George Clooney: The Mind Behind The Eyes

Q: Had you known Quentin before?

A: I read for Reservoir Dogs, the Michael Madsen dancing-around scene. I probably would have been horrible and I thought he was so great in it. It's the best thing I ever saw Michael do.

Q: Considering how long you waited for your shot at features, From Dusk Till Dawn was an odd choice. It was unapologetically violent, and it was two films grafted into one.

A: But the script was so good. In the first half of that movie the dialogue is spectacular, it's Pulp Fiction. The second half is a much different kind of film, the kind I also enjoy. People who love that film absolutely love it. But the ones who hate it, wow! When I bring it up to some entertainment reporters, you can actually see made twitch. They hate the gratuitous violence. I understand that, but it made me laugh. And my part was so well-written, I saw an opportunity.

Q: What opportunity?

A: When a part is well-written, I'm good. I know what my limitations are as an actor, but my strength is putting myself into a well-written part. When I get in trouble is when I have to fix it, or when I have to carry it on personality.

Q: What was the result of that film?

A: The world changed. Steven Spielberg sent me a note, saying, The Peacemaker is the first film from our new studio and I'd love you to do it. I'd made $250,000 on From Dusk Till Dawn and then Steven was offering me $3 million to star in his first movie at DreamWorks.

Q: Didn't he get you extricated from a pay-or-play deal at Universal to be The Green Hornet, something only Spielberg could have done?

A: Absolutely, it was a heady time. Of course, you realize later that it was because I was cheaper than anyone else.

Q: The film right after From Dusk Till Dawn was One Fine Day with Michelle Pfeiffer, a movie that was deemed just OK. Is it a good memory?

A: It was another gigantic break. I can't even explain how big a break. For the first time I was doing a romantic lead in a movie, and I was eye to eye with one of the top five leading women in the country. And the reviews were nice to me. The movie was what it was--everybody did their jobs. It wasn't groundbreaking stuff, but it makes you smile. And it made a lot of money. Was it a great film? Absolutely not. Was I proud to be in it and was it a lucky break for me? Absolutely.

Q: The Peacemaker was another film that could be perceived as a disappointment.

A: Or as another big break. Now I was doing an action film. But it was the first film I'd done where the script was in serious trouble from the very beginning. The story was compelling, and Mimi Leder did a really good job telling it, but the dialogue had problems. Still, it was me as an action star, something I'd never done.

Q: So when people point out your "failed" movies, they're missing the point--that you were proving you could exist in these worlds.

A: I wasn't really trying to prove anything. There was no master plan. I got jobs, and they were big breaks. On The Peacemaker we took some harder hits than we deserved.

Q: Why?

A: DreamWorks was being reviewed rather than The Peacemaker. It was the first time I'd gotten bad reviews ever in my life. Actually, Batman came out first, so it was like a one-two punch.

Q: You've often joked you were the actor who destroyed the Batman franchise.

A: It's a pretty horrendous film. Joel Schumacher is a good friend of mine. Akiva Goldsman, who wrote it, is a very close friend of mine. None of us really did it right. I got a call from Joel right after I made the deal for The Peacemaker and he said, do you want to play Batman in the next film? And I jumped up and down, screamed and said. Yes, I will play Batman.

Q: Did your excitement falter when you read the script?

A: I thought it was a bad script. But again, a gigantic break. Batman changed everything. Without Batman, I wouldn't ever have gotten to do Out of Sight. And as bad as it was, Batman & Robin was still a gigantic hit. It still made $230 million worldwide, plus tons of merchandise.

Q: The other three films may not have given Batman much to do, but this one turned him into the organizer of a superhero day care center.

A: Batman movies have always been the story of the bad guys. Bruce Wayne sits around, going, It's so hard to live because my parents were killed when I was little. We as an audience, go, OK, you're rich, you're schtupping the most beautiful babes in Gotham City, you've got a mansion and the coolest gadgets. Get over it. Other than that, it's been about the Joker or the Riddler. There wasn't much for me to do and I didn't do it very well. There are reasons.

Q: What were they?

A: One of them was it was intimidating. They were paying me $3 million to do it and that was a lot of money even though it was a $110 million film and they paid Arnold $20 million. Also, the entire film was completely looped--even when Bruce Wayne is sitting there talking to Alfred. I am the most hated man on the looping stage. As likeable as I like to be everywhere else, on the looping stage I'm the devil. After the first season of "ER," I never looped. I hate looping and every time I see a loop on screen I notice the dead air and see how it takes away from the performance. I'd rather hear scratching noises in the background and get the real performance. It's part of where the studio system went wrong, trying to gloss over everything.

Q: But isn't that just part of filmmaking?

A: I knew that in the last part of The Perfect Storm we were going to loop because you couldn't hear any of it. But the looping in Batman & Robin sucked the life out of the film.

Q: When you got those bad reviews for the first time in your career, was it a blow, or were you hardened by the earlier series futility?

A: I'd never been thumped before, so I took it hard. But you have to say, OK, this lets me get other films made. You know you're going to take some hits along the way. But it still hurts when they come.

Q: The Batman experience seemed to be a wake-up call for you.

A: They pay you to do publicity for a film, but I draw the line in lying about it. You find ways to talk around it. You say it's the biggest movie I've ever seen and working with these guys was one of the greatest times of my life. You say everything but the fact that the movie is an hour too long and just doesn't work. I decided after Batman that I wanted to be sure I could go in and say, "I'm really proud of the film." So I didn't do a job for a year, I just focused on finding the right script.

Q: Your choices became more offbeat after Batman. Did you worry at all that unless you made commercial choices you'd risk being a character actor?

A: Every good leading man worth his salt is a character actor. Mel Gibson is a character actor. He's a handsome leading man, but he does character actor performances.

Q: Most stars would raise their price after a film like The Perfect Storm. Did you?

A: I had an opportunity recently to raise it up a bit. We had a talk over at CAA, and we said, Why not stay where we are which is already a lot of money. I'd rather not take a giant fee up front, because you bust the budget and then you can't get the costars you want. I'm no good without that. And when I take $12 million of the budget upfront, a $30 million movie becomes a $42 million movie. That's a big difference, and it hurts the film. I'd like to take little or no money up front and get a legitimate piece of the backend. If the movie makes money, you make money. If it doesn't, you got to make a movie you wanted to make. The hard part is that they've worked it out with so many lawyers that I've never seen any money from any backend deal I've ever had, and some of those movies have made good money.

Q: Why do I fear your agents at CAA are going to read this and say, George, you've just become the Kmart of leading men?

A: Guys have been doing this forever. We wouldn't have made Three Kings if I'd gotten paid the deal that I had, which was $10 million. I gave back $5 million to get it made. I took $2.5 million and they gave me another $2.5 million later, as a thanks.

Q: Speaking of Three Kings, what was more trying, getting hit with thousands of gallons of water on The Perfect Storm, or fighting with director David O, Russell in the desert?

A: By far, being in the desert. David and I get along fine now, but it was a very bad time on that film.

Q: In the well-publicized brawl you had with him, it sounded like you didn't object to his abuse of you, but rather to his bullying an extra.

A: In fairness to David, he came after me enough that I was probably already sufficiently irritated. You sit there saying, he's the director, I'll take it, he's the director, I'll take it. Maybe I went off because I was angry in general. It was a hard film to do for so many reasons. The elements were really hard. I was working two jobs at the same time, flying in and out. And David directs by telling you while you're on camera how to say every single line, which is not a way I'm capable of working.

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