Work, jest and play
July, 2nd, 2000
George Clooney's friends have a favourite story about him. Richard Kind - the bulky actor who plays Paulie, the naive, hapless, panicky press secretary in Spin City - was staying over at Clooney's house for a while. This happens a lot: Clooney has eight spare bedrooms so his mates can hide out if they've been thrown out by their wives.
This time Kind brought a tiny kitten with him and started growing worried because there was nothing in the litter tray when he returned from work each day. He was so concerned he started feeding the poor kitten laxatives, but the tray was still empty.
( Picture goes here)
One day he walked into the bathroom to find a massive - you might say human-sized - deposit in the tray. Kind screamed: 'Oh, my god Kitty!' loud enough to be heard halfway across LA. Just before he could take the cat to the vet and ask for an explanation of this freak of nature, Clooney owned up...
There are several ways to react to this story. One is disgust that Clooney could be so puerile. Another is bemusement at the idea of a suave, millionaire film star sneaking around, clearing up after a cat and then defecating in a litter tray. But Clooney's friends prefer to see it this way: it demonstrates the dedication to the point of absurdity that distinguishes the true practical joker.
What Clooney's friends think matters because his life seems to be built around them. He calls them The Boys, his core group of eight. They've each got a bedroom in his house, sometimes just so they can stay after all-night poker, or when they've got some more serious crisis. And while they're there they can shoot hoops on his basketball court, watch movies in the screening room and drink Guinness on draught.
And when none of them is around, Clooney shares his space with his
potbellied
pig, Max, and his two dogs. Sometimes a woman manages to negotiate this
male
enclave for a while, but not at the moment. And Clooney, a divorced
man,
swears he'll never get married again.
Adam Sandler, the master of idiot comedy and just about as far as you
can get
from Clooney on screen, has a similar set-up. The difference is that
there's
something reclusive about Sandler's life, which seems to be conducted
solely
with his close friends. Sandler doesn't even speak to the press.
Clooney, on
the other hand, is happy to let journalists - that is the non-tabloid
variety
- hang out with him in his house. And if they don't do the interview
there,
he'll go out drinking with them: he's a beer man. And consequently the
press
love him. Stars these days tend to be prickly and oversensitive, or
therapised and unnervingly confessional. Clooney's different: he's just
relaxed, good copy. Ask him about the rumours that he's having an
affair with
Mark Wahlberg and he'll say: 'That must be my longest Hollywood
relationship.'
It's not all quips and practical jokes. He's got a serious side,
including
the interest in politics he inherited from his fiercely liberal father
Nick,
who Clooney claims used to tell him off for not going out with black
girls.
He thinks Jimmy Carter was a much underrated president. And he got
involved
in a campaign against a Chicago TV station that hired Jerry Springer to
comment on the news. Clooney, who has known Springer all his life, was
deeply
concerned by this dip in journalistic ethics, and let everyone know.
These strongly held opinions come coated in the famous charm. You could
see
it at Cannes this year. Ever since President Reagan's Libya obsession
had
Sylvester Stallone running scared from the festival in fear of a
terrorist
attack there have been mutterings about the end of the affair between
Cannes
and Hollywood. But Cannes allowed Clooney to sweep it off its feet. The
French like their Hollywood stars in the classic mould, and Clooney
certainly
has a touch of Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart about him.
In direct contrast to Bruce Willis, scowling as critics jeered at a
rough cut
of Armageddon, Clooney had the wisdom to come to Cannes with a festival
sure
thing, the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? But then, that's
Clooney
all over. These days he is the perfect film star in almost every way.
The
only thing he can't always do is the one that counts most - get punters
into
the cinema. His films tend to be medium-size hits at best.
Conventionally,
his new film, The Perfect Storm, would be seen to be the great test.
Based on
a true story about a doomed fishing boat, it has ambitious special
effects
and a summer opening: all the elements that show that the studio is
expecting
a hit. But in a typical move Clooney has suggested that it doesn't
stand a
chance in the early summer box office clash with Mel Gibson in The
Patriot .
Gibson, as it happens, was the first choice to play the skipper in The
Perfect Storm , a fact that Clooney's all too willing to discuss - just
as he
told everyone that his role in Three Kings was intended for Clint
Eastwood.
Asked once whether he was a big star, he said: 'Don't kid yourself. I'm
the
guy following Clint's horse with a shovel.'
George Clooney was five and dressed as a leprechaun when he first
appeared on
the local TV variety show that his father hosted. 'We were like this
vaudeville family,' he always says. His aunt is Rosemary Clooney and
her
husband was actor Jose Ferrer. But George didn't grow up intending to
be an
actor: that was all happening in faraway LA. He grew up in Kentucky and
Ohio
and wanted to play baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. It was a dream
that got
as far as a try-out, but as soon as he stood on the field with the
pros,
Clooney knew he would never be a ballplayer.
Instead, after hanging out on set with his cousin, actor Miguel Ferrer,
he
decided to head to LA and stay with Aunt Rosemary. It was 1982. Clooney
credits the next 12 years with giving him some perspective. He did a
year on
the dreadful sitcom The Facts Of Life , and the first season of
Roseanne . He
was in The Revenge Of The Killer Tomatoes . He appeared as
'Lip-synching
trannie' in one movie. And that was also the era when he got married
and
divorced. By the time the part of womanising, bullheaded paediatrician
Doug
Ross came along, Clooney looked like a man rather than a Hollywood
pretty boy.
Even now - at 39 - Perfect Storm director Wolfgang Petersen reckons
'he's too
young' for the parts that suit him best. ER made him a huge TV star,
even if
Clooney was eager to credit the show rather than take all the praise
himself,
given that the show has survived pretty well without him. But he was
also
quick to criticise the producers when they started to turn the doctors
into
social workers. His own rule was that Ross could only grieve for a
patient a
couple of times a season: any doctor affected more often than that
would
crack up soon enough.
But his TV stardom was slow to transfer to the big screen. This
mystified
people. It's no great puzzle why most of the Friends stars have
struggled to
convince on the big screen, but Clooney looked like an old-fashioned
movie
star. So he succeeded Val Kilmer in the rubber suit for Batman & Robin
(1997), the movie that seems to have killed off the series. He was
paired
with Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day (1996) a romantic comedy that on
paper
looked like a certain hit, but wasn't. And he was matched with Nicole
Kidman
for The Peacemaker (1997), directed by ER veteran Mimi Leder. That
failed to
do much either.
For all the goodwill, Clooney looked like he was going to have to stick to TV. At which point Steven Soderbergh, a director who seemed to have completely self-destructed, came to the rescue. Although it wasn't a big hit, Out Of Sight showed that Clooney - especially in his scenes with Jennifer Lopez - really did have that mysterious quality that stars used to have in the Forties.
By the time Three Kings came out, Clooney had left ER. Again, the film was only a middling success, but, again, the reviews were great, Clooney was excellent and was very proud of the film's political complexity, even if he did get in a punch-up with director David O. Russell. As Clooney's friends tell it, the tension came because, as usual, Clooney had made friends with the crew. And Russell, who had never made an action movie before, started getting panicked by all the helicopters and noise and was taking it out on the crew and the extras. Clooney stepped in, and Russell head-butted him. But he still thinks that Russell did a good job.
So film crews like him, the Coen brothers like him and magazines such as People like him. The South Park guys love him too: he played Sparky the Gay Dog. So maybe The Perfect Storm will finally justify that $12 million pay cheque. And if not, then he's busy producing Wahlberg's next movie, Metal God . And he'll probably do some more live TV following Failsafe, the Cold War drama he organised and starred in that was screened in the US in April.
And then there's Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the legendary but actually rather dismal rat-pack movie. Soderbergh will direct, while Clooney is producing and playing Danny Ocean, the Sinatra role. He has also roped in Julia Roberts, Michael Douglas, Bill Murray and possibly Bruce Willis to do the other parts for peanuts. How did he manage that? Because he's George Clooney,
and while the cinema-going public are taking their time to cotton on, the stars know he's a star.