Entertainment Weekly - 8-23-02
SOLARIS
THE PITCH: "It's about a man coming to terms with the death of his wife.
In space." --Clooney
What's the biggest difference between Soderbergh's adaptation of the 1961
cult-novel by Stanislaw Lem and the 1972 version directed by Russian master
Andrei Tarkovsky? "Well, it's not nine hours long," jokes
Clooney. Tarkovsky's cineast-adored sci-fi epic--which actually clocks in
at 2 hours and 45 minutes--only feels nine hours long, given the late auteur's
penchant for long, lingering shots of pond water, snorting horses, and highway
traffic. Soderbergh's remake is...well, we wish we knew; the director
declined to be interviewed. "Steven always described it as '2001:
A Space Odyssey meets Last Tango in Paris,' " says Jim
Gianopulos, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. (You mean, lots of
zero-gravity sex involving sticks of butter? "Well," laughs
Gianopulos, "I think he meant that euphemistically.") But here's
the basic plot: Strange and deadly things are happening aboard a space station
orbiting Solaris, a possibly sentient planet that may be playing mind games with
its observers. Clooney plays a widower psychologist sent to check things
out--and incredibly gets a second chance at love with his late wife, McElhone
(The Truman Show).
Titanic's James Cameron had long considered directing but stepped aside
when Soderbergh expressed interest. (He remains as a producer.) The Traffic
Oscar winner finished his screenplay as he was wrapping last year's Ocean's
Eleven and sent it out to a number of actors, including Daniel Day-Lewis,
but not to his Ocean's star Clooney. So the actor wrote him a
letter, "He's my partner, and I had to write him a letter," says
Clooney, who with Soderbergh runs the Warner Bros.-based production company
Section Eight (also responsible for October's smaller-scale Welcome to
Collinwood), "I said, 'Look: I would love to take a crack at it, but
only if you think I can do it.' And he basically said: 'What the f---?
Let's try.' "
The film was shot over the summer in just two months--pretty quick for a sci-fi
flick. "We have huge sets but very few special-effects shots.
Andybody going into this wanting to see Alien 3 is going to be
surprised," Says Clooney. "it's not an 'art film.' But it
is a film for everyone in that it's a well-made, well-told story."
THE LOWDOWN: "Not an art film" will be good news for those turned off
by Soderbergh's Full Frontal. Then again, brainy sci-fi doesn't
always play well with audiences (see A.I.).
Premiere Magazine - Sept. 2002
SOLARIS
Starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, and Jeremy Davies; directed by
Steven Soderbergh (Twentieth Century Fox, December 13)
When something goes wrong aboard the Prometheus, a spaceship orbiting the
titular planet, astronaut-psychologist Chris Kelvin (Clooney) investigates,
discovering that one crew member has killed himself, and two others (Davies and
Ulrich Tukur) are haunted by lifelike visions. Soon Kelvin starts seeing
visions, too--in the form of his wife (McElhone), who committed suicide years
before--he must choose between saving Earth from a potential evil alien force
and having a second chance at a lost love. "This is by far the
hardest acting job I've ever had to do," says Clooney, who petitioned
producing partner Soderbergh for the role after Daniel Day-Lewis turned it down.
"Every single scene is like, 'Okay, this scene may be the last moment of
your life.' " In 1972, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky converted
Stanislaw Lem's sci-fi novel into a nearly three-hour tract on Communism and
inhumanity ("not his best film," cautions Clooney); now Soderbergh
refashions the material into a kind of psychosexual search for God. Or, as
the director himself has said, "a combination of "2001" and Last
"Tango in Paris"."
Coy George: "It's [not an easy] thing to do when you're 41," Clooney
says of his first nude scene. "I not only had to clear out the entire
set, I had to clear the director out."