Partners Clooney and Soderbergh team up again for remake of somber 'Solaris'

source: San Francisco Chronicle, by Hugh Hart

Los Angeles -- George Clooney has been known to write a scorching letter or two. He excoriated Bill O'Reilly when the Fox newscaster criticized a Sept. 11 fund- raising telethon and penned an angry note to a tabloid TV show for invading his privacy. So last year, when Steven Soderbergh learned he was about to receive a hand-delivered letter from Clooney, the Oscar-winning director had a panic attack.

"A woman who works with him called me up and said, 'I have a letter from George that I'm to put in your hand,' and I thought, 'Oh God!' -- I'm trying to run through my mind, 'Did I say something in an interview or what?' That was my first reaction because I know George usually writes letters when something's gone wrong."

As it turned out, the actor was simply lobbying for a role in Soderbergh's "Solaris," which opens Wednesday.

Why the formality, when Clooney and Soderbergh had just finished co- producing "Ocean's Eleven"? Clooney was trying to be gentlemanly.

"I knew Steven was talking to another actor," he says. "I'd read the 'Solaris' script and I was really turned on by the idea of it, but I also didn't want to put Steven in a stressful position. He is my friend and my partner. So I thought the best way to give him the out was for me to give him some space by writing and saying, 'Look, I'd love to take a shot at it.' "

"And there was a check enclosed," Soderbergh cracks.Clooney: "And some photographs he wanted back. I had the negatives."

TWO-MONTH IMMERSION

Clooney, dressed in a black cable-knit sweater, gray slacks and polished black leather cordovans, is sitting on a sofa in a Los Angeles hotel room next to Soderbergh, who's rigidly propped up in black pants and combat boots. They can joke about "Solaris" now, but the making of this thinking-man's sci-fi picture required a two-month immersion in intergalactic angst.

Based on Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Russian film and the original novel by Stanislaw Lem, "Solaris" stars Clooney as Kelvin, a psychologist sent to find out why space-station scientists have been going mad. Haunted by the suicide of his wife years earlier, Kelvin also has to confront his own past when she apparently shows up on the spaceship.

" 'Solaris' required a complete dispersal of all the charm and good spirits that we normally associate with George," Soderbergh says. "The other thing is, it's really a nonverbal part. It's a completely interior performance, (like) a lot of the great performances that George and I both enjoy from the American new wave films of the late '60s and early '70s. I thought of this as George's 'Five Easy Pieces.' "

Soderbergh, who wrote the screenplay, says, "Those issues of memory, guilt, potential redemption and the opportunity to do something again and maybe do it differently appealed to me. There's a line in there that says, 'There are no answers, only choices.' "

"Solaris' " somber themes made for a somewhat gloomy shoot. "Our sets are usually pretty loose," Soderbergh says. "On this one, people would show up with a smile on their face and you could watch it fade because the atmosphere was just so intense."

Clooney arrived on the "Solaris" set seriously overworked from directing "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." "It actually helped in a way because I was exhausted," he says. "There really wasn't any fight left, to say, 'Kelvin wouldn't go and do that.' All I had to do was have some sense of what Steven was trying to do story-wise. I didn't worry about having full comprehension. No one had full comprehension. When I read the script, I understood two-thirds of it, and I think I understand the other third now, but I'm probably wrong. And I thought that was really interesting."

For Soderbergh, having his familiar collaborator on hand meant he didn't have to stand on ceremony when setting up a scene. "I'm not a big talker," Soderbergh says. "I don't like to beat it to death. I want to save it for when the camera's running, and if you have enough history, you don't have to give a big . . ."

Clooney completes the thought: "Motivational speech. Steven could just say, 'OK, 20 percent more existential dread.' "

Soderbergh: "Yeah. 'Crank it, more dread, more dread, more dread.' "

Clooney: "And I'd go, 'OK. Got it.' "

Soderbergh turns to Clooney: "Most people in your position don't want to play someone who doesn't know what's going on and is frequently terrified about what they are experiencing."

Clooney: "And not, 'Oh my God, boo!' horror-film scared but the tougher kind, which is that deep- down, soul-searching . . ."

Soderbergh: "At-the-precipice-of-your-own- existence terror. Which is a very abstract emotion to portray and really difficult to do when you've got a Panavision camera 20 inches from your nose. But we felt, having the experience of working together before, that each of us would be able to sort of lift (the other). It would have been harder for me to do this with an actor I didn't know, and I think it would have been harder for George to do with a director he didn't trust."

That trust was forged in 1998 during the making of "Out of Sight,' when Clooney and Soderbergh slugged their way out of career doldrums to make the critically acclaimed thriller co-starring Jennifer Lopez. "Both our careers were question marks when we started that film," Clooney says. "Steven was coming out with 'The Underneath,' which is his least favorite film, and I was coming off of 'Batman and Robin.' "

Soderbergh recalls, "On the stomach-churning scale, it was an 8 1/2 every morning. I had a shot at a piece of terrific material with a great cast. I knew if I blew this I was in big trouble because half of the film business -- studio movies -- would be off limits to me now."

"Out of Sight" did not do well at the box office, but it resurrected Soderbergh's artistic credibility and proved that Clooney, fresh from his five- year run on "ER," could be taken seriously on the big screen. Says Clooney, "It was a big boost of confidence to both of us, so you feel like once you've been in the trenches together you have sort of this blood- brother pact."

After "Out of Sight" was released, Clooney, 41, and Soderbergh, 39, formed their own production company, Section Eight. "It was basically formalizing a relationship that we already had," Soderbergh says, "because we were always sort of talking to each other about 'Hey, what are you doing?' 'Hey, take a look at this,' whatever."

Adds Clooney, "We were sitting in a position of, 'Well, I have a little bit of clout, you have a little bit of clout, put it together and we could maybe get some things done.' "

By year's end, the pair had a whole lot of clout. " 'Erin Brockovich' and 'Traffic' came out, which weren't just critical hits but also financial hits, and that made Steven a big gun," Clooney says. "I had 'Perfect Storm,' which got me off the dime of 'I can't open a movie,' even though it actually had nothing to do with me -- it was about a big wave. But if I'm going to take the heat on 'Batman and Robin' then I get to take credit for 'Perfect Storm.' And then I did 'O Brother, Where Art Thou,' which did well critically. So in the year that we formed the company, both of our positions changed considerably and made it easier for us to get things done."

A COMMON BOND

For Soderbergh, a Georgia native, and Clooney, who was raised in Kentucky, movies remain the common bond. "We talk about movies all the time," Clooney says. "There's a period of time, 1965 to '75, when studios were making films, and not just by the big ones, Kubrick and Coppola and Scorsese, but also the Alan Pakulas and the Sidney Lumets, who were making these brilliant movies.

"The bottom line is this: There are a few directors that you want to work with in life. We were very lucky in that we got to experiment in 'Solaris.' It is out there. It's a lot of questions and no answers, which is always hard to sell. I'm always proud to work with anybody who's sticking his neck out, and with 'Solaris,' Steven's sticking his neck way out there.' "