George Clooney

by Mark Browning

  From a studio point of view, there is a financial incentive to maintain the role of stars as long as they act as a hook to draw audiences in. It remains difficult to secure a distribution deal without the presence of stars. At the moment, Clooney has secured funding for more personal projects like Leatherheads (2008) only if he stars in them. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (2009), although sweeping the board at the 2010 Oscars, found only a last-minute distribution deal through Fox Searchlight, after potentially failing to find a backer, partly due to its lack of recognizable stars. However, there seem to be fewer films conceived as overt star vehicles, in part because there seems to be a decreasing pool of male actors who can open a film. There also seem to be few guarantees about finding a successful formula, except repeating one you have already found.

  Chapter 1

  From E/R to ER (Early Television Work)

  I’ve done a lot of very bad television and I’ve been very bad in a lot of bad television.

  —George Clooney1

  While the shift from television to feature films is not unknown (Clint Eastwood’s extended apprenticeship on Rawhide, for instance), lengthy TV careers usually represent a destination rather than a staging post in career terms. The number of contemporary actors who have made such a shift is extremely few with the exception of individuals like Guy Pearce from the Australian soap Neighbours (1986–89) to Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001) to The Time Machine (Simon Wells, 2002) and back again to TV in Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, 2011) on HBO. In the following survey of Clooney’s TV work, involving many failed pilots, dates in parentheses designate when he appeared in that show, not necessarily its full run.

  Clooney’s very first role on TV was in 1978 as an extra on the James Michener mini-series Centennial, which happened to be filming in Augusta, Kentucky, Clooney’s hometown. A guest spot on the California-based crime-fighting series Riptide (1984), a bloodless version of Miami Vice, was Clooney’s first on-screen speaking role, as one of a pair of kidnappers, eventually apprehended after a tussle and a roll down a flight of stairs.

  E/R (CBS, 1984–85) was canceled after only a single season but gave Clooney a taste of regular employment on a serial sitcom. As Mark “Ace” Kolmar, his character worked as an orderly with paramedics in all 22 episodes, alongside his on-screen aunt, Nurse Joan Thor (Conchata Ferrell, better known now as Berta in CBS’s Two and a Half Men), and with Elliott Gould, with whom he would team up again 15 years later in the Ocean’s franchise. Who could have guessed the direction Clooney’s career would take a decade later in another drama based in a Chicago hospital?

  Clooney appeared in single episodes of fledgling series, which ran for only a short time. Street Hawk (ABC, 1985) lasted only 12 episodes, featuring a superbike ridden by Jesse Mach (Rex Smith), a police public relations officer by day and a crime fighter by night, constituting a motorcycle version of Knight Rider. Clooney appears in episode 2, “A Second Self,” as Kevin Stark, brother of a car thief killed in a pursuit, who tries to lure Jesse into a trap to exact revenge. Clooney’s character dies (a rare early example), as dictated by the imperatives of the genre, in crossfire.

  He had experience in single episodes of more established dramatic vehicles too. In an episode of Murder, She Wrote, entitled “No Laughing Matter” (1987), Clooney plays Kip, son of Mack Howard, one-half of a long-running comedy double act with Murray Gruen, now estranged due to a long-running feud. Kip seeks to marry Corrie (Beth Windsor), daughter of Murray in a Romeo and Juliet-style tale of family hostility. Clooney played Detective Bobby Hopkins in a 1987 episode of The Golden Girls (“To Catch a Neighbor”). He is one of a pair of cops who use the girls’ house to watch their new neighbors, the McDowells, suspected of being jewel thieves. Clooney would probably be the first to admit that his acting here as “Bob Dishy” is hardly his best, accenting almost every word and trying to inject some drama into an episode whose writing falls below the standard of most others.

  Clooney began to build experience in consecutive episodes (albeit in minor roles) in mainstream comedies. Baby Talk (ABC, 1991–92) was a direct TV spin-off from Look Who’s Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989). In the first season only, Clooney plays Joe, a construction worker and potential suitor of single-mother Maggie Campbell (Julia Duffy), whose advances are commented on by baby Mickey (via a Tony Danza voice-over). As carpenter George Burnett, in The Facts of Life, he was a regular cast member in season 7, starring in 17 episodes (NBC, 1985–86, recurring 1986–87) but did not even merit his own name. Originally a spin-off from Diff’rent Strokes, by the time Clooney joined the show it had evolved to include major changes of cast, and its focus had moved away from the privileged Eastland School with Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae) as matriarchal headmistress to a gift shop called “Over Our Heads,” built with Burnett’s help after a fire at her previous shop.

  Clooney’s role in Roseanne (1988–91) is a little more significant in terms of the length of his appearance (11 episodes) and the enduring quality of the show. As the overbearing boss at a plastics factory, Booker Brooks, he also has a slightly more rounded character than in The Facts of Life or E/R. As Brooks he gets to date Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), don a moose costume, and work with John Goodman, who was also plotting a move into film. His presence is primarily visual and as a reverse-gender target of sexual harassment, so that we see him bending down to pick up a pen, provoking catcalls and getting his butt slapped by Jackie as she passes. The speed with which his character was dropped from the show, as it turned back toward the domestic and away from a work setting, reflects the brutality of network TV but also Clooney’s own dispensable status at this time. It was during his time on Roseanne that he watched Metcalf go off for occasional film parts, an example of a gradual shift into film rather than a sudden risky jump, which could result in very public failure.

  On Sisters (NBC, 1994–95) as Detective James Falconer, he gained the experience of a slightly broader drama show and was paired opposite Teddy (Sela Ward), who his character meets at an AA meeting at the beginning of season 4, marries by the end of it, only to be killed off by a car bomb in season 5. The show’s dialogue rarely extended beyond the formulaic, but there were flashes of innovation, like a scene in which Falconer cannot give up his dangerous job. We also see a younger Teddy (Jill Novick) unable to commit to Mitch (Ed Marinaro), played out nonnaturalistically on the same set at the same time, even with one line (“Why can’t you do this for me?”) spoken simultaneously by both male characters.

  Bodies of Evidence (CBS, 1992–93) did not have a long run, but as Detective Ryan Walker in 16 episodes opposite Lee Horsley (better known as TV’s Matt Houston), Clooney gained some experience of a formulaic cop show. He played a profiler helping Horsley’s character, Ben Carroll, as part of an elite homicide unit. Though hardly CSI, it does show the shift of detective narratives toward more forensic-based story lines.

  Sunset Beat (NBC, 1990) was a short-lived feature-length TV pilot, but it allowed Clooney to indulge in his passion for bikes with the wafer-thin premise of a group of LA policemen going undercover as bikers to solve crime led by Clooney’s character, Chic Chesbro, who has seriously long hair and also plays lead guitar in a band called Private Prayer. The supposed bad guys try to blackmail LA authorities into handing over confiscated money by bizarre acts like poisoning elephants in the city zoo. Explosions, stunts, and crude expositional dialogue all fight it out for attention. One scene will give a sufficient flavor: J.C., onetime mentor of Chesbro, is killed by being dropped from a helicopter onto the stage (using a very unconvincing dummy) while Chesbro is playing, and for a moment, the singer of the band, his girlfriend, almost starts to sing again.

  Without Warning: Terror in the Towers (Alan J. Levi, 1993) was a TV movie of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Clooney plays a young firefighter, spending quite a lot of the film in his hospital bed after being injured. The film uses lots of footage of the real attack but feels closer at times to a sensationalized reconstruction of the “Whe
n Insects Attack” subgenre than a piece of fictional drama. It focuses on the actions of heroic rescuers and pitiable victims, including a group of trapped schoolchildren, but does little to examine the possible causes of events.

  Clooney’s early TV career is dominated by comedy and roles as law enforcement officers, even blending the two in The Golden Girls. The significance of his TV career is that by the time his breakthrough role in ER appeared, he was older and no longer had the puppyish good looks of someone cast primarily for that reason. In a sense, he avoided roles in vacuous teen films by undergoing that apprenticeship on a succession of television roles. Cinematically, he made his first major features in his mid-30s, looking closer to 40. He has often mentioned, self-deprecatingly, his hair, and it is noticeable that in these TV roles, his hair is frequently the most memorable feature of any given scene. Whether it might be described as a mullet, the presence or absence of sideburns, or wayward strands that flop into his eyes, this distracting debate largely disappears when he starts his film career. There was comment at his cropped look on ER around the time of his filming from Dusk Till Dawn, but this signals a move away from matters of superficial fashion to that of utility and a look that is fit for purpose. In short, he grows up.

  In terms of roads not taken, while trying to break into film Clooney auditioned for the role of sadistic Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs (1992), the part eventually going to Michael Madsen. He also tried out five times for the part of J.D. in Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991), a part ultimately taken by Brad Pitt. Before The Descendants (2011), Clooney was interested in the role of Jack in Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004), but Payne ultimately opted for the lesser-known Thomas Haden Church.

  There are also rarely seen hidden gems like the 1996 promotional video, alongside Salma Hayek, for ZZ Top’s “She’s Just Killing Me” (also directed by Rodriguez), which appears on the soundtrack for From Dusk Till Dawn. More than a hastily cut promo for the film, in addition to a few fleeting shots from the film we see Clooney in black gloves on his motorbike approach a house, go in, and play a note or two on a piano, before Hayek appears in a striking red dress and gives him a bite on the neck. There are some strange shots of him removing his jacket (but keeping the gloves on) before he takes a few run-ups to a basketball hoop. There are a couple of signature turns and looks directly at the camera with his head still tilted. He also very briefly appears in a blond wig in Bree Sharp’s video for “David Duchovny” (Will Shivers, 1999).

  Early Film Roles

  Grizzly II: The Predator (David Sheldon, no release date)

  This production broke down due to lack of money (Canon Films went bankrupt), caused in part by an unconvincing bear creature, and remains unreleased. Despite the title, it has only a loose connection with Grizzly (William Girdler, 1976)—the main one being Sheldon, who codirected, cowrote, and coproduced the earlier film, and also Joan McCall, Sheldon’s wife in real life, who has a part in both films (Allison Corwin and Carol Blevins)—and absolutely none with Predator (John McTiernan, 1987).

  It did allow Clooney to work with Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern, but like Return to Horror High, Clooney’s part was small (one of a group of campers) and was a similar early sacrifice to the monster of the title, attacked by a campfire within the film’s opening 15 minutes.

  Shot in Hungary, the film is a strange hybrid creature (a little like the brief glimpses of the bear) of monster movie and concert film (Predator is the name of the fictitious band whose concert is being recorded). There are glimpses of known faces, like Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched from Milos Forman’s 1975 One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest), John Rhys-Davis (who found fame via the Indiana Jones movies), British electro mime artist Barbie Wilde, all-girl band Toto Coelo, and unauthorized use of Michael Jackson songs on the soundtrack.

  Thanks to the existence of video capture sites like YouTube, viewers can watch what exists of the film, including an incomplete climax involving the bear attacking the concert, being killed by an electric cable (reminiscent of Jeannot Szwarc’s 1978 Jaws II), and being applauded by the fans who think this is part of the concert. It is certainly tempting to think that Clooney’s early exit from the narrative was a wise move. The film regularly features in polls of contenders for the worst movie ever. Village People-style dancers, random explosions, and concert sections that look and sound like a camp version of an early Rick Springfield video—all this seems to genuinely excite the crowd who probably have never seen anything quite like this. One of the first bear attacks features a shot of a giant swinging paw, but the 20-foot grizzly of the title appears only in the partly-completed climax (as brief cutaways to a mascot-like creature). For the most part we have point-of-view shots from the monster and plenty of growling effects.

  Clooney’s cameo in a thriller about organ theft, The Harvest (David Marconi, 1993), is largely an opportunity to work with his cousin, Miguel Ferrer. It came back to haunt him as part of his dispute with Hard Copy magazine, who dug up this early work and gave it a prominence and significance that it did not deserve. Clooney appears briefly in one scene as a lip-synching transvestite, a role he has not been tempted to reprise. Unlike the protagonists of other contemporary camp cult hits The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (Stephan Elliott, 1994) or To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, 1995), Clooney’s role here is barely a character.

  Combat Academy (Neal Israel, 1986)

  Percival:

  Can’t we just act like adults for once? Who d’you think you are? Peter Pan?

  The film is an overt generic mix with Neal Israel, writer of Police Academy (Hugh Wilson, 1984) and director and cowriter of Bachelor Party (1984), acting as director here and reflected in the derivative nature of the title and even the theme music. However, rather than the rapid-fire gags and cartoonish characters of its comic predecessors, here there is a strange attempt at naturalism. It is a comedy without gags and a drama without dramatically engaging characters. The two protagonists, Percival (Wallace Langham) and especially supposedly cooler, wise-cracking Max (Keith Gordon), remain annoying nerds throughout.

  The opening montage of childish pranks in high school (exploding lockers and setting off sprinklers) sets the tone. Rather than learning any lesson, they essentially transfer this frat-house sensibility to Kirkland Military Academy, where a similar series of deeply annoying pranks follow, bringing them into conflict with General Woods (Robert Culp) and his son, Major Biff Woods (played by Clooney). Clooney’s first appearance, leaping from a truck, shows him as looking incredibly young (he was in his mid-20s at time of shooting) and with a voice several octaves higher than he was to have in his subsequent film career. At the time, he seems too self-consciously slim to fill out a military uniform.

  Whereas there are many films that deal with the reality of military training (Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Full Metal Jacket) or the stresses of life in a military academy (Harold Becker’s 1981 Taps), or even take a comic route to the whole process like Stripes (Ivan Reitman, 1981), Private Benjamin (Howard Zieff, 1980), or Volunteers (Nicholas Meyer, 1985), Combat Academy falls between all these stools. The paintball exercises are ludicrous, and the supposedly climactic battle with a group of visiting Russian cadets and Max’s homily about how we should all just get along and have fun is especially painful to watch. A military academy where nothing happens to a cadet who openly flouts all forms of discipline except having to do push-ups is hard to take seriously. The only character who fits the tone of Israel’s earlier work, and who therefore seems completely out of place here, is a wacky science teacher, Colonel Long (Richard Moll), who addresses the Russian cadets at the airport with “Will you be my friend? I like your hat.”

  The appearance of comic actors from much better vehicles (John Ratzenberger, Cliff from Cheers, as Percival’s father; or Jamie Farr, Klinger in MASH, as Colonel Frierick) cannot raise the quality of a very poor script. Whereas the character of Klinger was always trying to get thrown out of the a
rmy by his various poses of madness (an idea probably borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 Slaughterhouse Five), here Max tries to be thrown out of military school by an endless series of pranks. Where the former shows the insanity of real war, the latter just underlines the immaturity of the protagonist himself.

  The humorlessness of military life, dictating even how food should be eaten, is juxtaposed with extreme childishness, and the problem is that neither is particularly appealing. When conflict between Biff and Max reaches a climax over Biff’s pushing a nonswimmer into the pool, there is a farcical fistfight between the two. Whereas in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) Everett’s challenge to love-rival Vernon results in a genuinely funny exchange (see chapter 4), here Max engages in some unbelievable acrobatics to avoid being hit, and after delivering a single punch, Biff just walks away without any explanation.

  Clooney’s character is given a tiny amount of depth with a subplot involving kleptomania, in which he steals watches apparently in an act of rebellion against his father, but we do not really have enough in the script to invest such conflicts with credibility. The last exchange between General Woods and Biff finally touches on some real emotion and shows the potential of Clooney’s later work as he shouts “What’s my name?” at his father, who always refers to him simply as “Major.” However, the resonance of this exchange is undercut by a subsequent scene on the shooting range, where Biff bluntly admits to Max, “I miss my mom.” Max reconciles father and son by putting Biff in charge of a winning group in the paintball exercise, but that is only a veneer over paper-thin characterization.