George Clooney
Authors: Mark Browning
After receiving a First Class English degree at Manchester University, Mark Browning attended universities in Leeds, London, and Kent and gained a PGCE, an MA, and a PhD respectively. He has taught English and Film Studies in a number of schools in England and was a Senior Lecturer in Education in Bath. He has published study guides for Film Education, academic articles on the processes of adaptation, and also written comedy sketches for BBC Radio 2.
He has published a number of film-related works:
David Cronenberg: Author or Filmmaker?
(Intellect Books, 2007), which has also been translated into Serbo-Croat;
Stephen King on the Big Screen
(Intellect, 2009);
David Fincher: Films That Scar
(ABC-CLIO, 2010);
Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter
(ABC-CLIO, 2011);
Stephen King on the Small Screen
(Intellect, 2011); and
Danny Boyle: Lust for Life
(Chaplin Books, 2011).
He currently lives in Germany where he works as a teacher and freelance writer.
George Clooney
An Actor Looking for a Role
Mark Browning
ABC-CLIO, LLC
Copyright 2012 by Mark Browning
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Browning, Mark, 1966â
George Clooney : an actor looking for a role / Mark Browning.
        p. cm.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978â0â313â39621â2 (hard copy : alk. paper) â ISBN 978â0â313â39622â9 (ebook)
  1. Clooney, GeorgeâCriticism and interpretation. I. Title.
  PN2287.C546B76  2012
  791.4302â²8092âdc23 2012010975
ISBN: 978â0â313â39621â2
EISBN: 978â0â313â39622â9
1615141312Â Â Â Â 12345
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1 From
E/R
to
ER
(Early Television Work)
2 Romantic Hero (What Women Want)
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
(2000)
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(2002)
Good Night, and Good Luck
(2005)
The Ides of March
(2011)
The Men Who Stare at Goats
(2009)
The Descendants
(2011)
9 Time for a Commercial Break: “What Else?”
Kelvin: the conscious effort to smile, nod, stand ⦠performing millions of gestures that constitute life on earth ⦠I studied these until they became reflexes.
âKelvin in
Solaris
George Timothy Clooney is arguably not just a fine actor but a major Hollywood player, acting as director, producer, and writer on projects that without his interest and creative input would never have been made. His influence within the industry has grown steadily over the last decade so that rather than merely featuring in polls of most handsome man, he now tops polls of powerful figures in Hollywood. At the same time, a growing number of films with which he has been involved have garnered a more positive critical response, resulting in Oscar nominations for Best Actor (
Michael Clayton
,
Up in the Air
and
The Descendants
), Best Original Screenplay (
Good Night, and Good Luck
), Best Adapted Screenplay (
The Ides of March
), Best Director (
Good Night, and Good Luck
) and a win as Best Supporting Actor (
Syriana
).
Reflecting the global interest he generates, there have been several overt biographies of Clooney, which differ range in range and detail. David Bassom's
George Clooney: An Illustrated Story
(1999) is a speedily produced, 80-page thumbnail sketch, while Jeff Hudson's
George Clooney: A Biography
(2003) and Nick Johnstone's
George Clooney: The Illustrated Biography
(2008) are more substantial but still fundamentally dealing with Clooney as a celebrity rather than a screen actor. Sam Keenleyside's
Bedside Manners: George Clooney and ER
(1998) is an information-based TV tie-in, and Tamra B. Orr's
George Clooney and the Crisis in Darfur
(2008) is clearly focused on Clooney's political activism
beyond the screen. Even Kimberly J. Potts's
George Clooney: The Last Great Movie Star
(2007) offers a broad sweep of his celebrity lifestyle, high-profile romances, and political activism rather than a close analysis of his films. In terms of the background of the authors, Bassom is better known as a writer of companion books to the
Battlestar Galactica
and
Babylon 5
TV series; Hudson is a specialist on The Kinks; Keenleyside is a pop-culture critic and journalist; and Johnstone is a biographerâall of which are perfectly respectable professions but none of these writers are film specialists. The availability of Joseph Kanon's
The Good German
(2006), Tony Gilroy's shooting script for
Michael Clayton
(2007), and Clooney's own script for
Goodnight, and Good Luck
(2006), cowritten with Grant Heslov all show a substantial public appetite for reliving Clooney's more thoughtful and literary movies.
The missing piece of the jigsaw at the moment is analysis of Clooney's movies themselves, written by a film specialist, focusing on what we see on-screen rather than the cult of celebrity around it. This book will not be focusing on Clooney's private life, his latest girlfriends, or his presence in the news media, except where it relates directly to what appears on-screen. It is organized into generic sections as Clooney's work tends to fall within fairly specifically defined areas. A key element of the book is to consider how far he remains within generic expectations, when and how he pushes boundaries, and whether this succeeds. The development of an on-screen persona is not necessarily a simple sequential process. Movies may not be released in the order they were made, some will be screened (sometimes repeatedly) on television, and not everything will be seen by every viewer. Comments will focus on Clooney's starring roles but there is inevitably consideration of the films' broader strengths and weaknesses. Those films where Clooney also directs are given proportionately more space.
Overt plot summaries will be avoided; but since at the time of writing, Clooney has played a significant part in over 35 films and not every reader will have seen all of these, there will be some reference to narrative features in passing to help follow the points being made. At the time of writing, neither
The Descendants
nor
The Ides of March
had been released in Europe, so the book can make only limited comment on these films.
It is tempting to think that there have always been movie stars as long as there have been films but this is not so. In the earliest days of the medium's development, particularly 1895â1905, films were extremely short,
sometimes only a few seconds long, focused on one action, often comedic or spectacular, and figures were held in long-shot, making identification of individual actors difficult. In Edwin S. Porter's 11-minute
Great Train Robbery
(1903), although the narrative structure shows an evolving complexity, it was still possible for Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson to play several roles (a passenger, a dancer, and a bandit). It was not until the close-up became more widespread, particularly through the films of D. W. Griffith, that individual actors could be seen clearly and were part of engaging narratives so that audiences would associate a role with a specific actor. Thus from Griffith's
Birth of a Nation
(1915) onward, and particularly after the end of World War I and the waning of the French film industry, the notion of the Hollywood movie star evolved, alongside other developments such as a realization by the studios of how stars could be used to promote films and how their interests were best served by putting stars under contract, meaning in turn that they (stars and studios) became associated with particular genres as it became the most profitable way to make films and increased the power and reach of Hollywood.
Film theorists have approached the issue in a number of different, but related ways. For Richard Dyer, star images are made up of four elements: features promoted by the film industry, the response of critics, the utterances and actions of stars themselves, and the reactions of audiences.
1
Susan Hayward states that stars are constructs, “representing something that actually isn't there” that we accept as real, which might equally be applied to the whole cinematic apparatus as well as the notion of fictional narratives.
2
Christine Gledhill suggests that stars are made up of three elements: a real person, a “reel” person (on-screen character), and a star “persona,” which is a combination of the previous two. She argues that stars communicate with audiences primarily culturally, historically, and through bodily appearance, particularly with regard to female stars.
3
As idealized versions of our best selves, audiences do not always respond well to images of ageing, preferring the escapism of beauty and glamor. This has led to a scarcity of roles for older women, although perhaps with role models like Helen Mirren still finding work, attitudes are starting to change. Discussions of stars often use examples who are from the heyday of the studio era and nearly always female, like Marilyn Monroe, but the prime example chosen for this book is the most consistent leading man of the modern era: George Clooney.
Audiences come with expectations of stars. For Hayward, there are basically two different modes of acting. On the one hand, a star can play roles in line with his or her perceived personality, which might be termed “personification.” Mid-career Arnold Schwarzenegger movies with his
trademark catchphrase “I'll be back” establish a compact with the audience, who expect certain thrills (which can also be played with for comic effect). Alternatively, the actor might not play any element of his or her star persona but disappear into a role completely, which might be termed “impersonation.” Actors who can (and who studios allow) to operate in this manner, such as Meryl Streep, are particularly rare. The demands of such acting are much greater and marketing is more challenging, so audiences do not always know exactly what to expect, leading in turn to mixed critical and commercial reactions. The tagline for Rob Epstein's
Howl
(2010) runs “James Franco
is
Allen Ginsberg.” The idea that an actor is completely immersed in a role becomes the dominant marketing strategy for the film. Filmmakers will usually try to find a balance of recognizable features (allowing an audience to place a film in their own personal viewing experience) with limited surprise and innovation. Too much of the first element and you have just another formulaic movie; too much of the second and audiences will feel a star is miscast.