George Clooney on the gridiron
Actor/Director, George Clooney on his football comedy Leatherheads.
CraveOnline: You have a mixed cast in Leatherheads. Would a 1925 football team really be integrated?
George Clooney: They were all integrated then. That was the interesting thing. It was like 1940. There was a lot to do with that actually. There were quite a lot of black players in football in the 20s and then when the rules came in and when money became an issue then they got rid of them all and they weren’t back until much, much later. That was one of the really interesting things we found out. There was a lot of interesting things. We couldn’t use actual teams, NFL teams because we had the kids smoking and drinking and they were like, "That never happened." And you’re like, "OK." So, it’s not the Duluth Eskimos it’s the Duluth Bulldogs.
CraveOnline: What's the difference between '20s football and now?
George Clooney: There was a trick to this. When you are doing a period film, in particular a football film, an action film, we're used to it now with hand held cameras and steady cams. You can really increase the excitement level of football. If you were to do that in a period piece, in 1925 in particular, you would immediately sell out the period. Immediately you would feel that it was contemporary. ‘Oh, why is this hand held with the camera?’ You have to shoot it in a way we are sort of used to seeing that world which is straighter. So we realized that everything is going to be on a crane arm. Or everything was going to be on a dolly track and it’s going to be slower, so you had to find ways to move the camera toward the action always. It was a really tricky balance. And the actors had to find a way to perform like that too, because if you are going to keep things in a two-shot, you’ve go to keep it moving and you’ve got to keep the dynamic.
CraveOnline: You've starred in all of the films you've directed. Are you giving yourself bigger parts on purpose?
George Clooney: Yes, the next one is a one-man show. I’m doing Catch 22, one-man show. No, the truth is, I did it because this was a part that for a long, long, long time I wanted to play and I thought I was the right guy to play it. And I also thought, "I’m 46. If I don’t do it now, I’m done. This is it. This is my last shot at it." Soderbergh was going to do it in 1998 when we were going to do it and I was very excited about that sort of prospect and things sort of moved on and the script wasn’t in shape. We were sort of in pre-production, but we had an outline. We had two or three scenes that we loved and characters that we loved, but we didn’t have a plot. So, I spent a summer stealing from The Philadelphia Story, homaging the hell out of those films and the thing I came up which was horrible really, was the whole John Kerry/Swift Boat thing, where I came up with the idea that he’s holding a secret. Not that I thought that John Kerry wasn’t, but what if he really wasn’t a war hero and if there was an innocent way to do it where you didn’t make him a bad guy. And then Hail the Conquering Hero and films like that sort of helped with that too. So I was sort of stuck in this world where I was going to direct it and I was going to play the lead. What I hadn’t really paid attention to was that I was also going to play football and it hurt. The first day I got hit by some 21-year-old who knocked me on my ass and I was like, "Okay, I’m in trouble because I have four more months of this." I would never, by design, do a film that I would play the lead in ever again. It was one of those things where it all came together very quickly. But, it was a dumb move in some ways. It was a little too much to take on.
CraveOnline: How much worse did the football get in the mud?
George Clooney: We shipped it all into that football field. That is the same field where we do the opening sequence where John runs a touchdown. We came back a month later and shipped in tons and tons of mud. We had to do mud testing to find the right mud that would stick to you. And it was all sort of funny the first day, because it was 70 degrees, and we all just jumped in the mud and you have to wallow around and you get up and you start shooting. But, first of all, that stuff adds another 20-30 pounds and if you're running, all of a sudden you’re running in mud. But, the next day, it was 20 degrees and we were covered in mud. Then it was just mudsicles. We were like fudgicles out there. And then it was just miserable. It was about 2-4 days of truly miserable shooting. It took us a week to do that whole sequence. It was really complicated because a lot of that is CGI around it. We couldn’t have 50,000 people there. So, it was always about being able to shoot it and the pieces you could use in this sort of a section. So, it was trickier than anything I have done before. But, the mud was terrible. As you can imagine.
CraveOnline: Was making Renee Zellweger's character a noble journalist another comment about the integrity of the press?
George Clooney: I had already done a film about that. This one was more about the idea that I wanted to give John Krasinki’s character a secret. In the original draft of the film, John’s character and Lexi were boyfriend and girlfriend in college and they came out together. So, what happened, was she wasn’t active. She had nothing to do and there was nothing to get. And I was now, too old to be stealing the college girl. Unfortunately, that happened. So, it felt as if that needed to be changed and she needed to have something to do. So, really it was more about going, "Okay, let’s give her [something]." Obviously, there weren’t women sportswriters in 1925 and they are fighting to do it now even, so we felt like that was a great ballsy thing to be. But it wasn’t a comment on the press on that one. I was just having fun.
CraveOnline: You joke about stealing or homaging from classic screwball comedies, but you really know this stuff. How did you capture that style?
George Clooney: We called it front foot acting. The tendency actually since Montgomery Clift came on the scene is to internalize and it’s great and made for some of the most amazing work ever, but what gets lost in that is that ability to you’re almost answering like you just as if you couldn’t have heard the question. It has to be sort of that quick. The difference is you can’t do it exactly like Rosalind Russell. She was brilliant, but if you took that performance and put it into a modern film, even if was supposed to be an older film. "Sure, whatever, I don’t care." It would just be like an impersonation. So, with someone like John or someone like Renee, they are actors who don’t feel contemporary which is important. A lot of actors just feel like it’s 2008 no matter what you do. We had the same problem with Good Night, and Good Luck. You had to have actors who didn’t fill everything with "Y’know." That are good at being very crisp and clean and both of them are very crisp, clean actors. And then you had to go. We rehearsed the scene as if you’d heard it all and then I’d go, "Go, go, faster, faster, faster." To the point where it’s too fast and then you just slow it down. It’s just one of those things were you have to understand that it’s a rollercoaster and you go really quick and then slow down. And that finds itself when you rehearse it a few times on the set.
CraveOnline: You're friends with the Coen Brothers, did you look at their Hudsucker Proxy?
George Clooney: No, but I certainly watched Hudsucker Proxy, because you know I’ve stolen, er, homaged the hell out of those guys over the years and certainly there were things about this film that I was using more along the lines of other films they have done. Hudsucker I love. I know people love to smash that film, but I really love that movie.
CraveOnline: What kind of idiot are you playing in the next Coen brothers film?
George Clooney: I’m playing this character Harry Pfarrer in Burn After Reading and I have leaped heads and shoulders over the other idiots I have played. This is my trilogy of idiots with the Coen bros. That one is gonna be fun. I actually had to go and do an extra shot yesterday. I grew a beard back for half a day’s work. And I went in there and they showed me little bits of it and I was like, "Turn it off, I don’t want to see it. It’s so big." It will be fun though I think. The only thing that makes me feel good is that I think Brad is even bigger, a bigger idea than I am in it so it makes me feel safe.
CraveOnline: Do you know what you might direct next?
George Clooney: I think so. There is a play that is about to get made in New York that we are working on a screenplay of called Farragut North. It’s a really interesting. It may be the next one, but it would be next year.
CraveOnline: Would you act in that as well?
George Clooney: Don’t think so. I think there are a lot better actors for that then me. It’s actually interesting though. It’s about running for president. This was a play that was coming out long before people were talking about the election. It’s not the same thing. It’s not about Barack and Hillary and all that or Elliot Spitzer.
