George Clooney in The Good German
Interview: George Clooney on The Good German
“We love working together,” said Clooney. “This is one we developed. We optioned the book and developed the script and there is that awful moment where we have to sit Alan Horn and Jeff Rabinov down at Warner Bros. and tell them its going to be black and white. They are really thrilled about that as you can imagine. But, no, every time I get a chance to work with him I’m happy. I’ve never had a bad experience with him.”
It’s been almost a decade and the collaboration continues as strongly as ever. “I was a fan and stole ideas from him on Out of Sight. And I’m a fan and I steal ideas from him now. Over the years we’ve become very good friends as well and that’s an important part of it is that we’ve been able to spend a lot of time together and that we like each other a lot. But, I don’t know that it’s really changed. In the sense the sense that I still think the most of him as a director. I’ve been lucky between he and the Coen brothers. I’ve got a couple of people that I really enjoy working with who I also think play at the top of the game.”
This is Clooney’s second film shot in a style of the past and at least his fourth dealing with historical eras. Perhaps he is working his way up to his ideal era. “I mean, my favorite time, in American cinema especially, is the mid ‘60’s to the mid ‘70’s. If you look at the films that came out of that generation or that period of time, all those nuts, it’s just some amazing films. But, there is an awfully good era, I mean, we were looking at, Steven sent us films to look at for this film. Just to talk about and think about. Some of them I had seen before. Humoresque I had seen before. Mildred Pierce I had seen. I liked John Garfield and the idea of John Garfield. I thought that was sort of an interesting guy to think about. And there was a Mitchum film called Out of the Past which I had never seen which was phenomenal. I’m really a fan of that kind of filmmaking, sure. And Curtiz films.”
Perhaps The Good German’s device of beginning with a different character and easing into Clooney as the lead was also inspired by Hollywood classics. “I love the idea of changing the point of view, literally changing the lens because I thought the minute you started seeing the narrative change, you were like ‘Oh, this is really quite a way of telling the story,’ I was really excited by the idea of it. Also, because in general, a 40s film like this is told by the male in it. And it also throws you because you think it’s about Tobey Maguire and then it ain’t. I remember the first time I saw Alien, I remember when I went to the movie theater in 1979, you’re watching and you thought Tom Skerritt was going to be the star, because there’d always been the guy sort of surviving. He was the handsome guy and he bites it like first. Then all of a sudden you realize it’s Sigourney Weaver and you’re really taken by the idea that that point of view gets shifted a little bit and I think that’s really interesting storytelling.”
The Good German opens to theatres on December
15th.
For the trailers, posters, movie stills, more interviews and synopsis, go to The
Good German Movie Page.
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