Years prior to this interview, I had a memorable interaction with George Clooney. Also, “interaction,” might be a strong word. It involved a conga line and fate interceding by stopping the music where a conga-dancing George Clooney happened to be stopped right next to where I was standing. Then he looked at me and offered a “put ‘er there,” handshake, then conga’d off into the night. It’s the kind of story that sounds both fake and, well, why would you want any other interaction than that one? How could it be better? (You might not be surprised to learn that, during an interview, Clooney is an extremely charming individual.)
Clooney is promoting his new directorial effort, The Boys in the Boat, based on the 2013 novel and real-life story of the University of Washington rowing crew that represented the United States at the 1936 Olympics in Germany and … well, no spoilers intended, but if the Nazis had won it’s safe to assume this movie would not exist. Callum Turner (who joins Clooney ahead) plays Joe, a blue-collar student who tries out for the rowing junior varsity team as a way to just having enough food to eat, not realizing he was a natural and would soon be on the biggest stage against literally the worst people.
Ahead, Clooney and Turner take us through their new film, including a moment where Clooney received a studio note emphasizing that the audience really needs to understand Hitler is “bad.” Also, because of my obsession with Oceans 12, I asked Clooney if since Tess knows she looks like Julia Roberts, if Danny Ocean knows he looks like George Clooney. (I have a habit of asking Oceans 12 cast members this question.) Clooney had a great answer, but, more importantly, he also said his days of playing Danny Ocean might not be over. There’s a script for another movie and he’s really happy with it.
George Clooney: How are you, brother?
I’m good. How are you?
George Clooney: You know, can’t complain.
Callum Turner: I like those posters on your wall.
Oh yeah, that one here is pure ego. I got quoted on it, so I put it up.
George Clooney: Niiiiice.
Though the one next to it is a lost movie from the ’20s…
George Clooney: What is it? Manhattan Cocktail?
Callum Turner: You’ve not even seen the movie?
There are clips you can watch, but the film is lost. The poster is great though…
Callum Turner: Yeah, it’s great.
So, we’ve actually met once before. It was at The Monuments Men premiere party. You were in a conga line…
George Clooney: [Laughing] Yeah…
The music stops right where I’m just minding my own business. You look at me, you give me a nod, then give this roundabout, put ‘er there handshake. Then the music starts again, and you conga it off into the night.
George Clooney: And it was Bill Murray leading that conga line, too!
That part I don’t remember.
George Clooney: Yeah, it was Bill. By the way, in general, every conga line is led by Bill Murray. A good rule of thumb in general.
So, Callum, when you two first met, was he in a conga line? I’m guessing no but I don’t know for sure.
Callum Turner: He was. And he had a GoPro on his head and that’s how we did the meeting over Zoom.
George Clooney: I don’t go anywhere without a GoPro on my head.
Well right now you don’t.
George Clooney: It’s hidden in my wig.
I didn’t know really anything about rowing before I saw this. Did you?
Callum Turner: Not much. No.
George Clooney: No. In fact, I’ve only been to a couple before it and I’d never found it all that exciting either. This was the most watched sport in America in the ’30s, more than football. They’d have 100,000 people there. And it’s a funny thing, but we don’t have any great references in film. There’s a really good montage in The Social Network.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking of.
George Clooney: It’s one of the best shot montages ever. But if you watch it, it’s not great rowing. It’s all done in slow motion and it has kept frames out and stuff. It’s not great rowing. And so, for us, it was about how do you make rowing exciting and how does it look authentic? And man, it was hard. That was a trick. You had to find a math equation to make those… that last race in particular, we have like 500 cuts in that last race.
The scene I really like that kind of explains it is every rower on the boat works as a machine and have different jobs. And that an individual might be better or worse depending on the team around him and that some teams just click even with maybe lesser talent.
George Clooney: Well, that was it. And it’s kind of like The Beatles. It’s one of those weird things where they all need each other. They were hungry and they needed to succeed to stay in school and to eat, number one. But then there’s this weird thing that happens, which doesn’t happen normally, which is that they ended up being the perfect team. When George Harrison is your third-best songwriter in your group, it’s a kind of empirical. And it’s the same thing here where you just go, these guys, they happened to be this insanely gifted group of men.
You know who Callum reminds me of in this movie? And this is always dangerous if he’s like, “Well, I hate that actor. Thanks a lot, man.” Because of the kind of gruff American accent you were doing, you reminded me of Scott Glenn.
George Clooney: Oh, that’s funny! I love Scott Glenn.
I do, too. And I was thinking Urban Cowboy-era Scott Glenn. This badass dude.
George Clooney: And also, yeah, even Scott Glenn in The Right Stuff, that kind of gruff. But it’s funny, I only met Callum doing an American accent with blond hair, basically.
Callum Turner: Until like a week ago.
George Clooney: And now it’s like, I don’t even know him anymore. I thought he was American.
Callum Turner: He didn’t even recognize me! Walked straight past me! But for me, my inspiration is with people like Gary Cooper. In High Noon, and I love that movie so much. And that stoicism and the ability to transmit how he’s feeling by doing very little was important to us in this film. And George and I worked on that and just really brought the boundaries in and closed them off. So we just knew the space to operate within.
George Clooney: There’s also a thing about sports films in general, which is kind of like war films in a way. The ones that are most effective are when you don’t talk about your emotions – particularly period-type pieces where it’s a bunch of guys going, “Okay, we got this. Okay, let’s go do it.” And there’s a vibe to that. And when Callum and I were talking about it – and Joel Edgerton, when he was playing Coach Ulbrickson – said, “We tried desperately not to have people talk about their feelings.” And it’s tricky because modern-day storytelling is, you have to say, “How does that make you feel?” And you talk about it a lot. And we sort of just said, “Well, let’s stick to our guns and see if it works.” And that was our plan all along.
Callum Turner: And it makes it more profound when someone does actually say something. Like when Ulbrickson says, “I’m proud of…”
George Clooney: “…you boys.”
Callum Turner: Yeah. It’s just a really beautiful moment.
Another thing I kept thinking about, you have built into this movie the worst human being on Earth as the villain…
George Clooney: Yeah, yeah, Hitler.
That seems like a tough balance. Like, do you keep showing him? Can you show him too much before people are like, yeah, we get it?
George Clooney: There was an interesting thing, we got some notes once from the studio where they were like, “We have to make sure that they understand how bad Hitler is.” And we’re like, “Well, I think that’s already done.”
Callum Turner: Wait, that was a note?
George Clooney: Yeah. But the trick was: because, in the script, and in the way we did it, we don’t have our guys going, “Screw this guy, screw this fucking…” Because it’s 1936. And people didn’t know yet. Some people did, people who conformed, but a lot of people didn’t know how bad it was – and certainly could never have imagined how horrible. It’d be like some terrible autocrat now as opposed to being the all-time worst dictator in the history of the world. So we had to balance that. What we’re doing going, “You can’t know that much.”
That’s a really good point. In 1936 people didn’t know quite how bad he was yet.
George Clooney: He cleaned Berlin up and made it look really friendly when everybody got there. Now the truth is, and we do it in the film, our guys didn’t salute Hitler when everyone else did. So there was some understanding, but we wanted to make sure it wasn’t like, “Let’s kill this bad guy,” because you didn’t know it yet.
I’ve been wanting to ask you this for almost 20 years now, and I’ve asked Soderbergh this question because I’m obsessed with Oceans 12. In the movie, Tess realizes she looks like Julia Roberts. Does Danny Ocean know he looks like George Clooney?
George Clooney: Honestly, that’s a very good question. Danny Ocean thought he looked like Brad Pitt in the Ocean universe.
Oh, I see.
George Clooney: And that was really disappointing when someone told him he looked like me. As you can imagine, pretty Brad Pitt, you know.
I asked Matt Damon once and he said he didn’t exist in the universe. And I asked Casey Affleck and he asked me who played Virgil Malloy.
George Clooney: [Laughs] Wait, he didn’t remember?
He didn’t remember his character name.
George Clooney: We have a really good script for another Oceans now, so we may end up doing another one. It’s actually a great script.
Wait, really? Like, Oceans 14?
George Clooney: Well … I don’t want to call it that… I mean, the idea is kind of like Going In Style.
Oh really? The George Burns movie?
George Clooney: Yeah. George Burns and…
Art Carney I think? Is he in that?
George Clooney: Carney, yeah. We’re not quite that old.
No, you are not George Burns’s age in Going In Style.
George Clooney: Dude, I’m getting there.
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