Star Dreck, an article on SOLARIS

by Corey Levitan

"This film won't probably open great, and probably will have a modest run," said George Clooney of "Solaris," the sci-fi adventure opening Nov. 27.

Give the man points for honesty! Press interviews promoting a movie are almost always indiscriminate tongue-baths, but Clooney admits that "Solaris" - based on a Stanislaw Lem novel first filmed in 1972 by Russian Andrei Tarkovsky - will be a very hard sell. "It doesn't appeal to the masses," he said. At a cocktail party thrown by Twentieth Century Fox immediately preceding the film's first screening in Los Angeles - drinks before screenings aren't usually a good sign - Clooney was heard discussing "Solaris" even more candidly."How many drinks you had?" he asked a friend. "One? You'd better go get more."

Directed and written by Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh ("Traffic") and with James Cameron ("Titanic") as a producer, the meandering "Solaris" stars Clooney as Chris Kelvin, a doctor sent on a rescue mission to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. When he gets there he discovers the commander has committed suicide and the two remaining crew members are paranoid and delusional.Kelvin soon gets a taste of why, when his dead wife (Natascha McElhone), mysteriously appears and wants to resume their life together. "It was a tough movie to figure out how to sell," Soderbergh admitted. "Can you sell it as '2001' and have anybody show up?".TV and print ads position "Solaris" as a steamy romance in space.

"The marketing so far has been pretty dismal," Clooney said. "It has nothing to do with the film, the stuff that I've seen. I think it was one of those things where they were going, 'How do we sell this? 'Maybe we can sell it through sex.' " But the movie isn't about sex. It's about loss - of a loved one, of innocence, of sanity."It's not an easy film to talk about conceptually, even for me," said Soderbergh. "I was trying to make something in which I wasn't being as conscious as I normally am. There are scenes in the film that are emotional but they're abstract, so it's a tough thing to talk about." Advance press attention has mostly concentrated on Clooney's butt, which he flashes twice. It almost got the film an R rating before the MPAA agreed to a PG-13."You can't talk about the cosmos without getting back to George Clooney's ass," Soderbergh joked.

Clooney views that attention as a publicity orchestration. "I think they're just spinning their wheels and trying to find anything that can get some ink," he said. "And the minute they got an R, they go, 'All right, there we go. That's what we need.' "Clooney said he and Soderbergh - his friend and production-company partner - actively seek out movies that take a risk. (They worked together on last year's "Ocean's Eleven" and 1998's "Out of Sight," and their company produced "Welcome to Collinwood" and "Insomnia.") " 'Solaris' is a movie Steven is very nervous about," Clooney said. "It scared him to make it and it scares him in selling it - which makes it fun. It scares the [expletive] out of me. But it's a good air to be in, to be in a place where you might blow it. "Look, we'll fail eventually," he said. "And when that happens I'll be back on 'Hollywood Squares.' "

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