George Clooney (3 page)

Sunset Beat
(NBC, 1990) was a short-lived feature-length TV pilot, but it allowed Clooney to indulge in his passion for bikes with the wafer-thin premise of a group of LA policemen going undercover as bikers to solve crime led by Clooney's character, Chic Chesbro, who has seriously long hair and also plays lead guitar in a band called Private Prayer. The supposed bad guys try to blackmail LA authorities into handing over confiscated money by bizarre acts like poisoning elephants in the city zoo.
Explosions, stunts, and crude expositional dialogue all fight it out for attention. One scene will give a sufficient flavor: J.C., onetime mentor of Chesbro, is killed by being dropped from a helicopter onto the stage (using a very unconvincing dummy) while Chesbro is playing, and for a moment, the singer of the band, his girlfriend, almost starts to sing again.

Without Warning: Terror in the Towers
(Alan J. Levi, 1993) was a TV movie of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Clooney plays a young firefighter, spending quite a lot of the film in his hospital bed after being injured. The film uses lots of footage of the real attack but feels closer at times to a sensationalized reconstruction of the “When Insects Attack” subgenre than a piece of fictional drama. It focuses on the actions of heroic rescuers and pitiable victims, including a group of trapped schoolchildren, but does little to examine the possible causes of events.

Clooney's early TV career is dominated by comedy and roles as law enforcement officers, even blending the two in
The Golden Girls
. The significance of his TV career is that by the time his breakthrough role in
ER
appeared, he was older and no longer had the puppyish good looks of someone cast primarily for that reason. In a sense, he avoided roles in vacuous teen films by undergoing that apprenticeship on a succession of television roles. Cinematically, he made his first major features in his mid-30s, looking closer to 40. He has often mentioned, self-deprecatingly, his hair, and it is noticeable that in these TV roles, his hair is frequently the most memorable feature of any given scene. Whether it might be described as a mullet, the presence or absence of sideburns, or wayward strands that flop into his eyes, this distracting debate largely disappears when he starts his film career. There was comment at his cropped look on
ER
around the time of his filming from
Dusk Till Dawn
, but this signals a move away from matters of superficial fashion to that of utility and a look that is fit for purpose. In short, he grows up.

In terms of roads not taken, while trying to break into film Clooney auditioned for the role of sadistic Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega in
Reservoir Dogs
(1992), the part eventually going to Michael Madsen. He also tried out five times for the part of J.D. in Ridley Scott's
Thelma and Louise
(1991), a part ultimately taken by Brad Pitt. Before
The Descendants
(2011), Clooney was interested in the role of Jack in Alexander Payne's
Sideways
(2004), but Payne ultimately opted for the lesser-known Thomas Haden Church.

There are also rarely seen hidden gems like the 1996 promotional video, alongside Salma Hayek, for ZZ Top's “She's Just Killing Me” (also directed by Rodriguez), which appears on the soundtrack for
From Dusk Till Dawn
. More than a hastily cut promo for the film, in addition to a
few fleeting shots from the film we see Clooney in black gloves on his motorbike approach a house, go in, and play a note or two on a piano, before Hayek appears in a striking red dress and gives him a bite on the neck. There are some strange shots of him removing his jacket (but keeping the gloves on) before he takes a few run-ups to a basketball hoop. There are a couple of signature turns and looks directly at the camera with his head still tilted. He also very briefly appears in a blond wig in Bree Sharp's video for “David Duchovny” (Will Shivers, 1999).

This production broke down due to lack of money (Canon Films went bankrupt), caused in part by an unconvincing bear creature, and remains unreleased. Despite the title, it has only a loose connection with
Grizzly
(William Girdler, 1976)—the main one being Sheldon, who codirected, cowrote, and coproduced the earlier film, and also Joan McCall, Sheldon's wife in real life, who has a part in both films (Allison Corwin and Carol Blevins)—and absolutely none with
Predator
(John McTiernan, 1987).

It did allow Clooney to work with Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern, but like
Return to Horror High
, Clooney's part was small (one of a group of campers) and was a similar early sacrifice to the monster of the title, attacked by a campfire within the film's opening 15 minutes.

Shot in Hungary, the film is a strange hybrid creature (a little like the brief glimpses of the bear) of monster movie and concert film (Predator is the name of the fictitious band whose concert is being recorded). There are glimpses of known faces, like Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched from Milos Forman's 1975
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
), John Rhys-Davis (who found fame via the
Indiana Jones
movies), British electro mime artist Barbie Wilde, all-girl band Toto Coelo, and unauthorized use of Michael Jackson songs on the soundtrack.

Thanks to the existence of video capture sites like YouTube, viewers can watch what exists of the film, including an incomplete climax involving the bear attacking the concert, being killed by an electric cable (reminiscent of Jeannot Szwarc's 1978
Jaws II
), and being applauded by the fans who think this is part of the concert. It is certainly tempting to think that Clooney's early exit from the narrative was a wise move. The film regularly features in polls of contenders for the worst movie ever. Village People-style dancers, random explosions, and concert sections
that look and sound like a camp version of an early Rick Springfield video—all this seems to genuinely excite the crowd who probably have never seen anything quite like this. One of the first bear attacks features a shot of a giant swinging paw, but the 20-foot grizzly of the title appears only in the partly-completed climax (as brief cutaways to a mascot-like creature). For the most part we have point-of-view shots from the monster and plenty of growling effects.

Clooney's cameo in a thriller about organ theft,
The Harvest
(David Marconi, 1993), is largely an opportunity to work with his cousin, Miguel Ferrer. It came back to haunt him as part of his dispute with
Hard Copy
magazine, who dug up this early work and gave it a prominence and significance that it did not deserve. Clooney appears briefly in one scene as a lip-synching transvestite, a role he has not been tempted to reprise. Unlike the protagonists of other contemporary camp cult hits
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
(Stephan Elliott, 1994) or
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
(Beeban Kidron, 1995), Clooney's role here is barely a character.

The film is an overt generic mix with Neal Israel, writer of
Police Academy
(Hugh Wilson, 1984) and director and cowriter of
Bachelor Party
(1984), acting as director here and reflected in the derivative nature of the title and even the theme music. However, rather than the rapid-fire gags and cartoonish characters of its comic predecessors, here there is a strange attempt at naturalism. It is a comedy without gags and a drama without dramatically engaging characters. The two protagonists, Percival (Wallace Langham) and especially supposedly cooler, wise-cracking Max (Keith Gordon), remain annoying nerds throughout.

The opening montage of childish pranks in high school (exploding lockers and setting off sprinklers) sets the tone. Rather than learning any lesson, they essentially transfer this frat-house sensibility to Kirkland Military Academy, where a similar series of deeply annoying pranks follow, bringing them into conflict with General Woods (Robert Culp) and his son, Major Biff Woods (played by Clooney). Clooney's first appearance, leaping from a truck, shows him as looking incredibly young (he was in his mid-20s at time of shooting) and with a voice several octaves higher than he was to have in his subsequent film career. At the time, he seems too self-consciously slim to fill out a military uniform.

Whereas there are many films that deal with the reality of military training (Stanley Kubrick's 1987
Full Metal Jacket
) or the stresses of life in a military academy (Harold Becker's 1981
Taps
), or even take a comic route to the whole process like
Stripes
(Ivan Reitman, 1981),
Private Benjamin
(Howard Zieff, 1980), or
Volunteers
(Nicholas Meyer, 1985),
Combat Academy
falls between all these stools. The paintball exercises are ludicrous, and the supposedly climactic battle with a group of visiting Russian cadets and Max's homily about how we should all just get along and have fun is especially painful to watch. A military academy where nothing happens to a cadet who openly flouts all forms of discipline except having to do push-ups is hard to take seriously. The only character who fits the tone of Israel's earlier work, and who therefore seems completely out of place here, is a wacky science teacher, Colonel Long (Richard Moll), who addresses the Russian cadets at the airport with “Will you be my friend? I like your hat.”

The appearance of comic actors from much better vehicles (John Ratzenberger, Cliff from
Cheers
, as Percival's father; or Jamie Farr, Klinger in
MASH
, as Colonel Frierick) cannot raise the quality of a very poor script. Whereas the character of Klinger was always trying to get thrown out of the army by his various poses of madness (an idea probably borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut's 1969
Slaughterhouse Five
), here Max tries to be thrown out of military school by an endless series of pranks. Where the former shows the insanity of real war, the latter just underlines the immaturity of the protagonist himself.

The humorlessness of military life, dictating even how food should be eaten, is juxtaposed with extreme childishness, and the problem is that neither is particularly appealing. When conflict between Biff and Max reaches a climax over Biff's pushing a nonswimmer into the pool, there is a farcical fistfight between the two. Whereas in
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
(2000) Everett's challenge to love-rival Vernon results in a genuinely funny exchange (see chapter 4), here Max engages in some unbelievable acrobatics to avoid being hit, and after delivering a single punch, Biff just walks away without any explanation.

Clooney's character is given a tiny amount of depth with a subplot involving kleptomania, in which he steals watches apparently in an act of rebellion against his father, but we do not really have enough in the script to invest such conflicts with credibility. The last exchange between General Woods and Biff finally touches on some real emotion and shows the potential of Clooney's later work as he shouts “What's my name?” at his father, who always refers to him simply as “Major.” However, the resonance of this exchange is undercut by a subsequent scene on the
shooting range, where Biff bluntly admits to Max, “I miss my mom.” Max reconciles father and son by putting Biff in charge of a winning group in the paintball exercise, but that is only a veneer over paper-thin characterization.

It is a rare example in Clooney's career where he looks credibly young enough to play a son and therefore have an on-screen relationship with a fictional father. Clooney does what he can with the lines and on-screen time that he has here, but unfortunately the film is too concerned with its agenda of pranks to pay much attention to developing credible relationships.

Looking every inch a truly terrible piece of derivative, instantly forgettable awfulness, there is viewing pleasure to be had here, partly deriving from the notion of paracinema, films that offer a low-budget, exploitative reflection of mainstream film. Clooney, first seen with curly hair and a hat as he spins pizzas, is not the lead here but a supporting character, Matt Stevens, best friend of the hero, Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke).

The frame story of a fictional Channel 73 offering their $1 movie establishes the film-within-a-film motif as well as the level of audience expectation. From the outset, there is a clear sense of fun, parodying transparent titles like “Big Breasted Girls Go to the Beach and Take Their Tops Off.” Instead of seeking to hide its low-budget status, the film being shown flaunts its terrible model work (the picture of the spooky house used for a cutaway is held up later as an example of cost cutting). The derivative elements in the film are played for laughs rather than attempting to create shocks or suspense. The pods of Professor Gangreen (John Astin), like the teleportation pods in
The Fly
(Kurt Neumann, 1958, and David Cronenberg, 1986), alter matter but operate via a jukebox, and one of the early experiments produces Rambo-like soldiers, clones of which then act as guards throughout the film.

The film acts as a further subgenre of B-movie, most obviously in relation to films like
The Blob
(Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., 1958). Panic about this “Red Menace” (the term is used twice) leads to mass panic, suppression, and indoctrination (summarized in this film as backstory of the Tomato Wars from the original film). The notion of a Prohibition-style ban on tomatoes creates a black market and the need to improvise in certain foodstuffs, such as pizza, now made with ingredients like strawberry
jam instead of tomato sauce. Rather than simply absurd, the political parallels work quite well, so that the current generation is portrayed as naïve, having grown up without experience of tomatoes and therefore underestimating the threat they pose.