Clooney and Soderberg: Hollywood's Dynamic Duo

source: AP, Dec. 2001 LOS ANGELES

George Clooney adored the Cincinnati Reds growing up, yet choked at the plate when he tried out for the team. He idolized his father, a TV anchorman, then discovered he lacked the news skills for a journalism career himself. And when Clooney tried warbling the signature song of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, he realized he was a few notes shy of his aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney.

So the actor settled for becoming one of Hollywood's hottest commodities, with a choice of plum roles and multi-million-dollar pay days. Not bad for a guy who slept on the floor of a buddy's closet during his early time in Hollywood and spent a decade toiling in mostly bad television and movies before hitting it big with the series ER in 1994. Clooney's recent movie success parallels that of Steven Soderbergh, his new producing partner and director of Ocean's Eleven, in which Clooney stars with Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon. In the mid-1990s, both stumbled through critical or commercial duds, Clooney with Batman & Robin, Soderbergh with The Underneath. "Steven and I were both kind of at creative low points," Clooney said in an interview. "Things weren't working so well for either of us."

Then they hooked up for Out of Sight, an acclaimed crime romp that, while failing to make money, showcased Soderbergh as a skilled big-budget director and Clooney as a charming leading man. Soderbergh went on to make the independent hit The Limey, then followed up last year with Erin Brockovich and Traffic, winning the best-director Oscar for the latter. Clooney, 40, broke out with the satiric Gulf War adventure Three Kings and established box-office luster with The Perfect Storm. O Brother, the Coen brothers' rootsy update of The Odyssey, showcased Clooney in a new light, as a modern rapscallion who would have been at home in the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges. "He's just sort of unique right now. There's no one quite like him, his age, who can do the kinds of things he does.

That's probably why he gets offered everything," Soderbergh said. "And as he himself says, 'What I'm concerned about now is the films I leave behind.' He's in the fortunate position not to really have to worry about money, so he can focus on that." Brad Pitt and Clooney.©AP The two consulted after Out of Sight, offering advice on each other's projects, then formed their own company, Section Eight, to make anything from lower-budgeted films to $80 million productions. "We both had a great year, and suddenly this company was in a position to get pretty much anything we wanted made," Clooney said. "And that's sort of where we sit right now, which is great." One of the first scripts that came their way was Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the Rat Pack flick that starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. At Clooney and Soderbergh's urging, the superstar cast took big pay cuts to make it affordable.

Clooney stands in as the Sinatra character, masterminding an elaborate casino heist. Neither Clooney nor Soderbergh were fans of the original Ocean's Eleven, but the actor worried about reprising even a so-so Sinatra role. "The qualms were what was happening in pre-production, where people are coming up and saying, 'So, you're playing Frank Sinatra.' And I'd go, 'No, I'm not playing Frank Sinatra. I'm doing a movie that he did.' "The truth is we had a really good script. Frank didn't get to say the lines I get to say in this movie, and he didn't get the director I got. So I won't be as cool as Frank, but I will have a better piece of material to work with. So I figured I'd be all right." Films that Clooney and Soderbergh are producing or developing include Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven; Welcome to Collinwood, in which Clooney also appears on-screen; and The Good German, adapted from the Joseph Kanon novel.

Clooney also is filming his directing debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in which he co-stars with Drew Barrymore and Sam Rockwell. Then he reunites with the Coen brothers on Intolerable Cruelty, co-starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. Next spring, Soderbergh and Clooney begin shooting their third director-actor collaboration with Solaris, a sci-fi script Soderbergh adapted from Stanislaw Lem's novel. Clooney has also become a Hollywood activist. He was a key organizer of a celebrity-packed telethon for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, and has led a sharp rebuttal to Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly's claims that the money raised was slow in trickling down to victims.

Clooney said fund-raisers have been vigilant in overseeing and distributing the money to those with the greatest need. Before moving to Hollywood in the early '80s, Clooney tried to be a ballplayer. He played high-school ball in Kentucky, near Cincinnati, and had two tryouts with the Reds. He hit solidly when a semi-pro pitcher tossed him 80-mph fastballs. It was the 85-mph curveball that sent Clooney diving to the ground. "It was such a clear moment in my mind where I thought, that's a game I don't even understand," Clooney said. "And that kid doesn't even pitch in the pros. He pitches in the semi-pros."

Clooney then studied TV journalism, emulating his father, anchorman Nick Clooney. He did news reporting for his mother's cable-TV access show but "realized I wasn't very good at it, and I realized I wasn't really bright enough or educated enough to be a journalist," Clooney said. He moved to Hollywood, taking acting classes and working construction to pay the bills. He had TV stints on The Facts of Life, Roseanne and Sisters, and some unremarkable movie roles before ER came along. "I love that no one saw him coming. He wallowed around for 10 years on some absolute crap shows, which he'll be the first person to tell you about, and then he hit on ER," said Ocean's Eleven co-star Pitt.

"Even at that point, you could say, OK, he's defined: That's that guy on ER. But from there, by his sheer will and charm and wit alone, he keeps surprising us." Clooney did find his talent lacking when he went into the recording studio to sing "Man of Constant Sorrow" for O Brother . "It sounded like a bad Bob Dylan record," Clooney said. When he came out of the recording booth, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen and soundtrack producer T-Bone Burnett avoided eye contact, uncertain how to tell him they would have to overdub a real singer's voice, the actor said. Clooney strung them along a bit. "I'm like, 'Boy, that's really good, isn't it?' And you can see them like, twitching, and I just wouldn't let them off," Clooney said.

"I go, 'You know, I'll give it another shot, but I don't think it's going to get much better.' T-Bone says, 'I don't think it's going to get much better either.' Anyway, the one thing I can do is hear when it's bad, so I finally go, 'OK, bring your guy in."' Moments later, singer Dan Tyminski strolled into the booth to record Clooney's vocals.