair for the film’s gruesome torture scene, Clooney fell backwards and cracked his head on a cement step. He has suffered headaches ever since and, according to some, short-term memory loss.

“What was the question again?” he chuckles. “I’ve forgotten! Seriously, though, on Leatherheads I was getting smacked around the football field by a bunch of guys much younger than me. I lost a lot of weight and all the tabloids were like, ‘Cancer scare!’”

Despite its sporting backdrop, the film owes much to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s, and all the best passes are those hurled between Clooney and his co-star, Renee Zellweger. It is a perfect vehicle for actors with movie-star quality, something that Clooney possesses in abundance.

“Films like Michael Clayton and Leatherheads, they just don’t make them any more,” he says. “With Leatherheads, I wanted to capture the feel and techniques used in films by Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks and George Stevens.

“There’s a style to what these guys did. If you watch The Thin Man or Bringing Up Baby, Philadelphia Story or His Girl Friday, they still work today. They’re classic comedy and those characters are smarter than
we are, and they’re certainly funnier.

“It’s a simpler style of storytelling. You don’t have to do poop jokes; the comedy builds more slowly. Nowadays we don’t have that patience any more in film. We want it all now. And while I knew I wouldn’t do it as well as Hawks or Capra, I at least know the ground they’re working on.” He flashes a smile. “So I simply tried to steal their ideas!”

This is not false humility; in person, Clooney is every bit as charming as even his most enchanting on-screen characters. Dressed simply in a black shirt and blue jeans, he cracks jokes and never stumbles into arrogance.

“How do I feel about being a ‘fantasy man’ for women? If people see me up close, they’d soon change their minds,” he says. “Anyway, people’s fantasy guys change every 15 minutes, so you just take those things as compliments, knowing that it’ll all change fairly quickly.”

Clooney says he regularly hears rumours that he is about to get married, the most recent “announcement” claiming that he was to marry his current girlfriend, Sarah Larson. “My BlackBerry woke me up the other day. It was buzzing away and when I looked at the message, it said that I was getting married. I thought, ‘Wow, someone should tell Sarah!’”

After a string of failed romances, Clooney seems happy in his current relationship. In recent years he has dated Charlize Theron, Kimberly Russell, Lisa Snowdon, Krista Allen and French model Celine Balitran.

He was married to actress Talia Balsam between 1989 and 1993 and after the separation swore he’d never marry again. Whether he sticks to his pledge remains to be seen, although he currently has more than enough obligations to devour his time.

As well as starring in and directing Leatherheads, the first film from his newly formed Smokehouse production company, he recently shot his third project with the Coen brothers, Burn After Reading, completing what the Coens describe as his “trilogy of idiots”, following O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty. However, contrary to tabloid speculation, he is not returning to the TV show ER.

“I care about my legacy,” he says. “There are two worlds here. You get a film that opens huge on the first weekend, and of course that’s nice, but often the films that open big are not the ones that are remembered as part of your legacy.

“So the trick is to balance a couple of those, thereby allowing you to do the smaller film, the ones that will last.

“Leatherheads is a larger film but it wasn’t designed as a blockbuster. Of everything I’ve done, I’m most proud of Good Night, and Good Luck because I wrote and directed it, and also I think that will last a while.

“I am also going to direct again at the end of the year. It’s called Farragut North, about the people who run political campaigns. But I wouldn’t do a lead part. I’ve been in every film that I’ve directed (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night, and Good Luck, and now Leatherheads), and that’s fine. But when you’re the lead, it’s hard to get the rhythms going.

“Hey, I’m getting older,” he smiles, before offering what is surely just a quip: “Maybe I’m becoming less willing to take a risk.”

Source: Link

Leatherheads Screening-Q&A at The Picturehouse in Pelham, NY

First, let me just say that, like the editors of Esquire, I think I’m developing a man crush on Clooney. I’m not ashamed to say that. How, after hearing him last night, you could not feel the same way?

The evening began with a screening of “Leatherheads,” which, you might have heard, wasn’t exactly one of Clooney’s biggest box-office successes. What was surprising was just how candid Clooney was about the movie’s shortcomings when he took the stage.

After his big entrance, host Peter Travers asked the audience, “Did you enjoy the movie?” The audience respectfully applauded and cheered. To which Clooney deadpanned, “So the good news is that between you and six other people, well, that’s our entire audience.”

Travers went on to point out that all of Clooney’s directorial efforts—”Good Night and Good Luck,” “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” and “Leatherheads”—have failed to yield the box office receipts that “Iron Man” got in its first five minutes. Ever the affable interviewee, George admitted to “psychosis” and “stupidity” and the need to do “Oceans 47″ to help ensure his next project (”They’re changing my colosomy bag. ‘Brad, get over here. Roll over here.’”).

The biggest irony about “Leatherheads,” Travers pointed out, is that Clooney’s sport of choice in real life is baseball. In fact, he was so good that he actually once tried out for the Cincinatti Reds. “I only lacked … skill,” said Clooney. “I had the hat wearing and uniform part down. … I thought I need something that doesn’t take any skill, so I thought about acting.”

Next, Travers fired out a quote from Roseanne Barr—a blurb she wrote for the new Time magazine “100 Most Influential People in the World” story—which goes as follows: “He can drink too much and still, while standing in a bar parking lot at 3 a.m., discuss the world with such passion and good sense that you actually stop imagining him nude and really listen.”

“Don’t you want Roseanne writing your obit?” said Clooney. “The first time I met her she said, [in Roseanne voice] ‘George, you’re really good looking. Why don’t you take me out back, behind the stage, and make me stink.’”

Thus began the serious part of the interview.

As I said, Clooney was spectacularly candid about “Leatherheads.” “Coming here tonight was an interesting thing for me,” he said, “because this movie bombed. And when I say it bombed, it really bombed. So people ask, ‘how does that make you feel?’ It stings. It’s not like you just showed up. This is a couple years and a lot of work and seven or eight months of a tremendous amount of work. You get knocked back a little bit.” He went on to say—forgive the sports aphorism—that it isn’t how many times you get knocked down, but how you get back up that’s important. “Winning cycles are what we like nowadays. … People started keeping tabs on box office [around 20 years ago]. Now it’s sort of a contest, which I think is kind of funny. Most of the films you’ll see at the Academy Awards didn’t make much money.”

Travers then brought up the infamous Time cover story, “The Last Movie Star,” remarking, “that’s worse, right, being the last of something.” “Well,” replied Clooney, “It’s better than being the last reality TV star. You know, I couldn’t figure that title out. They said that it came out on the day of the Oscars. So I went to the Oscars, and the thing had just come out, and Jack Nicholson sat down and said [in Jack rasp], ‘oh, so you’re the last movie star?’ Uh, sorry, I didn’t write the thing. I was trying to figure out what he was saying. Then I figured out that what he was saying was that movie stars used to play a version of themselves,” he continued, trailing off. “So really, what I’m saying is that, what they meant as a nice compliment—it was really just a slap in the face.”

Clooney talked about how most of his best films (”O Brother, Where Art Thou,” “Out of Sight”) have bombed at the box office. Which of course bridged nicely into a conversation about what Travers termed “your Coen brothers trilogy”—which includes the forthcoming “Burn After Reading” (which Clooney filmed, in part, in New Rochelle last fall). Like his other Coen bros. roles, Clooney said, “He’s no mental giant. I read the script and thought, this guy’s terrible, he’s an idiot. He’s winey all the time. I called them up and said, ‘I don’t even know how to play this guy.’ And they said, ‘We wrote him for you, man!’”

And his prediction for how “Burn” will do at the box office? Clooney explained their track record: “They do ‘Fargo,’ then we did ‘O Brother’ (people like it now, but we got burned at the time). They did ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There,” then we did ‘Intolerable.’ Now we’ve got the film following ‘No Country,’ which won all the Oscars.” Well, you get the picture. Still, whether Clooney was lowering the bar intentionally or truly thinks his Coen flicks are jinxed, he was eager to point out that if it’s going down in flames, there are plenty of other A-list actors (Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, etc.) going down with him. “It will open September 12,” Travers plugged. “And close September 13,” Clooney added. “That’s what makes me the last movie star!”

Clooney is nothing if not self-deprecating and funny, and the conversation was littered with offhand jokes about his acting resume—1988’s “Return of the Killer Tomatoes,” “Batman” (”The nipples on the front—for feeding little bats”) and “The Facts of Life” (”that’s right, I was the next door neighbor of Tutti”). It’s hard not to like a guy who, when asked if he wears boxers or briefs, admits to going “commando” when shooting on location.

There were at least a dozen other fascinating, hilarious Clooney stories from the evening, including his trips to Darfur, his proudest career moment (hint: it’s not squeezing corns into pumps at women’s shoe stores), and the liberal movie-star conspiracy cabal. That’s last one: not a joke. There really is a lefty cabal! Frankly, it’s too much good stuff to fit into one post. So for the next week or so, I’ll continue sharing about a Clooney anecdote a day.

And in the meantime, if you haven’t already seen my liveblog of the evening, be sure to check it out. This may be the first and last time I ever attempt bloggging via iPhone. An interesting experiment, though one that I suspect Clooney himself would find no less disturbing than Gawker Stalker.

Source: Link

More Pics: Link

Leatherheads

Cast:

George Clooney … Jimmy Dodge Connely
Renee Zelleweger … Lexie Littleton
John Krazinski … Carter Rutherford

Synopsis:

Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly (George Clooney) is the team captain of the Bulldogs in the struggling pro football league in 1925. The entire pro football league is in danger of collapsing, one team at a time, and his team is next. Dodge gets an idea of saving the team by recruiting a college football star who fills the college stadium with over 45,000 cheering fans. With the lure of big money, Dodge is able to convince Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to drop out of college and join the team. Carter is not only a star football player who can outrun his completion, but he is also a national war hero of WWI who single-handedly captured a platoon of German soldiers. Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) is a newspaper journalist assigned to get Carter’s real inside story about the capture of the German soldiers. To get the story, Lexie must travel with the team, and in time, both Carter and Dodge fall for her. Only one will win her love as the fourth quarter comes to an end.

Trivia and Facts:

* The script was written back in 1993. The writers brought it to the attention of Steven Soderbergh who then took it to the then president of production at Universal Pictures, Casey Silver. It went into script limbo after Silver left the studio to become an independent producer. Soderbergh then came back and brought Clooney along to make the film.

* Star-director Clooney and his co-star Zelleger premiered this film in Clooney’s hometown of Maysville, KY on March 24th, 2008. In 1953, his aunt Rosemary Clooney had premiered a film of her own, The Stars Are Singing (1953), in the same town, though not at the same theatre. Roughly 3,000 fans attended the red carpet event while 200 VIPs were hand-selected to watch the film. An additional screening was held afterward with 100 lucky winners winning 2 tickets apiece from a raffle drawing. Clooney and Zellweger hosted the second screening as well before departing the theatre. Among the guests in attendance were former Lt. Governor of Kentucky Steve Henry and his wife, Miss America 2000, Heather French Henry.

* Clooney claimed that he had rewritten all but two scenes and had asked the WGA for credit. When they denied his request, he removed himself as a voting member and changed his status to “Financial Core Member.”

Quotes:

Jimmy ‘Dodge’ Connelly: You’re only as young as the woman you feel

From the Gallery More…

Trailer

Game for Anything

Game for anything 
Clooney tries to avoid acting his age in new comedy ‘Leatherheads’
Los Angeles Daily News  Published April 4 2008

Ten years ago, fresh off the success of their sexy crime comedy “Out of Sight,” George Clooney and director Steven Soderbergh planned to make a sports comedy called “Leatherheads.”

Clooney would play an aging pro football player, circa 1925, watching the game he loves turn from sandlot spectacle into a money-making machine.

The movie never got off the ground.

“We had four great characters, but we didn’t have a story,” Clooney said. “We could never come up with a third act.”

The movie languished until Clooney spent a few weeks working on it while vacationing at his Italian villa in Lake Como two summers ago. Clooney decided to direct “Leatherheads” himself.

“Well … no one can say I’m too young for the part now,” Clooney, 46, joked. “Maybe too old.”

“Leatherheads” is a departure from the serious movies the star has been making lately.

“The actual truth of it is, after ‘Good Night’–and ‘Syriana’ for that matter–everything I was offered to direct was a political film,” he told the New York Daily News. “All heavy stuff. And I actually think of myself as a director, not an ‘issues’ director. And the way to [protect] that is to direct different types of things, different genres, mix it up.

“So I thought, ‘What’s next for me should not be a message film. It shouldn’t have a statement.’ And there’s nothing further from a statement than ‘Leatherheads.’ It was the perfect one to do.”

Clooney’s still serious about his political causes, especially the turmoil in the African region of Darfur.

He’s a Hollywood A-lister who knows how to use his celebrity to get things done, helping to create Not on Our Watch, a group that tries to focus attention and resources to help people in Darfur.

“As a celebrity,” Clooney told the New York Times Syndicate, “you don’t make politics, but you do bring the cameras. When you’re famous, you do start to think that what you’re saying changes things. You realize that your job isn’t to change things; your job is to shine a light on good or bad.”

Clooney kept things light in a recent interview, sharing his love for dirty football and explaining why the brain often lags behind the body when dealing with the ravages of time.

After your neck injury (suffered while shooting “Syriana”), it was a little surprising …
That I’d make a football movie? It seems like a dumb thing to do. That’s what most people say. I was supposed to make this 10 years ago, but the script never worked. We never had a plot.

Small problem.
Just a bit. So it fell apart because we couldn’t figure it out. I spent a summer working on it, came up with something I liked, but in my head, I’m still thinking it’s 1998.

And you’re only 36 years old, not 46.
Honest to God’s truth, yes. I was like, “OK, I gotta play some football too.” And I play basketball and stuff still. So I figure I’ll be OK. The first day of shooting, I go out and I got leveled.

The minute I got hit, I got up and looked over at [producer] Grant [Heslov] and just started laughing. “Uh-oh. I forgot, man. This is a 65-day schedule. I’m going to get the [bleep] beat out of me.”

Did you have a discussion with the cast after that?
We had the “Don’t Hit the Director Discussion,” which I think, in general, is a good rule.

So good, I’d have thought you’d institute it before day one.
I didn’t understand. There’s the part of you that’s still a guy that says, “Ah, we’ll just play some football. Take it easy. Don’t anybody kill each other.” And OK, you play, but some of these kids are 21, so their version of not killing anyone almost killed me.

There is the saying: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
That’s true if you’re 21. When you’re 21 and hit the curb and fly off the handles of your bike and hit the ground, you jump up and laugh about it. When you’re 46, that’ll put you in the hospital for six months.

That explains all the old-timer jokes in the movie.
Problem is, my head still thinks it’s young. We were playing basketball three days ago. I always had a good vertical jump. I could stand under the rim and jump up and hang onto the rim. I was telling that to these guys, and they said, “[Bull],” and of course, I took two steps and jumped, and I was like three inches from the rim.

You cop a line from Groucho Marx in the movie: “You’re only as old as the women you feel.”
That line seemed sort of perfect. I know I’ll get hit for it.

But is it true?
I think the only answer can be: Yes.

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