George Clooney

by Mark Browning

  Chandler:

  All right, what have we learned so far?

  —Friends, episode 117, “The One with Two Parts, Part Two”

  As pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross, Clooney managed to strike critical and commercial gold. It is perhaps easy to forget just how popular the show was, and particularly his appearances on it, in the mid- to late 1990s. His cameo in Friends (along with Noah Wyle) as one of two doctors double-dating Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courtney Cox) reflects his notoriety at the time as well as his comic timing (memorably declaring “God bless the chick pea”).

  Through ER, he became a global phenomenon, the consequences of which still follow him to this day. In a positive sense, he was brought into the homes of millions of people in a role that was sympathetic and caring, rebellious in his dealings with authority but usually with the patients’ interests at heart. First seen in the pilot, inebriated on St. Patrick’s Day just hours before a working shift, Ross’s drinking and womanizing (numbering over 14 sexual conquests across the first three seasons alone, including medical student Harper Tracy) added to the image of a loveable rogue, whose inability to commit to Nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) was the stuff of dreams for network producers hankering after a story line that would keep viewers coming back over repeated seasons. Finding romantic or matrimonial commitment difficult at the same time as apparently having a natural gift in caring for children—these character traits resurface in subsequent film roles. His role required not only learning mountains of medical terms, to be delivered at breakneck speed, as well as performing medical procedures in a credible way, but also regular close-ups of him looking down caringly, often with head tilted in a solicitous manner—an acting pose, which he has had to live down ever since.

  With 25 episodes per season, it is not surprising that the dramatic quality of ER varies; but in terms of pace, it seems closer to the rhythm of film, avoiding sentimental cliché where possible and giving audiences some credit for filling in gaps by engaging with multiple narrative threads. Unlike other medical dramas, such as Chicago Hope, it focused much more precisely on the relationships between medical staff rather than on patients, whose traumas provide an input of narrative energy but who rarely survive, so to speak, more than an episode. Early on, Clooney’s aunt, Rosemary, has a small part as a torch singer, Madame X, in “Going Home” (season 1, episode 3 and later in episode 11).

  There is more than a touch of naiveté about the extent to which Clooney’s character is prepared to bend or break rules on behalf of individual patients or the extent to which he emotionally invests in them, but this makes his role more compelling for audiences. In “Long Day’s Journey” (season 1, episode 14), in a single shift he deals with an abused boy, a baby left by a suicide, and a worsening cystic fibrosis victim. In “The Birthday Party” (season 1, episode 17), he punches an abusive father, and in “And Baby Makes Two” (season 2, episode 5), his orders for tests on an HIV-positive boy are overruled by Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), who as the financial and managerial line manager represents the institutional factors restraining Clooney’s character.

  There are a few particular stand-out episodes for his character. In “Hell and High Water” (season 2, episode 7), he saves a boy trapped in a drainage tunnel; most of the episode is focused on Doug as action hero, coming to the rescue of a vulnerable child, who like him is given to acts of recklessness. He makes mistakes (effectively killing a patient by mislabeling him in “Blizzard,” season 1, episode 10), and his place in the ER is precarious financially, personally, and ethically as he continues to break rules, major and minor, on behalf of his patients. We are drip-fed a distant relationship between Doug and his father, who, it transpires, has many of the same less attractive character traits. However, in “The Healers” (season 2, episode 16) Doug is reminded by his father that he alone bears responsibility for his actions.

  Clooney left the series in 1999, midway through season 5, his character unaware that Hathaway is carrying his twins. The pressure to close that narrative circle was so great that amid tremendous secrecy, Clooney filmed a small cameo for the episode “Such Sweet Sorrow” in 2000 where we see Hathaway joining him in Seattle. His character is kept alive by visual devices, like a photo at Carter’s leaving party at the end of season 11 or a small reference in season 14 to their children, supposedly now in third grade. In the episode “Old Times” in season 15 in 2009, Clooney reprised his role, with he and Hathaway still married. They become involved in a plotline involving Carter who needs a kidney transplant, although they are unaware of the recipient of the organ. In a nicely understated scenario, the final line is given to Hathaway who talks of the kidney going to “some doctor in Chicago.”

  Conclusion

  It is worth noting that the DVD cases for both The Magic Bubble and Red Surf feature images of Clooney that do not appear in the actual films. For The Magic Bubble, an older Clooney with short hair appears, linked to the crop he had for From Dusk Till Dawn, and in Red Surf, although acknowledged in small print, the image is crudely doctored (quite literally) so that the smiling face of Dr. Doug Ross is pasted onto the leather jacket of Remar, the surfer drug dealer. You can even see faint traces of Ross’s ER green uniform. This reflects how film marketing uses a form of retroactive rewriting of history, and that once a particular image of a star becomes dominant, it is pasted (sometimes literally) over previous work, overwriting or erasing it.

  Sunset Beat and Red Surf feel almost like twins separated at birth. In both, Clooney plays a role given to lightweight rebellion, signaled by motorbike-riding leather jackets and big Michael Bolton-style hair (visible without the helmet). In both he has a vague backstory of a broken relationship, acts in a way designated as rebellious (by eating with his mouth open or putting his feet up on desks), and lives a lifestyle that constitutes an adolescent male fantasy, surrounded by bikes, guns, and potential action. Both films end with an explosion over water. In Sunset Beat, he survives to ride off with his buddies; in Red Surf he dies, but in an almost identical shot his partner takes his place and rides off with his girlfriend on a coastal road. Both are formulaic genre narratives, ensemble pieces in which Clooney is one of a group of men and relatively bloodless. In Sunset Beat, a kidnap victim has demands tattooed onto his chest rather than pieces being cut off his body. Also here, slightly reminiscent of Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), we see Clooney at an observatory in a shoot-out scene; and at the close, framed by the rising sun, as troubled bad boy he scatters his friend’s ashes from the balcony at the same location. However, unlike James Dean, it would take another decade before Clooney could credibly exude a sense of loss (see chapter 8).

  Clooney’s early film work shows him trying out different roles: drug-dealing villain faced with the imminence of young fatherhood (Red Surf), a son in conflict with a father (Combat Academy), and object of an older woman’s fantasy (The Magic Bubble). The roles show him toying with rule-breaking, criminal, or immoral acts and evolving from peripheral parts with single names (Mac and Biff) to more central roles with two names (Mark Remar). Loquacious wise-cracking charm, a winning smile, and (by his own admission) good hair—these features are present too. But perhaps more importantly, these early efforts show roads not taken, such as Red Surf’s R rating, presumably for the portrayal of drug use, rare in Clooney’s film work and an experiment with more violent content in a crime genre. We also see him trying out a range of potential genres—horror, crime, action, family drama—but often with a pervasive light touch. The horror films are more parodies than outright attempts at scaring audiences, the moral dilemma in The Magic Bubble carries little dramatic weight, and as a criminal in Red Surf, it seems like Clooney’s character cannot really bring himself to commit to the brutality required by life as a drug dealer.

  In terms of ER, Clooney honored a five-year contract at a time when he could have earned more (as coworkers argued to improve their terms) or walked away to concentrate solely on a film career. Long workin
g days and the juggling of schedules were very challenging as he dovetailed ER with shooting Batman and Robin. However, by sticking with ER he showed himself to be a trustworthy, hardworking actor and one who realized that it gave him the chance to improve his craft, work on emotionally intense story lines with a high-quality ensemble cast, and network with directors who would play a part in his subsequent film career, such as Tarantino (like “Motherhood,” season 1, episode 24) and Mimi Leder (like “Day One,” season 1, episode 2). He brought to his studio work the same kind of joker persona that he would show on film sets, easing tension and making difficult schedules more bearable. Generally speaking, other actors have only positive comments to make about working around him, which would be a real asset when he later worked on more stressful films or took the opportunity to direct himself.

  Chapter 2

  Romantic Hero (What Women Want)

  I’m a handsome man, conventionally-proportioned, but with flair. Old tailors love me. They tell me I remind them of men from forty years ago, slim but sturdy, on the small side but broad.

  —Ryan Bingham in Walter Kirn’s Up in the Air 1

  One Fine Day (Michael Hoffman, 1996)

  Jack:

  Guess what? I’m not like every other man you know.

  One Fine Day follows Jack Taylor (George Clooney) and Melanie Parks (Michelle Pfeiffer) across a supposedly average day in New York, trying to juggle the stresses of demanding jobs, journalist and architect respectively, with the difficulties of looking after Jack’s son, Sammy (Alex D. Linz), and Melanie’s daughter, Maggie (Mae Whitman).

  Conventionally, romantic comedy works by juxtaposing unfamiliar elements, bringing characters together who might not usually meet. The problem here is that the script spends much of its energy in keeping the protagonists apart. The film is an exercise in crosscutting to the point where all we see is frenzied attempts to meet deadlines that have no dramatic weight. The “will they, won’t they” is strung out for the length of the entire film, by which time we may feel that the pressure of generic predictability weighs far too heavily.

  The fractured nature of the narrative means that the two leads maintain the presence of the other by talking about them to a third party (Jack to his boss and Melanie to her mother). The means by which the pair are kept separated but supposedly in the minds of one another (and the viewer) become increasingly contrived, not just swapping children at points but also (accidentally) mobile phones so that they have to take and pass on messages for one another, literally dipping into the lives of the other for a day. Jack’s carrying of the goldfish bowl becomes a physical representation of the burden of looking after children, and although the fish are eaten by a cat later, he cares enough to get some more and take them around to Melanie’s flat (although by that stage the fish are a thinly veiled justification for seeing her). In the run-up to their first meeting at the locked door of the school, they are placed increasingly closer to the point where they almost inhabit the same scene as she bobs down to tie Sammy’s laces and he walks behind her, out of shot with Maggie. The pair tries to use each other’s children as sources of information to see how serious the other person is about potential emotional involvement.

  The character of Jack is straining after an Everyman significance, which it struggles to carry off convincingly. When he claims “I’m sick of resentful … fish, who think that you owe them but who won’t trust you for a second to do anything for them,” the potential seriousness of his role as a spokesperson for modern man is undermined by his position on a couch, his choice of metaphor, and the fact that we are looking at George Clooney, twice voted the world’s sexiest man. Lines of dialogue like Melanie’s “That’s a totally ex-husband thing to do” countered by Jack’s “Well, you would know because that’s a totally ex-wife reaction,” clearly echo one another but never reach the wit or even fun in language taken by Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) in His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) or other screwball comedies, which this film dimly resembles.

  Initially, Sammy and Maggie echo their parents’ animosity, pulling faces at each other in the taxi, but predictably over the course of the film they act as catalysts to bring them together. It is the search for Maggie, who wanders off after a kitten, and Sammy’s soccer game that bring into sharp focus Jack’s qualities as a parent, particularly in contrast with Melanie’s largely absent ex-partner. At the denouement, the seal of approval for the implied future relationship of Jack and Melanie comes from the children coming into the room, where the adults are eventually at ease with one another sufficiently to fall asleep on the couch together.

  The sense of a divided screen is present in the vertical wipes used as transition devices and the shot composition, like in the first taxi ride, where the symmetrical two-shot clearly juxtaposes the two in enforced proximity. Actual split-screens are used for phone scenes as the deadline pressure on both Jack and Melanie increases. As they separate after the drop-in center episode, the camera remains on a street scene and the pair walk out of shot, only to return four times, suggesting the difficulty they now have in walking away from each other but also the need they both feel to have the final word.

  The choice of basing the narrative around a single day is potentially interesting but simply put, not enough happens, literally or emotionally. This is very much an ordinary day for Melanie and Jack. She has an important presentation; he has a big story—but we get the impression that this is the nature of their professional lives. The film ultimately follows the agenda of the protagonists, i.e., work related rather than personal, and is the less interesting for it. Both are under some pressure (to win over an important client or to source a big corruption story) but the same might equally happen the following day or next week.

  The film attempts to undermine cynicism, to emphasize that these two characters really do not know each other and judge their opposite gender harshly. Melanie does not necessarily hate all men, and Jack can find time in his life for children. The problem is that a lot of Melanie’s distrust lacks any real basis in the film. We see Jack playing, and happy to do so, with his child, improvising a Hunchback of Notre Dame scenario in the scaffolding in his flat. As ex-partner Kristen leaves for her honeymoon near the opening, she gives Jack and Maggie a look of wistful envy, suggesting this is a glimpse of the husband and father that Jack could have been (with her). He is happy to live among boxes, toast marshmallows, and indulge in games of hide and seek. Later, he even retrieves his willful daughter as she hides under a table; without losing his temper and despite an urgent deadline, he patiently negotiates a deal with the child to have a cat.

  Maybe he seems happy to accept the fun elements of fatherhood rather than the longer-term aspects of paternal responsibility (Kristen calls him a “good-time father”) but he seems far closer to the children in action as well as spirit than Melanie, who finds play difficult and spends her time scolding and giving lists of dos and don’ts. She is the one who loses her temper with Sammy in the design studio (for the boy playing), and although provoked, Jack does not. His version of play, involving an element of risk, seen in Sammy’s accident with the marble, allowing the children to eat burgers for breakfast, and carrying Maggie on his shoulders, is portrayed as more healthy than Melanie’s control freakishness. Like Sally in When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989), Melanie’s fussiness is also expressed about food (this time for her child), but here we are not encouraged to laugh at this behavior as endearing, and her precise directions to the taxi driver just seem annoying. By her own admission she is “horrible” to Jack all day, while he responsibly looked after her son and she managed to lose his daughter.

  If the sexual politics of romantic comedies such as Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993) or While You Were Sleeping (Jon Turteltaub, 1995) overtly raise the question “Where have all the good men gone?” One Fine Day attempts to suggest that they are still here, just unrecognized and misjudged. However, the assumption that Jack puts his career b
efore his children is refuted by Jack’s action on screen. The film touches lightly on what it is to be a father, suggesting it is more connected to what you do rather than what you are: Melanie laughs at the drop-in puppet show until she sees it is created by Jack. However, if the film is seriously trying to exact a promise from Melanie as typical of hard-nosed women that “I can’t do everything on my own,” it seems to be quite strained as if Jack is desperately needing a form of vindication, i.e., that men still have a role in society, even if no one is quite sure what that is.

  At the climactic press conference, as we have learned so little of Jack’s corruption story, it does not seem to matter to the viewer whether he succeeds in proving his point or not. The key witness he has been searching for suddenly appears in a taxi and virtually throws her story at him. The stakes are purely personal in his meeting Melanie at an agreed point in place and time. It is his demonstration of his credentials as a reliable father that matters here. In Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999), a climactic press conference actually features one of the two protagonists, Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), lending the event a sense of genuine emotional jeopardy, which seems lacking here. Melanie’s outburst in defense of Jack, “at least he’s honest,” seems more motivated to delay the press conference than to express a moment of realization of Jack’s worth.

  In the hectic nature of the narrative, particularly in the number of scenes that show the pair walking through crowded New York streets, it is tempting to see the film as actually dramatizing its very opposite: that here we have two adults for whom children are primarily an encumbrance to be dragged around and palmed off on any available child care. The guilt of using inadequate child care, particularly with reference to the drop-in center, eats away at Melanie. However, she is still someone who is in a position to buy a solution to most of her problems, from taxi rides to last-minute alterations to her broken building model. Ultimately, the film puts forward the fairly conservative notion, that bringing up children with two parents is better than one, but more for the prosaic factor of time sharing than any suggestion of a broader experience of gender and sexuality, and that a modern definition of parental paradise is a half-decent babysitter.