From eDrive's George Clooney Q&A (1998)

Ain't He Cool?

If your movie career needs a boost, you could take on a lot worse roles than the lead in a film based on an Elmore ("Dutch") Leonard novel produced by Danny De Vito's Jersey Films.

That's what George Clooney was smart enough to do with Out of Sight, which opens nationwide June 26. Jersey Films produced Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino was greatly influenced by Dutch's award-winning crime fiction) and Get Shorty, based another Leonard novel. The hunky ER star, who's stumbled a bit on the big screen (Batman and Robin, The Peacemaker, One Fine Day), stars in Out of Sight as bankrobber Jack Foley in this character-driven crime drama laced with Leonard-esque humor. Co-starring is the sultry Jennifer Lopez (Selena), and the movie boasts an impressive supporting cast that includes Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina and Steve Zahn, and features smaller roles for Michael Keaton, Nancy Allen and Samuel Jackson.

For Clooney, taking on a Dutch good bad-guy was a no-brainer, in more ways than one...

eDrive: So, did you go after this part or did it come to you?

George Clooney: I said "yes" after reading the first four pages of the script. I'm a huge Elmore Leonard fan, and the Jersey Films guys know how to do him on screen. It was the same screenwriter, Scott Frank, from Get Shorty, and Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Get Shorty, is the executive producer on this movie. And getting Steven Soderbergh to direct really classed up the project and allowed us to get the kind of actors we wound up getting.

eDrive: One of the hallmarks of Elmore Leonard's stuff is that his characters aren't always the sharpest tacks in the world. It seems, having seen the movie, that playing someone not-too-bright came pretty natural to you.

George [laughing]: Oh, thank you. I'll try to take that as a compliment. But, yeah, Jack Foley isn't brain surgeon material. My character is pretty good at robbing banks, he's just had bad luck with cars. He's also going to stick around town because he likes a girl who happens to be a Federal Marshall. Now, that's a problem.

eDrive: What is it about Elmore Leonard that you like, and why do you think it's taken so long for Hollywood to do right by his material?

George: Yeah, I didn't think 52 Pick-Up worked, and neither did Stick, with Burt Reynolds. The thing is, Leonard is brilliant at characters and dialogue. He doesn't outline. He just starts writing characters. And when people pitch it, it's like, okay, there's a bankrobber, a heist, he scores some diamonds. But that doesn't matter in the least; it's about the characters and how the characters get there.

eDrive: You haven't made that many movies; you probably could have made more over the last couple of years. Do you read a lot of scripts, and how good are they, in general?

George: You know, you think you reach a point in this business and you'll only be getting better-than-average stuff sent to you. Well, wrong. At one point I was five scripts a week for months, and with script after script it was like, "God, this is awful." THen you hear of the name stars who wind up doing it, you read about it or hear about it, and you think, "Man, were they stoned?" It's a test of your will, reading all those scripts. You hope you find something that's good to do before they stop sending you stuff.

eDrive: Is it still hard for you to find the kind of movie project you want to do? Are you on the "A" list?

George: Four or five people above me have to look at it, say they're too busy, then I get it. Those guys can't do them all. It's not bad -- I like it that way. The truth is those same handful of stars can't do them all. And then one might take a project just for the payday, and then you'll get the good script.

eDrive: Tell us how one of your more memorable roles to date came about -- that of Sparky the Gay Dog on South Park?

George: I saw that Christmas tape that was going around and I literally made 200 tapes of that and gave it to all my friends. I think Matt and Trey heard about what a big fan I was, and when they got The Comedy Central gig, they called me up. I came down and literally just barked into a mike for an hour, I left, and all of a sudden I was Sparky the Gay Dog. That's it. I just think the show is hysterically funny. It's ridiculous humor; it's so politically incorrect. I love it.

eDrive: I hear you've gotten a role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line along with folks like Nick Nolte, John Travolta, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, Bill Pullman and John Cusack.

George: I just have a small role, a week's worth, in Australia. When I heard Terrence was making a new movie, I let it be known that, hell, I'd carry film boxes. I just wanted to be able to say that somewhere down the line I worked with Terrence Malick. I really have just two scenes as a colonel who basically comes in and says, "From this point on, all of this crap stops." It was a little intimidating. Not only Malick and all the tanks, but great actors whom I've never worked with. I happen to think that Sean Penn is the most talented actor of my generation -- we're around the same age -- so it was a little intimidating working with Sean for the first time.

eDrive: What about the whole TV-to-movies transition? Is it any easier now that it was ten, or even 20, years ago?

George: It's this giant chasm you have to cross. It's always been that way, and I think it always will be. But it certainly can be done, especially if you get a point where you have a lot of clout as a TV actor, you're front-and-center in a hit show. A lot of people think that it's a relatively recent phenomenon -- starting with people like Robin Williams and Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis -- but people don't realize that the Clint Eastwoods and Steve McQueens started out in television.

eDrive: How would you categorize or evaluate your "transition" so far?

George: Batman and Robin wasn't a very good movie. I think I might have buried that franchise...

eDrive: Thank you...

George [laughing]: Your welcome. Anyway, the movie made money, but not as much as the studio expected and it was considered a big disappointment. I have to take some responsibility for that. As for The Peacemaker, I think people were reviewing the studio as much as the movie. It was the first movie from DreamWorks, it cost $50 million and made $150 million worldwide. Look, I'm not an action star, so that was a stretch for me. One Fine Day was a disappointment, too. It was a nice, sweet, little romantic comedy that should have been released over Valentine's Day, not in December with all the Oscar heavyweights. I just keep things in perspective -- I've been thinking a lot about Kevin Costner these days. Five or seven years ago he was a God, now he sucks. Well, he wasn't ever a God and he doesn't suck. It's somewhere in between. Usually, it's somewhere in between. The press likes to exaggerate things one way or the other. I don't think that's big news. For me, I think I'm doing okay.

eDrive: Is it true that you went after your real-life current lady-love kind of like your character goes after the Jennifer Lopez character in Out of Sight?

George [laughing]: Yeah, I basically stalked her. No, I met her at a country home at this party, talked with her, and followed her to this bar she was working at. But I'm kind of proud of myself for doing that. As a kid in high school -- and even in college -- I was the kind of kid who'd be sitting at a bar and staring at some girl and she'd be staring back at me and I'd never go over and talk to her -- and then I'd go home and beat my head against the wall and think, "Why didn't I talk to her?!" So, in my old age, I've finally gotten a little more brave.

--Kenneth M. Chanko