George Clooney (5 page)

The norms of marriage are protected as Charles blows the bubbles too and discovers a sense of lost youth, and the Coles' marriage is reinvigorated rather than abandoned. Charles responds to his son, Junior, now renamed Willie to give him a greater sense of selfhood, and attends the final symbolic baseball game as a supportive father. The symbolism is fairly heavy-handed, like birthday candles that Julia cannot blow out. More light romance than comedy but lacking the real punch of related genre pieces like
Bull Durham
(Ron Shelton, 1988) or
Liar Liar
(Tom Shadyac, 1997), it is a harmless enough piece of drama that is probably about as revolutionary as its ambition.

—
Friends
, episode 117, “The One with Two Parts, Part Two”

As pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross, Clooney managed to strike critical and commercial gold. It is perhaps easy to forget just how popular the show was, and particularly his appearances on it, in the mid- to late 1990s. His cameo in
Friends
(along with Noah Wyle) as one of two doctors double-dating Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courtney Cox) reflects his notoriety at the time as well as his comic timing (memorably declaring “God bless the chick pea”).

Through
ER
, he became a global phenomenon, the consequences of which still follow him to this day. In a positive sense, he was brought into the homes of millions of people in a role that was sympathetic and caring, rebellious in his dealings with authority but usually with the patients' interests at heart. First seen in the pilot, inebriated on St. Patrick's Day just hours before a working shift, Ross's drinking and womanizing (numbering over 14 sexual conquests across the first three seasons alone, including medical student Harper Tracy) added to the image of a loveable rogue, whose inability to commit to Nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) was the stuff of dreams for network producers hankering after a story line that would keep viewers coming back over repeated seasons. Finding romantic or matrimonial commitment difficult at the same time as apparently having a natural gift in caring for children—these character traits resurface in subsequent film roles. His role required not only learning mountains of medical terms, to be delivered at breakneck speed, as well as performing medical procedures in a credible way, but also regular close-ups of him looking down caringly, often with head tilted in a solicitous manner—an acting pose, which he has had to live down ever since.

With 25 episodes per season, it is not surprising that the dramatic quality of
ER
varies; but in terms of pace, it seems closer to the rhythm of film, avoiding sentimental cliché where possible and giving audiences some credit for filling in gaps by engaging with multiple narrative threads. Unlike other medical dramas, such as
Chicago Hope
, it focused much more precisely on the relationships between medical staff rather than on patients, whose traumas provide an input of narrative energy but who rarely survive, so to speak, more than an episode. Early on, Clooney's aunt, Rosemary, has a small part as a torch singer, Madame X, in “Going Home” (season 1, episode 3 and later in episode 11).

There is more than a touch of naiveté about the extent to which Clooney's character is prepared to bend or break rules on behalf of individual patients or the extent to which he emotionally invests in them, but this makes his role more compelling for audiences. In “Long Day's Journey” (season 1, episode 14), in a single shift he deals with an abused boy, a baby left by a suicide, and a worsening cystic fibrosis victim. In “The Birthday Party” (season 1, episode 17), he punches an abusive father, and in “And Baby Makes Two” (season 2, episode 5), his orders for tests on an HIV-positive boy are overruled by Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), who as the financial and managerial line manager represents the institutional factors restraining Clooney's character.

There are a few particular stand-out episodes for his character. In “Hell and High Water” (season 2, episode 7), he saves a boy trapped in a drainage tunnel; most of the episode is focused on Doug as action hero, coming to the rescue of a vulnerable child, who like him is given to acts of recklessness. He makes mistakes (effectively killing a patient by mislabeling him in “Blizzard,” season 1, episode 10), and his place in the ER is precarious financially, personally, and ethically as he continues to break rules, major and minor, on behalf of his patients. We are drip-fed a distant relationship between Doug and his father, who, it transpires, has many of the same less attractive character traits. However, in “The Healers” (season 2, episode 16) Doug is reminded by his father that he alone bears responsibility for his actions.

Clooney left the series in 1999, midway through season 5, his character unaware that Hathaway is carrying his twins. The pressure to close that narrative circle was so great that amid tremendous secrecy, Clooney filmed a small cameo for the episode “Such Sweet Sorrow” in 2000 where we see Hathaway joining him in Seattle. His character is kept alive by visual devices, like a photo at Carter's leaving party at the end of season 11 or a small reference in season 14 to their children, supposedly now in third grade. In the episode “Old Times” in season 15 in 2009, Clooney reprised his role, with he and Hathaway still married. They become involved in a plotline involving Carter who needs a kidney transplant, although they are unaware of the recipient of the organ. In a nicely understated scenario, the final line is given to Hathaway who talks of the kidney going to “some doctor in Chicago.”

It is worth noting that the DVD cases for both
The Magic Bubble
and
Red Surf
feature images of Clooney that do not appear in the actual films.
For
The Magic Bubble
, an older Clooney with short hair appears, linked to the crop he had for
From Dusk Till Dawn
, and in
Red Surf
, although acknowledged in small print, the image is crudely doctored (quite literally) so that the smiling face of Dr. Doug Ross is pasted onto the leather jacket of Remar, the surfer drug dealer. You can even see faint traces of Ross's ER green uniform. This reflects how film marketing uses a form of retroactive rewriting of history, and that once a particular image of a star becomes dominant, it is pasted (sometimes literally) over previous work, overwriting or erasing it.

Sunset Beat
and
Red Surf
feel almost like twins separated at birth. In both, Clooney plays a role given to lightweight rebellion, signaled by motorbike-riding leather jackets and big Michael Bolton-style hair (visible without the helmet). In both he has a vague backstory of a broken relationship, acts in a way designated as rebellious (by eating with his mouth open or putting his feet up on desks), and lives a lifestyle that constitutes an adolescent male fantasy, surrounded by bikes, guns, and potential action. Both films end with an explosion over water. In
Sunset Beat
, he survives to ride off with his buddies; in
Red Surf
he dies, but in an almost identical shot his partner takes his place and rides off with his girlfriend on a coastal road. Both are formulaic genre narratives, ensemble pieces in which Clooney is one of a group of men and relatively bloodless. In
Sunset Beat
, a kidnap victim has demands tattooed onto his chest rather than pieces being cut off his body. Also here, slightly reminiscent of
Rebel Without a Cause
(Nicholas Ray, 1955), we see Clooney at an observatory in a shoot-out scene; and at the close, framed by the rising sun, as troubled bad boy he scatters his friend's ashes from the balcony at the same location. However, unlike James Dean, it would take another decade before Clooney could credibly exude a sense of loss (see chapter 8).

Clooney's early film work shows him trying out different roles: drug-dealing villain faced with the imminence of young fatherhood (
Red Surf
), a son in conflict with a father (
Combat Academy
), and object of an older woman's fantasy (
The Magic Bubble
). The roles show him toying with rule-breaking, criminal, or immoral acts and evolving from peripheral parts with single names (Mac and Biff) to more central roles with two names (Mark Remar). Loquacious wise-cracking charm, a winning smile, and (by his own admission) good hair—these features are present too. But perhaps more importantly, these early efforts show roads not taken, such as
Red Surf
's R rating, presumably for the portrayal of drug use, rare in Clooney's film work and an experiment with more violent content in a crime genre. We also see him trying out a range of potential genres—horror, crime, action, family drama—but often with a pervasive
light touch. The horror films are more parodies than outright attempts at scaring audiences, the moral dilemma in
The Magic Bubble
carries little dramatic weight, and as a criminal in
Red Surf
, it seems like Clooney's character cannot really bring himself to commit to the brutality required by life as a drug dealer.

In terms of
ER
, Clooney honored a five-year contract at a time when he could have earned more (as coworkers argued to improve their terms) or walked away to concentrate solely on a film career. Long working days and the juggling of schedules were very challenging as he dovetailed
ER
with shooting
Batman and Robin
. However, by sticking with
ER
he showed himself to be a trustworthy, hardworking actor and one who realized that it gave him the chance to improve his craft, work on emotionally intense story lines with a high-quality ensemble cast, and network with directors who would play a part in his subsequent film career, such as Tarantino (like “Motherhood,” season 1, episode 24) and Mimi Leder (like “Day One,” season 1, episode 2). He brought to his studio work the same kind of joker persona that he would show on film sets, easing tension and making difficult schedules more bearable. Generally speaking, other actors have only positive comments to make about working around him, which would be a real asset when he later worked on more stressful films or took the opportunity to direct himself.

I'm a handsome man, conventionally-proportioned, but with flair. Old tailors love me. They tell me I remind them of men from forty years ago, slim but sturdy, on the small side but broad.

—Ryan Bingham in Walter Kirn's
Up in the Air
¹

One Fine Day
follows Jack Taylor (George Clooney) and Melanie Parks (Michelle Pfeiffer) across a supposedly average day in New York, trying to juggle the stresses of demanding jobs, journalist and architect respectively, with the difficulties of looking after Jack's son, Sammy (Alex D. Linz), and Melanie's daughter, Maggie (Mae Whitman).

Conventionally, romantic comedy works by juxtaposing unfamiliar elements, bringing characters together who might not usually meet. The problem here is that the script spends much of its energy in keeping the protagonists apart. The film is an exercise in crosscutting to the point where all we see is frenzied attempts to meet deadlines that have no dramatic weight. The “will they, won't they” is strung out for the length of the entire film, by which time we may feel that the pressure of generic predictability weighs far too heavily.

The fractured nature of the narrative means that the two leads maintain the presence of the other by talking about them to a third party (Jack to his boss and Melanie to her mother). The means by which the pair are kept separated but supposedly in the minds of one another (and the viewer) become increasingly contrived, not just swapping children
at points but also (accidentally) mobile phones so that they have to take and pass on messages for one another, literally dipping into the lives of the other for a day. Jack's carrying of the goldfish bowl becomes a physical representation of the burden of looking after children, and although the fish are eaten by a cat later, he cares enough to get some more and take them around to Melanie's flat (although by that stage the fish are a thinly veiled justification for seeing her). In the run-up to their first meeting at the locked door of the school, they are placed increasingly closer to the point where they almost inhabit the same scene as she bobs down to tie Sammy's laces and he walks behind her, out of shot with Maggie. The pair tries to use each other's children as sources of information to see how serious the other person is about potential emotional involvement.

The character of Jack is straining after an Everyman significance, which it struggles to carry off convincingly. When he claims “I'm sick of resentful … fish, who think that you owe them but who won't trust you for a second to do anything for them,” the potential seriousness of his role as a spokesperson for modern man is undermined by his position on a couch, his choice of metaphor, and the fact that we are looking at George Clooney, twice voted the world's sexiest man. Lines of dialogue like Melanie's “That's a totally ex-husband thing to do” countered by Jack's “Well, you would know because that's a totally ex-wife reaction,” clearly echo one another but never reach the wit or even fun in language taken by Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) in
His Girl Friday
(Howard Hawks, 1940) or other screwball comedies, which this film dimly resembles.

Initially, Sammy and Maggie echo their parents' animosity, pulling faces at each other in the taxi, but predictably over the course of the film they act as catalysts to bring them together. It is the search for Maggie, who wanders off after a kitten, and Sammy's soccer game that bring into sharp focus Jack's qualities as a parent, particularly in contrast with Melanie's largely absent ex-partner. At the denouement, the seal of approval for the implied future relationship of Jack and Melanie comes from the children coming into the room, where the adults are eventually at ease with one another sufficiently to fall asleep on the couch together.