George Clooney (7 page)

Costume designer Mary Zophres put Clooney in exactly the same cut of suit as worn by Cary Grant in
Indiscreet
(Stanley Donen, 1958). While this is effective at first, over time Miles is not an easy character to relate to. The idea that an individual who looks like George Clooney would be paranoid about his appearance might be possible, but audiences might feel it is a tad self-indulgent. Massey's performance in his own office, striking a pose even before speaking, is a practice for the preening and grandstanding of the courtroom (essentially just another form of theater). It is hard to know at what point this is just a professional act and at what point there really is any substance to his character. Even in the marriage ceremony between Miles and Marilyn, the listing of Miles's company after his name makes this feel more like a business merger than an emotional attachment. The final section of the film with Miles's resolution to hire (and then cancel) the services of an unlikely assassin shifts the tone into the absurd. Miles's and Wrigley's exaggerated gait through Marilyn's house, and particularly their backing into each other and spraying each other in the face, feels more akin to the slapstick of
Scooby-Doo
.

The figure of the senior partner, Herb Myerson (Tom Aldredge), who invites Miles into the inner sanctum of his office where he is surrounded by medical machines, is a physical manifestation of mortal transience, signaled by the choral singing, which Miles seeks to deny. The reality, that this is the best future he can aspire to, visibly shakes him but only temporarily. Although he later has a nightmare in which Herb's face is translated into a vampiric figure via lightning flash-cuts, there is no moment of realization at the inequalities of the law. Clearly we are a long way from social realism, but the idea that a top law firm would ever employ the services of a cartoonish figure like Wheezy Jo (Irwin Keyes) rather than the cold killers of
Michael Clayton
seems unbelievable, even in the context of a black comedy.

Wrigley (Paul Adelstein) represents Miles's less charismatic double, what Miles might be without his good looks and charm. Wrigley is a company man, musing “Who needs a home when you've got a colostomy bag?” Wrigley is the norm, not articulate enough to speak in open court, against which Miles measures himself, assuming there is a great distance between them when they are really two sides of the same coin. Wrigley's nerdish recitation of company policy (“Only love is in mind
when the Massey is signed”), or his opening advice that Miles is just experiencing a midlife crisis and should get a car, may be uninspired but this is only a less visually appealing version of Miles's own nature. Wrigley's excessive outpouring of emotion at Marilyn's wedding may embarrass Miles but it is at least genuine—the kind of feeling that Miles cannot find in his own life. Wrigley also provides the function of a sidekick, but this really develops quite late on in the film, the two sharing a flat after the collapse of Miles's marriage.

Marilyn is extremely hard to like or indeed really to know. She betrays everyone, so why she should be trusted at the end seems unclear, and unlike most screwball comedies, there is little sense that she really learns anything. By the close, she appears just as calculating as ever. She has already conned Miles into marriage once, and apparently little changes late in the plot to suggest a rapid conversion from this position (perhaps indeed a hardening of resolve would be more credible since he pays someone to kill her). Like the bombers in
Fail Safe
(see chapter 7), the fact that he subsequently tried to call the plan off does not deny the motive behind the plan in the first place. The role played by Zeta-Jones here seems strongly reminiscent of her performance in
Splitting Heirs
(Robert Young, 1993), where she exudes glacial charm, cynically marries for money, and spends her time lounging by a pool. She stands next to Miles in silence in the elevator, not because they are inhibited but because they really have nothing to say to each other.

More problematically, she looks the part but there is little on-screen chemistry between the pair. When Miles grabs her away from Howard (Billy Bob Thornton) for a second and kisses her, she seems to be transported into a state of ecstasy one moment and then coolly walks off the next. Later, after dinner, they both realize that having achieved their main goals, their lives remain empty and neither feels hungry. Her coquettishness never really thaws (except supposedly right at the end as they kiss across the table that first separated them). She declares that divorce is a “passport to wealth, independence, and freedom,” but we see her having little idea of what to do with this freedom or that either of her husbands oppressed her particularly. She leaves Miles, coldly telling him that he will “always be my favorite husband,” but then she seems sad and almost tearful on the plane. In terms of character development, we have little sense other than the expectations of genre and the need for some form of narrative closure as to why there is a sudden change of heart on her part. Miles tells us (twice) that he finds her “fascinating” (once even with something akin to a raffish growl), but this is asserted rather than shown dramatically or explained.

The number of quotable lines, perhaps, suggests a script that is too diffuse to be convincing (with a long history, the Coens picking up a story from Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone) and that might have felt cutting edge a decade or so ago, but debates about prenuptial contracts (or prenups as they are termed in the film) feel dated. Often the best lines come from minor characters, such as the woman testifying against her husband on the grounds that he used the vacuum cleaner for a sex toy, thereby depriving her of a cleaner for a considerable time, or about matters in passing, such as Miles's sarcastic order for a “ham sandwich on stale rye bread, lots of mayo, go easy on the ham,” which is taken down without reaction from the waitress. However, the exaggerated dialogue (such as Miles's climactic summing up of the Baron as “the silly man”), visual gags (like the magazine
Living without Intestines
that he reads while waiting to see Myerson), or farcical actions like his tennis practice, barely moving his racket as the machine fires balls right at him, all seem almost placed to be used as trailer material.

Rather than exploring any complex notion of motivation, Miles's resolution to “find her Norgay” (the individual who helped her to achieve greatness) only leads to the camp comedy of Baron von Espy (Jonathan Hadary) and some cheap anti-French jokes. Miles's advice to Wrigley in the pursuit of wisdom, which seems echoed in the script more widely, is to “start with the people with funny names.” Ellen Cheshire and John Ashbrook make much of what they see as the rampant homophobia in the film, and certainly there are a large number of thinly veiled references to same-sex relationships.
³
However, this does not really coalesce into anything approaching a coherent ideology but is closer to the anally fixated comic sensibility of a Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy stand-up routine. Where the comic elements of
O Brother
resonate with depth,
Intolerable Cruelty
seems happy to operate at a much more blunt level, in terms of its use of stereotypical characters and sexualized dialogue (such as Miles declaring “Darling, you're exposed” after Marilyn rips up the prenup).

Miles's supposed great change is signaled by departing from his prepared speech and then symbolically ripping it up, but even this is taken as a stunt leading to applause, which we clearly see Miles enjoying. He may declare that he is “naked, vulnerable, and in love,” but he does not seem capable of real depth of feeling, only stating “Love is good” in a self-conscious echo of Gordon Gekko's “Greed is good” from
Wall Street
(Oliver Stone, 1987). His resolution to be a better man is undercut by his comic inability to describe precisely where he might do good works (practicing in “East Los Angeles or one of those other … ”), finishing
with a dismissive wave. This is not a portrayal of genuine emotion but a parody of it, with a sentimental piano score, the audience rising to its feet through which Miles passes to increasing adulation, and eventually Wrigley (his alter ego) declaring in tears, “I love you, man.”

Certain elements of screwball are certainly present: an emasculated hero (in Clooney's absurd running style in racing to the elevator to talk to her), a sexually aggressive female seeking a closer form of equality in the battle of the sexes, and some snappy banter. However, there are several missing elements, which hamstring the emotional power of the narrative. Classic screwball heroines are defined in relation to their work, or at least want recognition in relation to it. Marilyn's relation to work is to seek to avoid it altogether by freeloading from rich husbands. In this, she is a reflection of changing social values, but it is questionable what proportion of the female audience would really want to aspire to her vacuous lifestyle here. Also conventionally, there is an element of reversal in that hero and heroine learn something from each other. It could be argued that Miles learns the value of true love over cynicism, but Marilyn seems unworthy of his adulation, weakening his status further, and as her motivation remains questionable right up to the end, what she might learn is open to question. Unlike in
O Brother
, where the generosity of spirit is emphasized, here it is emotional mean-spiritedness that prevails. By choosing to close on the TV show, which may be intended as a parody but probably exists somewhere, it is Petch's slogan and the notion of marriage as material for cheap television that endures.

For Clooney's second directing experience, he gathered around him personnel with whom he had worked before, most particularly Thomas Sigel as cinematographer, Grant Heslov as producer (as well as playing minor part, Saul Keller), and Stephen Mirrione as editor. Clooney plays Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly, based very loosely on the career of Johnny “Blood” McNally of the Green Bay Packers, and the situation of Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) is reminiscent of George Halas, coach of the Chicago Bears and his signing of halfback Harold “Red” Grange from the University of Illinois. Critical reaction to
Leatherheads
is typically lukewarm, which in retrospect is a little unfair. If there are weaknesses in the film, they lie in its underlying structure rather than its execution.

Like the preceding films in this chapter,
Leatherheads
is related to screwball comedy, particularly the way it displaces explicit portrayal of sexual matters into highly charged dialogue, as seen in the verbal sparring
between Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) and Dodge, in their first meeting in the hotel foyer and later in the train cabin, mistakenly taken by them both. The film provides the opportunity for Clooney to indulge in his passions for motorbikes and sports and plays to his strengths in terms of comic timing and romantic entanglements requiring charm from the hero. His age, perhaps a growing impediment to gaining leading roles, becomes an asset in screwball, where the quintessential screwball actors, like Clarke Gable, were at least a decade older than the average leading man today.

There are some similarities with
A League of Their Own
(Penny Marshall, 1992) in the portrayal of a fledgling professional sport in the early part of the twentieth century. There is a social element as we see the itinerant and fragile nature of the team, which travels to games only for them to be canceled when teams go into liquidation. Teams are rapidly built and dissolved, which is particularly hard on individuals who, according to Dodge, “are not exactly the cream of America's workforce.” A montage of working locations (a factory, a mine, and a field) stands for the lives that the team have escaped from and to which they must return if Dodge cannot conjure up a deal to make professional football turn a profit.

Part of the empathy that we might feel for Dodge is that with hindsight we know that he is right, whatever the wisdom prevailing at the time. C. C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce, based on the real C. C. Pyle), symptomatic of the evolution of a new species, the sports agent, is seen as exploitative (taking a 25% cut from Dodge), unprincipled (threatening the
Chicago Tribune
with legal action, using a false witness), and opportunistic (he leaves the narrative, declaring “There's always baseball,” before being seen framed among the corrupt New York Yankees team in the closing snapshots). A deleted scene would have shown C.C., like brutal boss Bob Brown in
A Perfect Storm
(Wolfgang Peterson, 2000), shrewdly but callously dividing up the take, leaving the individual players with very little to show for their work (see chapter 3). Corporate sponsorship is also waking up to the commercial opportunities in sport with Carter's face even appearing on the huge clock, next to the sports field.

In terms of staging sporting action, Clooney's camera often gives us a tight shot on the ball carrier, increasing the sense of speed and avoiding the need to choreograph complicated plays (as well as suggesting the chaos of the opening game in a field). Individual plays and final scores are important but there is little sense of a play-by-play drama. Commentators are present but we hear their words only in the final game with Chicago. Shots of Carter tend to be reverse tracking shots as he runs at the camera and then forward tracking shots like a defender who cannot
catch him (similar patterns are used in
Forrest Gump
, Robert Zemeckis, 1994). Shots of Clooney in particular tend to be tight so as not to emphasize his relatively diminutive size. The idea that his character could earn a living in his mid-40s in a fairly brutal sport, without obvious size or speed, is something the film does not dwell on, but the fact that Clooney had to cast extras who would not dwarf him, and order extras not to hit the director during plays, does tend to suggest a slight awkwardness here.