The Dangerous Confessions of George Clooney: The actor speaks to Jean Lynch about directing his first movie.
There was a point when it seemed that Charlie Kaufman's screenplay, based on the supposedly real-life memoirs of The Gong Show's host Chuck Barris' time as a CIA assassin, would never make it to the shooting stage, despite being one of the hottest scripts in Hollywood. Its eventual saviour, George Clooney in his directorial debut, picks up the story.
"It was at Warner Brothers as a studio script, and the problem was that it was a great screenplay but it fell right into that 'it's not cheap enough for a real independent studio to make' and 'it's not expensive enough for Warner Bros. to make', and it didn't fall into any of the categories that they knew how to sell." A number of directors came and went, including Curtis Hanson, David Finscher, PJ Hogan and Bryan Singer. Clooney was attached as an actor in the role of Jim Byrd, a CIA agent. He says, "It had got to that thing where it was in turnaround, and it wasn't going to get made, and I thought, well, if I grab it, and do it for scale, and get everybody else to do it for scale, we can get the film made for way under what it was budgeted at and that was my pitch to Harvey (Weinstein); I told him how much I wanted to make the film, what I thought the aesthetic of it was, and that I could do it $10m cheaper than anyone else."
Clooney finally realised that the best person to sit in the director's chair was himself. He says "My dad had a gameshow called 'The Money Maze', and the husband would run through it while the wife would stand above it going 'go left - go right -', which I think was a great statement on American popular culture at the time.
"And I was there. I was in the back of those sets at the exact same period in the 70's, so I knew what they looked like and what they felt like, and I certainly had an understanding of fame, and those trappings.
"I felt that this was the screenplay that I knew how to tell the story, so I wanted to try, because I don't know if there's another film that I would have this personal understanding of."
Charlie's Angels star, Sam Rockwell, plays Barris, in a breakthrough performance. Says Clooney, "Steven (Soderbergh) and I were producing a little project called Welcome to Collinwood and I did a small part in the film in order to help raise the money. Sam had the lead in the film, and as I was working with him I kept thinking he was the perfect guy to play Chuck. I didn't want someone too famous to play the role.
"The movie works because Sam Rockwell was a very brave actor from the beginning, and that's the simple truth of it. This is a character that does a lot of despicable things, yet you still have to root for him."
Rockwell is appreciative of the support of his director. He says, "It was pretty moving, really amazing. It's rare in Hollywood that someone will back you the way George did, so I didn't want to disappoint him." In fact, having immersed himself so in the character that he was able to replicate all Barris's mannerisms and his lisp, Rockwell was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actor at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
As one might expect from the creator of Being John Malkovich and the recent Adaptation, Kaufman's script reflects the ambiguity of its subject matter. Was Chuck Barris really a CIA assassin, or is the tale a metaphor for his 'murder' of the morals of modern society (Barris is often 'credited' with the 'dumbing down' of TV). The film doesn't dwell too much on the authenticity of the tale. It's almost irrelevant; it makes a great story, and either way provides a fascinating insight into a well-loved media celebrity, but it is telling that the title is Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, suggesting that all these incredible events are taking place in someone's head.
Clooney makes effective use of some stylish, angled shots, while director of photography, Tom Sigel, says "The look of the film is quite a tapestry because the script is such a collage. It ranges from a pastel hand-painted look for the game shows, to a stark, de-saturated film-noir look for the world of the CIA." That Clooney has been directed by some of the quirkiest of modern directors is in clear evidence.
"Steven's films are famous for bringing back non-linear storytelling" he says, "while Joel & Ethan (Coen), certainly the way they use the camera as a character I felt was a great lesson.
"But who else I was really ripping off, and I sent letters of apology to, were Mike Nicholls and Sidney Lumet."
Considered to be something of a companion piece to Paul Schrader's Autofocus, the seedy life and death story of Hogan's Hero star Bob Crane, Clooney's film is considerably more upbeat, celebrating the fantastic aspects of its subject's life rather than dwelling on the murky depths. But then the real larger-than-life Barris is still very much alive and well, proving that all fairy tales really do have a happy ending.
Jean Lynch
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