FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| FILM OUT OF SIGHT The complete irony of George Clooney is that up until the very three-dimensional flick Out of Sight, in which he plays Jack Foley, a three-time convicted bank robber who breaks out of prison and into the life of federal marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), he was the two-dimensional toy of Hollywood moguls (propped up in front of a camera as a male lead). But one look at him in the flesh and you understand - instantly, chemically, at the atomic level - why directors keep choosing him; yet you are left to wonder how they have failed him so miserably. The George Clooney that television audiences see is about one-quarter Clooney. Movie audiences see a half-Clooney. Face-to-face and now, in Out of Sight, he's the full Clooney. Here is part of what the camera misses: Clooney is his eyes - big, very, very big; lashes that make you forget questions for a moment; a jaw which is probably the sole reason he nailed the Batman role; and a voice which is the vocal embodiment of a freshly paved Autobahn - smooth, baritone, deep, but no gravel. And the strangest part, particularly when talking about a Hollywood actor, is he can act. George Clooney comes by his talents honestly. He's the son of Nick Clooney, a broadcast journalist; nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney, and Oscar-winning actor Jose Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac, 1950); and cousin of actor Miguel Ferrer (Mr. Magoo, Mulan). He grew up in the business. In 1982, he moved to LA, reportedly sleeping in a friend's closet for a year while trying to land roles. He landed his first role on the ironically named TV series E/R (1984), with Elliot Gould, and then ran the gamut of recurring roles on prime time shows, including Roseanne, which must have been a frightening mix of chemical energies. It is his character Dr. Doug Ross on ER, currently going into its fifth season, which brought him celebrity because of his looks, which are as much a part of the character as the personality. That could be why he's reticent to give up the role by pulling a David Caruso (NYPD Blues) and bailing out of ER. "I didn't give up my job in television because I love my job and because I had a contract to do it for five years," he says during an interview in Los Angeles. "Everything came to me because of it, and it's not right, when you get successful, to walk away from it." His role on ER secured him: a spot across from Tarantino in the flop From Dusk Til Dawn; Peacemaker, the movie based on the perfect blockbuster formula that somehow missed the mark; and Batman & Robin, a previously lucrative franchise which Clooney claims to have single-handedly "closed down." "Batman was a tough year of work. Not just because physically it was demanding doing seven days a week for a year, but it was also that the project wasn't great. It wasn't just about the box office being disappointing, which it was, it was that the film itself was disappointing," Clooney admits. "And if I'm going to play the role of Batman in Batman & Robin, then I have to take some responsibility for that. Which means that the next project I do, I have to have more responsibility in the script. They can blame me if they want; I blame me for some of the things that went wrong with Batman." Out of Sight with Jennifer Lopez (the woman who is to butts what Pamela Anderson is to breasts), however, is the breakthrough project. The film which is based on a book by Elmore Leonard, is exactly what Clooney's film career needed. "This is a great break. This is the first project I read - after nine months of looking at scripts - and went, 'This is the project I want to do,' and went after it. I'm a huge fan of Leonard's books. This is something that you'd love to do just because you like the character (Foley). You know, his characters, like Foley and Chili Palmer in Get Shorty, they're all smart in a certain sense, and dumb in a certain sense, and have a little bit of bad luck. They're just the greatest characters." And the scene with Clooney - who is steadfastly single - and Lopez, shot in the trunk of her car, proves he can turn on the magic anywhere, anytime. "I don't think you can work on chemistry. I think it almost always comes from really good writing more than anything. The chemistry was certainly in this script," he says. "I've seen married couples do romantic comedies that don't work. Maybe they're just too familiar with each other. I didn't know Jennifer before so maybe that's the secret. (Men) should do that in real life - just never even know the girl you live with." |