George Clooney: Please Play More Goobers
A couple days ago I rewatched O Brother, Where Art Thou. When I was a freshman in high school, we read Homer’s Illiad and when we were finished we spent a couple class periods watching O Brother Where Art Thou, Ethan and Joel Coen’s take on the story. I remembered liking it, but now that I’ve spent the last six months watching a billion movies I figured I’d give it another shot and see if I still enjoyed it.
Before I go into my tirade I should say this- I think Hollywood has massively underutilized George Clooney. I first realized this when I watched “From Dusk Til Dawn.” Clooney plays Seth Gecko, one half of the murderous Gecko Brothers. When I saw the cast list I figured I would probably be underwhelmed by Clooney but he was by far my favorite performance. Seth Gecko freak me out, and George Clooney pulls this role off perfectly.
George Clooney was always an actor that was in a lot of rom coms and action movies I wasn’t interested in. A lot of the time he plays a calm and collected cool guy- Clooney is the master of the smooth male lead, something that doesn’t really peak my interest on it’s own. It’s not that I didn’t like George Clooney, I just wasn’t interested in the roles he was playing.
After “From Dusk Til Dawn” I watched “Burn After Reading” and I was even more excited with George Clooney. Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, an international spy who also happens to be dumber than a bag of rocks. Every comedic beat is perfect from Clooney. There’s a scene where Brad Pitt’s character is hiding in Pfarrer’s closet after breaking into his house to look for top secret documents. The ensuing scene shows Clooney opening his closet, freaking out, and reflexively shooting Pitt- a sort of not funny scene that is made very funny by Clooney’s physical acting.
O Brother, Where Art Thou is the king of these Clooney roles. In the film Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill- a scammer who has been jailed for scamming- while he tries to get back to his wife and daughters. Clooney has excellent material to work with, but he enhances the role with how he portrays McGill. McGill is quippy, but not in a hamfisted superhero movie way. The writing is great, but the delivery of lines such as “I take your point but it does put me in a damned awkward position vis a vis my progeny” and “I don’t get it big Dan” are enhanced by Clooney’s ernest delivery. McGill might be smart, but in places he can be less bright than you would maybe expect- the way Clooney fixes his eyes in these scenes to show a man trying to make a cover for slight ignorance makes all of his deliveries better.
There’s a scene where Ulysses and his fellow escapees Delmar and Pete are sleeping in a barn. Ulysses wakes up to the authorities surrounding the barn and remarks “Damn, we’re in a tough spot.” Over the next minute as Delmar and Pete awake Ulysses says the same line the same way three more times over the next minute. The hopelessness of the situation is enhanced comedically by Ulysses making the obvious observation over and over again.
Why doesn’t George Clooney do more roles like this? Burn After Reading and O Brother, Where Art Thou are both Coen brothers movies. I think Clooney does well playing off of the Coen’s writing style but because he’s not going to exclusively act in Coen Brothers movies it’s pretty easy to see how he can get typecast for romcoms and brooding action movies when he’s outside of that bubble. As for “From Dusk Til Dawn” I think that it being such an early role in his film career impacted my opinion. Now this could be because Quentin Tarantino’s performance as Richie Gecko is pretty mediocre in my eyes, but Clooney is the absolute highlight of the movie for me.
George Clooney is 62 years old. He has more money than God and doesn’t have to act for the rest of his life if he doesn’t want to. If he does continue acting I want him to play a goofy ass dude one more time. It doesn’t have to be a huge role, but there’s gotta be somebody out there that can properly (in my eyes) utilize George Clooney.