The usually bucolic, laid-back State Street scene outside Santa Barbara’s historic Arlington Theater was uncharacteristically electric with anticipation as film-loving locals, out-of-towners, industry insiders and throngs of college students from the nearby University of California outpost crowded together hoping for a glimpse of the cinematic superstar arriving to collect the prestigious Modern Master award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. And honoree George Clooney didn’t disappoint, flashing his trademark grin as he stepped out of his limo and going to work signing autographs and posing for more pictures with the fans than for the professional photographers.
Clooney, who just days earlier made history by receiving best director and best original screenplay nominations for Good Night, and Good Luck and, in an Oscar first, a best supporting actor nomination for a separate film, Syriana, was being honored for his accomplishments in bringing high-quality and high-minded entertainment to the screen.
Before the tribute, Hollywood.com chatted with Clooney and asked the newly minted “hyphenate”–actor-writer-director-producer–if the success of both films had inspired him to work on even more issue-oriented projects. “I’ve always done that sort of thing,” he said. “Three Kings was topic-oriented. Fail Safe was topic-oriented. I believe in them. I also believe in entertainment. I don’t think that it’s one or the other, I really don’t. I think that you can actually pull them both off, so that’s the idea.” Clooney was looking forward to shifting gears for the serious-minded to the lighthearted with another big-screen romp with his celebrity pals: Ocean’s 13 is on the horizon. “It’d be fun–if we could get all those guys together again!”
“Man of the hour, man of the week, man of the year,” is how film critic and historian Leonard Maltin described Clooney, who met the star for the first time to moderate the tribute. “He brought integrity, and I think that people see him as a decent man which he appears to be,” Maltin told Hollywood.com when asked how Clooney hit a chord with audiences this year, “And he’s using his clout in a very purposeful way, and I think that’s terrific…He’s a movie star and that’s how he got to do the other [serious] films, but he has to maintain that status and I think that’s something he’s very aware of.”
Actor Clint Howard–a familiar face in his brother Ron’s films like Cinderella Man and in Santa Barbara to promote his new indie Planet Ibsen–showed up because he goes way back with Clooney. “I did a TV movie with George back in the mid ’80’s called Sunset Beat that I think he would definitely like to forget about, but every time I see him I don’t let him.” Despite his subsequent superstardom, Howard said Clooney’s still very much the same guy he was pre-fame. “Here’s a guy who’s put himself into a really unique position, and yet he’s just a regular guy who likes to hang out and have fun.”
After hitting the awards gala circuit alongside Clooney so frequently lately, Hollywod.com pointed out that as soon as any fete is over he’s always insisting he needs to break away to the bar for a cocktail. We wondered if it was, indeed, a bonus to have an open bar at these kinds of events, to take the edge off all the attention? “I joke about it, but usually I don’t have a drink before I go up,” Clooney grinned, “because I’ll say something really dumb.”
That didn’t seem likely: sitting down on stage with Maltin in front of a huge audience (that included fellow superstar Sharon Stone) Clooney unleashed his trademark blend of charm, wit, self-deprecation, candor, opinions and insight. Hollywood.com has the highlights:
On his reputation for being a nice guy, and the implication that others of his stature in Hollywood might not be so pleasant:
“I actually don’t think that’s true. You know famous people. I find that in general they’re pretty great. I think they handle interesting situations pretty well, in general. I’ve run into a couple of schmucks, but hey…You want me to name names, is that it? I’ll tell you right now, I don’t like Julia Roberts. I don’t like her, and I don’t think she’s pretty. That’s just my opinion. Well, that and Brad Pitt. He doesn’t like her either [laughs].”
On his two pet projects receiving such acclaim as extraordinary films:
“I figure I have to make up for Batman and Robin. I owe everyone something. Listen, you feel very lucky. The truth of the matter is, most of the time, there are projects that you want to work on, and things you want to get done. Obviously, those are two films that weren’t very easy to get made, at the time we were trying to get them made, which was just as the war broke out, and they were asking some tough questions, which wasn’t at the time really popular. And they were labeled as unpatriotic. So it was hard to do. Those are films that you want to make, and I feel really lucky that they worked, and that’s because of a lot of other people besides me, truly…We sat down and we thought, ‘What’s a blockbuster, really? Well, let’s do it black and white, let’s have David Strathairn star in it, and it’ll be about the McCarthy era.’ So that played really well in the room. And Syriana, it was a really tough time to do that film. Good Night was a passion piece, and it was easy to get going, because we had nothing to lose. We felt like, ‘Well we were gonna make it, no matter what.’ If we had to finance it ourselves, we’d do it.”
On his TV roots and early career as a struggling actor:
“When I was playing George Burnett on The Facts of Life, I was trying to make a mullet really important–that’s my next film, The Mullet. No, I didn’t get to audition for films…I was reading pilots, and reading for three lines for a casting director in a feature film and not getting it. ER changed all of that, in one weekend. In a night really, Thursday night at ten o’clock. If I hadn’t gotten Thursday night at ten o’clock with ER, I wouldn’t be sitting here…I was on some really bad [shows]. I did a TV series called Sunset Beat, where I played an undercover cop on a Harley during the day, and a rock star at night. I thought I was great in it. But you know, when you’re an actor, and you’re making any money at all, I mean, you’re beating 99 percent of the odds…Ultimately, you take some lumps and you do some really bad things along the way. I don’t feel vindicated or like ‘Oh, isn’t it great now.’ If I get hit by a bus tonight, I win. Otherwise I’m on Hollywood Squares, you know? I’ll be on some reality show eating worms. I’ll be in dinner theatre singing all the songs from O Brother Where Art Thou? as if I actually sang them–I didn’t sing it. So you know, you win if–it all depends on when you die.”
On keeping perspective on success in Hollywood:
“In a weird way, I had a great break, because my aunt had been extraordinary. Rosemary Clooney was my aunt. And as big a hit as you could be in 1950. By 1957, ’58 she was done. It’s not like she got less talented. The music changed. And she didn’t understand that–she thought ‘Wow, I’m a genius,’ when they told her she was a genius. So when it all went away, she thought it was her. And it hurt her for about 15 years or so, and of course later she had a comeback. And I had the luxury of seeing how little success has to do with you. You know, the best actors I ever saw were in an acting class who never made it out. Some of the best, most interesting things I’ve ever seen were in tiny little theatres that never saw the light of day. Look, you prepare, you’re ready for it, you hope you get a break, but you do need somebody to go, ‘Okay: you, come on…” I was actually lucky that I didn’t get famous early. I would’ve been shooting crack into my forehead if I’d gotten famous then. ‘I’m huge!’ I don’t know how kids who are young do it, because I don’t think you have no perspective because you actually do think you’re brilliant.”
[PAGEBREAK]On Batman and Robin:
“I saw this other Batman, this new one–it’s bullsh*t [laughs]. First of all, Joel Schumacher told me Batman was gay. He put nipples on me, I didn’t know he was gay. I could’ve done this dark, tortured soul thing, I could’ve done that sh*t. Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I almost buried the franchise. Almost, single handedly. [When I got the part] I called all my friends: ‘Hey, I’m in the next Batman movie.’ ‘Oh really, what are you gonna be?’ [pause] ‘Batman!’ [whoops] I was excited by it. You can talk yourself into all kinds of things. While you’re doing it, you’re like, ‘It’s okay, it’ll be good.’ First of all, the batsuit is like 85 pounds, and you can’t move. I mean, if Batman actually wore that suit, everyone would die. You can’t lift your arms, a guy has to lift your arms, like ‘Ugh–I’m Batman.’ And Joel–who I adore, the funniest man ever–he directed with a big loudspeaker, and you’re sitting like this in your rubber suit, and he always would direct with this speaker, and he’d sit there and go, ‘Okay, remember now, your parents are dead, you have nothing to live for, and….action!’ ‘I’m Batman!’…I was like ‘I’m doing a great job! I’ve got Batman nailed.’ And I was horrible in it. And I took a lot of heat for it. I got beat up–it was actually the first time ever that I’d gotten bad reviews.”
On his ability to pick a good screenplay:
“I’m better now. I’m good at that. The next three films after Batman and Robin: Out of Sight was nominated for screenplay, Three Kings should have been, because it was a brilliant, brilliant film, and then O Brother, Where Art Thou? was the next film, and that was nominated. So I was pretty good at picking screenplays. I don’t know if I have a good ear, but it’s my ear.”
On his distinct Southern dialect in O Brother, Where Art Thou?:
“They wanted me to play this Southern guy, and I grew up in Kentucky, but anyway, it’s been a while. Well, my uncle Jack is a tobacco farmer. I sent him a copy of the script and a tape recorder, and I said ‘Say all my lines in the tape recorder, I’ll give you fifteen hundred bucks, and a credit.’ So I get the tape recorder back, and he starts out, [in folksy Southern accent] ‘George, I don’t think none of the folks around here talk like this here, but we’ll give it a go.’ Perfect. Well, the funniest thing was, I was about two- thirds of the way through shooting the movie, and I just threw the script away and just went and listened to my lines, and it was like, ‘Where the heck are ya?’ and ‘What the heck are ya doin’? Where the durn heck are ya?’ And Joel and Ethan [Coen] were like, ‘Why is it that you say every word exactly like the way we wrote it, except you don’t say “hell” or “damn?” You say “heck” or “durn?” And I’m like “Huh?” Well, I listened to the tape, I learned the script, and my uncle Jack rewrote everything they did. You know, it was like, Bible Belt, and he wasn’t gonna say hell or damn. We realized when he was saying ‘We don’t talk like that,’ he was talking about the dirty words. He cleaned up the dirty words.”
On what he’s picked up from the directors he’s worked with:
“You mean stolen? What have I stolen? I steal from everyone. I’ll steal from anyone–I’ll steal from you. It’s a point of view: they are very specific in their voice. Like the Coens, for instance: when you get your ‘sides’ in the morning–which is where your lines are all written down–the back of them would always have the story boards. They’d be each a single shot, and sort of they taught you how to act. When you’d see it, you’d be like ‘Oh, so it’s like this,’ and you sort of knew what you wanted to do. I hired the same storyboard artist when I did Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, because we didn’t have any time to rehearse, and I’d built all these sets around camera moves, and I wanted the actor to get there, but–I’m an actor, you can’t just go up and say, ‘Go stand there.’ You’ve got to kind of sort of manipulate it a little bit, con them into doing something. But if they open up their sides, and they see the pictures in the back, they sort of would go naturally exactly where you wanted them to. So I stole things.”
On making the decision to move into directing:
“I don’t like sitting in my trailer. I don’t get it, I’m from Kentucky, we try to stay out of the trailers. You spend your whole lifetime trying to get on a set, and then you’re like, ‘I’m gonna sit in my trailer, I’m going in my trailer.’ I was always on a set and watching people work, and I liked it. It was fun for me to watch really good directors do really well. Soderbergh and Joel and Ethan were the best to watch like that, and there was this screenplay that I really loved called Confessions, and I was attached to it as an actor, trying to get it made…It was a good script, Charlie Kaufman wrote it, and it was [used as] bait to get directors to come to a studio and then sort of switch them off onto other projects, and it was never gonna get made. And so I knew that probably the only way it was gonna get made was if I just said ‘All right, I’m gonna do it.’ Harvey Weinstein had just bought it–we were on the set of Ocean’s 11, and Steven Soderbergh was there, and Harvey came over and goes ‘All right look Steve, if George screws this whole goddamn thing up, you’re gonna have to take it over.’ And Steve’s like ‘Okay, I will.’ And that was it, we made the deal, and Steven gave me final cut back and walked away and then I never saw either of them again. They sort of let me make the film, which is great. It was really a fun time.”
On his partnership with Steven Soderbergh:
“After Out of Sight I had a [production] company–I think we had 35 films in development, none of which I ever read or was gonna do, and then it was like, ‘Well, this is stupid.’ And Steven and I said let’s actually make a company that we can get some things done in, that we can sort of try to force feed the things that we liked–which were the things we’d learned from independent film in the ’90s and from foreign films and what have you–back into the studio system where all the resources are, where the ability to sell them existed. And they were willing to do it if we were willing to take a hit financially. So we thought, ‘Well, let’s try doing that. Let’s see if we can pull it off,’ and we’ve had a lot of success with that, in a way. And we’ve failed a lot too, but that’s part of the deal, is we’re not making any money. Our company’s a massive financial failure. Personally, we’re way in the hole on it. We have day jobs, we can survive, but that’s part of the fun: ‘Let’s see what we can do.’”
On his reputation as being an outspoken Hollywood liberal:
“As we were going through this sort of lead-up to the war, I did what I always do, which is make some jokes, and I went at the administration because I thought there were some questions that should have been asked. Which is fair enough, and you can’t demand freedom of speech and then say ‘But don’t say bad things about me.’ And they did. And you have to take that, and that’s fine, and I didn’t mind that so much…It’s a wild story, because just as all this stuff is going on, I get a call. It’s the day before the Oscars, which I’d never been to: ‘Come meet these people at the Belage hotel. And it was Michael Moore, Gore Vidal, Susan Sarandon and Tim [Robbins], Sean Penn, Eddie Vedder–people who were being called ‘traitors’ at this point, and they were all talking about what they were gonna do at the Oscars if something happened. And this is the one where Michael Moore made a lot of people unhappy, made a lot of people angry the next day. And he told us all what he was gonna do, and I was like ‘Well, maybe you shouldn’t do that–maybe–I don’t know…’ About six months later, Bill O’Reilly did a television show and he had Richard Roeper on, and he did a whole show on why my career was over because of my political views, right? And then he said, ‘You know how these liberals are. They get together, they plan out what they’re gonna say, and then they go to the Oscars.’ And Richard Roeper said, ‘Now Bill, just think what you just said. Do you really think that all of these actors get in a room the day before the Oscars and talk about what they’re gonna do at the Oscars!’ And O’Reilly’s like [conceding the point] ‘I know, it sounds ridiculous.’ And I looked over at Grant [Heslov] and I was like ‘Actually, that’s exactly what happened.’ But we were all sort of in the middle of a point where you just said ‘Look, agree or disagree with the issues, you can’t be called unpatriotic for asking those questions.’”
On accepting the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Modern Master honor:
“I don’t think it’s brave to make films like these, I think I’m terrified of not making films like these, and that’s the truth. I’m afraid of being 70 years old and being Batman again. So I thank you very much for this award, and I appreciate it. This is the place that I got to bring the first film that I directed, and I was so warmly received before. And it really helped considerably for me, because I wasn’t quite sure whether this was something I wanted to do or not. So I thank you very much for this, it’s very encouraging.”
At the very end, as Clooney accepted his award from his longtime friend and Good Night, and Good Luck screenwriting partner Grant Heslov, the Lucite trophy broke in two pieces, with one portion falling to the floor. “Did you do that to Peter Jackson, too, you…?” he mock-glowered at the audience.
