We saw the leads of Alexander Payne’s new film at the London press conference.
By Becky Reed on 25th January 2012
With The Descendants hitting UK cinemas 27th January, we bring you a report from the London press conference.
The film had its UK premiere at the London Film Festival in October 2011, and star George Clooney was joined by his onscreen daughter Shailene Woodley for a chat with the assembled press.
In Alexander Payne’s new film (we’ll be bringing you a chat with the Sideways, Election and About Schmidt director this week), Clooney plays a Hawaiian lawyer and land baron forced to face home truths when his wife ends up in a coma. He hunts down his wife’s lover to break the news of her impending death, while mending the relationship with his two daughters - teenager Alexandra (Woodley) and ten-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller). We loved this warm, funny and brutally honest drama, based on the book by Kaui Hart Hemmings. Read our review here, and our very own interview with Hemmings here.
Clooney was ever-charming as he humbly referred to his Batman and Robin years, whilst reflecting on his success and future plans as director.
Did you find any particular challenges playing an ordinary family man - a father and a husband?
Clooney: I have actually done this - I have been a father in several films, and a husband, but this one was more emotional and attached to the family. I played a father in One Fine Day, in Syriana, I played a father in Fantastic Mr Fox, O’ Brother Where Art Thou. I found it challenging only in the sense that I wanted to serve the material very well. It’s a tricky piece - the movie starts with basically the death of the wife and then it is a sort of a coming-of-age film, and unfortunately the person coming of age is a 50-year-old man. There are tricks to understanding how to play this in the right way, but, again, it is really all in the script. The work is a lot easier when the script is really well written. Plus, I’ve got nice kids.
There is a wonderful scene where your character is given some advice - have your own families offered you any advice over the course of your life?
Clooney: My father’s best advice was ‘Don’t ever mix grain and grape’. Honestly, that’s been the most useful advice he’s ever given me. My family in general has been a mixture of great success stories and cautionary tales in terms of success, and understanding how little success actually has to do with you. My aunt was as big as singer as you could be in 1950, and she was done by 1960, but she didn’t become less of a singer. And then she had a nice comeback. I got a great lesson in how little it has to do with you and how much it has to do with other elements, including luck, and a 10pm timeslot for a hospital show. Without that you don’t get the kind of career that I have had. The best advice I got was sort of by example from all of my family members.
Woodley: The best advice - both my parents are in the education system, so this industry is not something they’re familiar with - is just to continue being yourself and not get carried away in the materialism involved in this industry and involved in so many other things.
Shailene, what was it like working with George and Alexander?
Woodley: They are two of the greatest men I’ve ever met in my life. I think the thing that they both brought to set - which a lot of people don’t and I’m forever grateful for – is gratitude. They were both just as grateful to be there as all of us other actors, as the crew members, as the transportation, local guys. Everyone was so grateful to be there and the set was so confortable too. There wasn’t an intimidation factor working with George Clooney – he’s so down to earth and humble that you don’t feel like you’re working with someone who is above you in any way or better than you. You feel like you’re working with someone who’s just as grateful to be in that situation as you are. And that’s rare to find, whether you’re at where George Clooney is and how many movies he’s done, or whether you’ve done no movies, like Amara Miller, who’s in the film, who plays Scottie. And Alexander, he gives you the time and the freedom to do what you want to do as an actor, and if it’s working, he actually tells you it’s working, which is really nice. And if it’s not working then he’ll come up and he’ll politely suggest other ways to maybe approach it.
The film deals with a plethora of emotions – did it have an effect on you at all?
Clooney: Alexander keep such a nice set - it’s such a fun place to be. There are people who like to work under chaos, and some people work better under that, and create that sort of chaos, but sometimes that makes a set not necessarily very fun. I like to work on sets that don’t have that - I feel it is more creative and more welcoming. Alexander makes the most welcome set you have ever been on. And so there are very difficult scenes to do; scenes where you are kissing your wife goodbye, where you’re yelling at a corpse basically, but when you are finished it is a really friendly, fun place to be. So there isn’t a whole lot of carrying things around with you, there’s not a whole lot of moping around. We were just so happy to be together. We were in Hawaii – what was there to be unhappy about?
Some of the film’s most affecting scenes are the ones without dialogue.
Clooney: We live in an age and a time now where we are trying to show 500 things going on at the same time. You turn on Bloomberg television and there are fifty things on there all at once. And I find that silence, stillness… if you flick the channels and find someone just staring at the camera and it is quiet, they’ll stop. That seems to be the new unusual thing. I enjoy the quiet moments in films, they are important. You have to earn them, and Alexander is so good at earning those moments. By the end of the film, there’s a scene with all three of us sitting together, it’s a family. You could not have done that scene, for that long, at the beginning of the movie, as you haven’t earned it. To watch the stillness of that particular scene with an audience speaks volumes.
What do you look for in a film, and what appealed to you about this project?
Clooney: First of all, I learnt after a series of very bad mistakes early on in my career, that I should probably read a good screenplay once in a while before I say yes. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you’re not gonna make a good film out of a bad script, so you need to start with a good screenplay. Alexander is someone I had wanted to work with for a long time and I got the opportunity. We had dinner in Toronto and he said he was going to send me a script and I had sort of decided that I was going to do it no matter what the screenplay was, as I haven’t seen him miss yet as a filmmaker. There are two elements that solidify the choices that you make – that is director and screenplay. I had been on that sort of Batman and Robin and Peacemaker run where you, as an actor, you just take jobs. At that point, I had been on a lot of TV series, a couple of films and I was very excited. I called my friends saying, ‘I got Batman! Wooh!’, ‘What part are you playing?’, ‘Batman!’, ‘Wow!”. I didn’t know it was, ‘Yeah, I’m in Ishtar!’ It happens! Then I understood that I was not only going to be responsible for the roles I was going to play but for the films that were going to be made. The next three scripts I got were Out of Sight, Three Kings, and O’ Brother, Where Art Thou. And so since then I have really tried to focus on the best screenplays as possible, and the directors I’m working with are on the same page. You can really protect yourself as an actor if you work with really good people - you can hide a lot of flaws along the way.
There is talk of an Oscar nomination [Clooney was since nominated] - how do you feel about that?
Clooney: Listen, I’ve been on both sides of that equation a few times now. I have learned that whenever someone says that, what they’re first and foremost doing is complimenting the work. It is a very nice thing to say, and it is the result of a lot of other people doing a lot of other work. But I don’t remember who wins awards, and I have won a few. What I remember are movies, I really love movies. I remember 1976 where it was Taxi Driver, All The President’s Men, Network, Bound for Glory and Rocky. I know Rocky won but I love those movies and I watch them constantly. So I am not so concerned with speculation about winning things, because I enjoy being in films that last longer than their opening weekend. That’s my goal in life. I don’t want to be that man they wheel out when he is 75-years-old and they say ‘you’ve opened fifteen films at number one’. That is not my goal in life, to be the richest guy in the cemetery.
How has directing changed you as an actor?
Clooney: I have been directing and involved in producing and the creating of films as well as acting for quite a while now. I always think in terms of what the director needs - not just for this scene but for the film. On episodic television, you would have a different director come in every week and when I’d be doing ER every week I would have a kid. And every director that would come in would say ‘this is a scene that really gets you, maybe you could cry a little bit.’ But if I was crying in 22 episodes it would be too much and so you have to adjust towards the long term, thinking of the 22 episodes in a year. That also works in film, which you understand that there are some scenes that you have to lose in order to win something at the end. A good director will keep pointing you that way, but it is also your job as an actor to understand that there are scenes that you do, particularly when you are the lead in the film, where other people get to come in
and steal and you have to let them. I understand that, but working with a really good director always reminds you where those moments are.
You have turned fifty this year - how has that changed your approach to work?
Clooney: I hope to trend towards directing more because, as we all know, as you get older, there are less and less roles for 50-year-olds. And I want to be part of this business for a long time. I remember when I was a young man living in Kentucky - we were broke, my mum was making my clothes for me, and I was doing some dull job and I remember hearing some famous actor, who will remain nameless, on television complaining about how hard it was for them. I thought ‘what a jerk! You’re living the dream and you should enjoy that. And we should think you enjoy that because you got lucky, you got the brass ring.’ And that’s important to continually remember because I got the brass ring along the way and I am going to enjoy it. There are things that aren’t fun, and we all know them, but I am not going to complain about that to anybody. I get a very easy ride and I understand that. So I enjoy my life.
0 comments:
Post a Comment