George Clooney - 'Jay Kelly'

19:18George Clooney:Well, that was great. And then the next year, I mean, it's just no letting up here as people will be able to see. But 2023, another in the director's share, the boys in the boat, not acting in that one, but something that I know you tried to get the rights for years. It was a big thing. Just for anyone who needs a reminder, University of Washington rowing team, trying to get to and compete in the 36 Summer Olympics.

19:41Jay Kelly:Yeah, that was an interesting one because I kind of at this point was focusing on it being the last thing I was probably going to be directing because, you know, we were in London. We have a place there and the kids were there, but our kids weren't going to go to school in London. They'd already started spending time in this little prep school in France. France has really good laws about taking pictures of your kids. and so we found that that was a much safer place for our kids to uh you know spend time so i kind of knew that this was i was going to be wrapping it up with this one and and you know as they always say don't do you know don't do movies in water you watch the making of jaws it's hard to shoot a movie in water it's cold well you've done it right perfect storm i've done perfect storm but that wasn't always one that was on a soundstage a lot of it this was almost all on water and it was a bitch to do the actors were fantastic because you know they had to train and train you know if you think about it we took all these young actors and i literally said to them you have to be honest with me and you have to be athletic because if you're not athletic i'm gonna fire you yeah because you're gonna be training like an olympic athlete and we trained him for three months and by the time we got there they were up to like you know 40 strokes they were really moving 45 strokes at a point they couldn't do it for a long sustained period of time like an olympic uh athletes can but they could do it for long enough to shoot but you know those are difficult things you can shoot those scenes they can do it four or five times and then they're done for the day you know and that's you know so so you're really you know you've got seven cameras going and you're trying to line up the boats and the wind is blowing you sideways and there's so many things that can go wrong.

21:33Jay Kelly:And it was a bear to shoot. But I was really proud of everybody's, everybody mucked in in a way that was a really exceptional way. And, you know, I mean, that, again, that movie was successful. I wish they didn't release it at all foreign. Not one moment. What was that about? You know, it was in the middle of all that MGM sales deal. And part of the deal was that we got a domestic release and that's literally what we got was a domestic release it's too bad because we did really good uh finances domestically and i think it would have done because rowing's a

22:08George Clooney:little more popular overseas well and you had back-to-back weird release situations because the next one was wolves the next year and just to remind people this is john watts from spider-man probably best known you and brad pitt yeah two two fixers forced to team up on a job rather than work together as Lone Wolves. I guess that's where the title comes from. So, but, you know, action comedy, slick, big director, two, you know, the two people you think of when you think of a movie star to me, I know it became the biggest thing ever at that point on Apple, but how, in what rationale does it make sense to not theatrically release?

22:47Jay Kelly:We were supposed to, we were supposed to have a big theatrical release. There were a couple of things that went wrong. You know, I like John Watts a lot. He screwed up a couple of things And one of them was that he didn't deliver when he was supposed to. And because of that, we were backing into a release date. And when you're doing that, you need a long lead of press. You have to have been doing these things three months earlier, and you're setting yourself up. And we got to about 10 weeks. and I think Apple wasn't on their feet yet about how to release things. I think in fairness to them, they were figuring it out.

23:30Jay Kelly:You know, there was, at the time, when they pulled the theatrical release, there was a lot of finger-pointing and people going on. And I had to go to the Venice Film Festival and talk about it. And it was interesting because I said, look, guys, here's the thing. We're at a revolution in our industry. We are. the old legacy way of doing films is gone there is a hybrid version of it and we're not sure where we're going to end up and we're not sure how it's going to work out we're not sure how we're going to monetize it ai is a certainly a concern as you're watching all the stuff that sam has been doing that's really frightening quite honestly um and as in the last three weeks absolutely just rattled the industry.

24:14Jay Kelly:So there's all these things that were going on at the same time. And the thing I kept saying to the press is, I said, you know, you guys are part of this too. We're all part of this. This is an industry in the middle of massive changes and we're going to get some of it wrong. And this one we got wrong. You know, all of us did. The release should have been much earlier. The film should have been handed in sooner. all of the things that should have been done that weren't done, and Apple figuring out, well, then we should delay it and really have a release over Christmas time and do that. There was a lot of people figuring it out.

24:52Jay Kelly:We're building the airplane while we're flying it, and that one wasn't done well because the movie worked. There was no real problems with it. It was well-reviewed, and it was Brad and I, and it was a fun film. So there was no reason why it couldn't have worked or wouldn't have worked. It's just that there were about 30 things that went wrong all at once. And it was funny. I remember getting a call from Brian Lord. It was like July. And I'd been calling going, what are we doing, man? Because nobody's done any long lead press interviews, pictures, anything. I said, what's going on? And he called me back and said, I think that there's no way they're going to be able to release it like this.

25:36Jay Kelly:And I said, yeah, well, then, you know, you can't release a film if you haven't done all the preliminary work.

25:42George Clooney:Okay, one last pre-J. Kelly thing that I got to talk about because I saw this and really enjoyed it. And that was you going back to Good Night and Good Luck. Now you got to play Murrow, which you alluded to earlier, not getting to do earlier. I believe it had been 39 years since you'd done a professional theatrical. I do. I'm going to play every 39. I hope to be there for the next one. Yeah, me too. But, you know, adapting 20 years after your film, adapting and your script, adapting it for the stage. I'm thrilled that you did decide to do it. But what makes you at this point in life with young kids and a young wife and a busy schedule go say, I'm going to go do eight shows a week?

26:22Jay Kelly:Well, I figure this is the only chance I have to do it. I also felt like it was a good time to talk about these issues again, which are how important freedom of press is, which I think is an essential conversation to constantly have. I thought we had a take on how to make it an interesting play, and there was a window of opportunity to do it. and Grant and I sat down. Interestingly, there were several different iterations at one point. There were different actors that were going to play it. I mean, 15 years ago, we were going to do the play at Steppenwolf and places like that. Not me in it. Other actors were going to play it.

27:02Jay Kelly:Somebody came up and they did a play reading. Somebody had written a version adapted and it wasn't a very good adaptation of it. And I called up Grant. I said, let's adapt this thing and let's get to work. And I said, and I think I can play the part. It's stage. I'm too old but on stage you can get away with a little bit more than you can you know in the movies and I don't need to like CGI my face so we worked on Grant and I worked on it and we called up Brian Lord and just said so what do you think and he said if you want to uproot your life because it's a lot and it was a lot you know we had 20 some actors on stage and it was on a musical stage, you know, the Winter Garden, which is where they do cats, you know, and Mamma Mia.

27:46Jay Kelly:That's not normally where you do a play, 1 ,600 seats. And so that required filling it with a real big production. And so it was a gamble. Everybody took a big gamble, took a flyer on it, and was hopeful that it would be successful because if it's unsuccessful, then, you know, those kind of plays are harder and harder and harder to make. And it was, you know, it broke all the records, broke all the box office records, which was exciting for us to do. But more than that, I mean, you were there. There was an energy in that room of 1 ,600 people who needed to hear those words said out loud. Murrow is a good writer, you know.

28:31Jay Kelly:And when he says, we will not walk in fear one of another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we're not descendants from fearful men. Those are lines that people need to remind us who we are at our best. And you could feel it in the room. And there were times we had people jumping up and cheering, and it got rowdy in there. But it was exciting to do, and it was nerve-wracking, because, you know, I'm 64, and I have most of the lines, and I have these long monologues, And I was really concerned with remembering my lines.

29:08Jay Kelly:It's impressive.

29:09George Clooney:Dude, it's a lot.

29:11Jay Kelly:And I was concerned. And so every night before the play, I would go into the dressing room and I would go through the whole play every night again and again. And there was every single night before I went on stage, I would go, why did I do this? Why did I do this? But you know, the truth of the matter is there was also something about being 64 and going, This is something that I'm not comfortable in and that I don't think I have all the answers for and that I don't know whether it'll work. And all those things that are really good to remind yourself and to constantly challenge yourself. And so it worked out.

29:49Jay Kelly:It would have really been a bummer to have to keep doing the play if it hadn't worked out. We hadn't gotten like the New York Times, you know, critics pick like that.

29:58George Clooney:And you won't say, but I'll say Tony nomination, huge ticket sales that really helped Broadway that year, and then the national broadcast. So if you can't afford to, or you can't be in New York or whatever, you've still got to see it.

30:10Jay Kelly:Well, actually, you know, it's on Amazon now. We cut it together. It was done live. I'll tell you something. I've done a lot of live television. We did Failsafe Live and ER Live, and those were all my babies along the way. This was terrifying. You know, because we've done the play, but I went to Todd Wagner, who's helped to finance it, and Todd was brilliant. He and I basically came in with the money, and Jeff Skoll came up with the money to do it, because we weren't going to get that money from CNN. They don't have that kind of money. And we came up with this idea, and so then Friday night, remember, also, we've already sold out the show.

30:55Jay Kelly:So we can't just put cameras in front of people, screw it up. So we got long lenses, but we have 25 cameras and we got 17 trucks outside. And we had to rehearse it. So we were loading in Friday night. Saturday matinee was the first rehearsal with the cameras. And Grant was in the truck, you know, and basically trying to figure out what the shots were. There were 600 and some shots, you know, in it. We're trying to make it look cinematic as opposed to just from the front shot. And it's tricky. And we're also trying not to interfere with the audience. The Manatee was a disaster. I think I even screwed up lines and stuff.

31:38Jay Kelly:It was really like everything was going wrong. And then the 7 o 'clock show was getting ready to start. And now you've got CNNs outside doing the stand-ups out front. And we're still trying to get cameras set. and I don't know what at the very end I look I wanted to look into the camera for the very last line to say what are you prepared to do and I couldn't because the cameras are so far back and it's I'm front lit and I can't see them and Grant I'm on my phone with Grant and I'm standing the audience is already in piling in and I'm standing up on the balcony of the stage where they can't see me with a black shroud so they can't see me trying to see the camera Grant I'm talking to Grant and he's back on the back of the theater taping a little flashlight to the camera over the top.

32:24Jay Kelly:As the audience is coming in going, that's your camera. And I go, okay, got it. And six minutes later, we were live on the air. That is show business.

32:32George Clooney:It was show business.

32:33Jay Kelly:And it was great fun and it was nerve wracking. I remember the conversations of like, remember this is just another, you know, this is just another show. Don't worry, it's just another show. And I went in and said, no, guys. I said, I never saw Mary Martin do South Pacific, but I hear she was great. I said, this is the only time anybody's going to see this. I said, so I need you guys to bring it. And it was exciting and nerve-wracking.

33:02George Clooney:It's just sad that the original incarnation, the film version, and this were both, in a way, necessitated by your social conscience of having to respond to shitty times in the country.

33:14Jay Kelly:Well, but I mean, most of the time, what I do for a living is its job is to be in reaction to, right? You know, All the President's Men didn't come out in 1972. It came out in 1976. You know, it takes time for us to get our thoughts together, get it on film, put it together, get it out there. So what you find is that storytelling in general reflects a moment in time where we were. Very seldom does it lead. The play was unusually well-timed to talk about those things. You could feel, you know, there were lines in the play where, which is true, where Don Hullenbeck, the newsman who kills himself, at one point says, you know, Clark Gregg was doing it, and he says, I feel like all the reasonable people got on a plane and went to Europe.

34:04Jay Kelly:Yes. And, you know, we didn't have to say anything. It was the longest laugh in the play.

34:07George Clooney:Oh, yeah, I remember.

34:08Jay Kelly:So the timing on this one just happened to be, unfortunately, well-timed.

34:14George Clooney:Yeah. Okay. So already by the time you were doing that, I think you had maybe completed J. Kelly? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And let's go back to just the origin of this, which is that Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, neither of whom I think you'd ever worked with before. Well, sort of Noah with Fantastic Mr. Fox a little bit, but not really. They wrote, they say they wrote the script without telling you, but with you in mind for the part of Jay. Noah has told me that he wouldn't have actually made it if you had said no. I know you're skeptical. I doubt that.

34:49Jay Kelly:I doubt that. You would have found somebody. But, you know, because of what he was trying to do with this, you did need it to be someone who was well-known. Yeah. The audience needed to have some relationship with that character. So there were only a few of the guys that could have, you know, because the older you are, the better, you know, it plays. And so you also need them to be at least 60, you know.

35:16George Clooney:Well, I guess when you got the script, you concluded, as I think most people would, great material, great part. But I wondered if there was any hesitation because, and I mentioned this the other day when we talked, and I'm sure you've gotten it from a lot of people. I could see how somebody would look at it as a bit of a risky thing to sign on to because people who know you know that you are not Jay Kelly. Or even if, you know, people who see you every few years for something like this. I feel like I know you enough to know that you're very, you know, your family is important to you. You're very good to your friends.

35:50George Clooney:You're very good to your team. Jay Kelly is not. But at the same time, Jay Kelly is a guy from Kentucky who looks a lot like George Clooney, who shows up and has a similar kind of career. And they talk about as the last great movie star and all these things. And then he does some bad things. And so I don't know how much you necessarily care or consider how whether people are going to mistake you for the character or think that, you know, things like that. But was it a consideration? It wasn't really.

36:20Jay Kelly:I'll tell you what. First of all, he added a couple of those. He added the Kentucky thing and a couple of those things as we were shooting. He kept looking at my life and adding things. I was like, take it easy. At the end, we would blow it, but there's a whole montage of my career. And they actually used actual clips of my career, and I was shocked by that. When I did Up in the Air, there was all these conversations about how it was very similar to me. And it was. There were things that I had said. I don't ever want to get married again and all those kind of things. And that one was like, I'm more than happy to take this on and look at myself and say how silly some of those things I did and said and believed are.

37:01Jay Kelly:This one was much more, I read this as a character that I was really fascinated in playing. Because, you know, if this guy isn't charming, he's a real dick. You need that sort of that thing. And I don't know how to explain it except to say that you got to be willing to. You know, it's like every time you see Jack Nicholson in movies, watch Carnal Knowledge is a perfect example. He does nothing but shitty things and you root for him. You know, Danny DeVito in Taxi. You know, he does nothing but shitty things, but somehow you root for him. I don't know why that is. It's good writing. It's the right actor in the right place in the right time.

37:39Jay Kelly:Jack did it in almost everything he ever did, if you think about it. this was one of those where he actually earnestly has to believe that he's a good guy. And the wake of damage that he does behind him is something that he just isn't even aware of. He was famous too young. He's been surrounded by a team of people who've said yes to him. I was interested in that guy. I thought that was a really fun character to play. and also to be able to find the kindness in him. He's not an evil guy. He's just oblivious. And he's oblivious to his daughters. He's oblivious. Everything was with the singular eye on getting, achieving, and holding and continuing to hold on to fame, which he hasn't ended even at the end of the movie.

38:39Jay Kelly:And being able to take that ride and still root for these characters, I thought was, I didn't know if it was doable. Noah's a really good writer. Noah and Emily wrote a beautiful script, but he's such a good director. And that was a big element too, was like, are we going to get away with this? Because part of it is like, by the end, everybody's gone. And they're gone for the right reasons because they want to take care of their own lives and visit with their own families. And when I say to my daughter, you know, this had to be worth something and she says, what if it isn't? You know, it's a pretty fascinating question for all of us because that's the other part of it was this never felt like a story about a movie star to me.

39:28Jay Kelly:this felt like almost every one of us who has had to balance work and life and how much of it and we always get it wrong and our job is to try to somehow say well I need to achieve this and I'm going to miss my kids this and I'm going to miss my wife's that and I'm going to miss my parents thing and some of that is true you couldn't achieve the success that you try to achieve without that. My parents missed a bunch of things of mine. That's just the way it was. They got to work, got to put food on the table. Later in life, you look back and you go, I really missed those things. And you, you know, you never look back when I wish I worked more.

40:10George Clooney:It certainly could apply to somebody who isn't a movie star, but as somebody who is a movie star, how did you, how do you think you were able to avoid becoming this kind of guy? And by seeing other people who had, was that of any value to, you know, were you able to draw upon that, the people who'd made the mistakes that you'd avoided?

40:31Jay Kelly:Sure. I know some big stars who really handled it poorly, including my Aunt Rosemary, who was a big star. I didn't know her very well. You know, I lived in Kentucky. I was a tobacco farmer. So she came to Kentucky three or four times when I was growing up, and she was the famous aunt from California. But she was a big star at 19 years old and then rock and roll came in and women were out of the business and she didn't handle it well. It was drugs and booze and she missed 25 years of her career and her life to being angry and to really stepping on a lot of people. She got it back at the end, you know, and sort of really rallied, but she missed a big chunk.

41:14Jay Kelly:It was a great lesson for me in how little success has to do with you, how failure is not a terrible thing. What I took from this film is something I've taken very close to my heart about life in general as I see some people who've gotten much older than me and are nearing the end of their lives, the end of this journey. and if they failed, they're okay. Because failing is okay. You can fail and go, yeah, I tried that. It didn't work out. I wanted to do that. I auditioned for that. I meant to do this. It didn't work out. I went back and sold insurance. I did that. You're fine with that. You can live with failure.

42:00Jay Kelly:What you cannot live with is regret. You can't live with that road that you didn't try when you think that that could have been something special because you can't go back. and that is toxic and that to me is something that I um happily don't have in my life you know if I get hit by a bus when I walk outside after this interview there's not one person who knows me or who's been around me that wouldn't think well I pretty much got everything you could get out of it I'm the most successful version of where I started cutting tobacco for three dollars an hour that I ever thought I'd be. And not just in work as an actor, but also in life.

42:42Jay Kelly:I have a beautiful wife and wonderful children and great friends and a great family. And I've worked at those things, but I also have made sure that wherever there was a fork in the road, I took the one that I thought was riskiest and not the safest. And it worked out. It could have not, I could live with that. What I couldn't live with was having not taken that road.

43:09George Clooney:There's a great scene in this movie, I think, where Jay Kelly gets on, for lack of alternatives, ends up in the economy section of a train, which I imagine it's been a little while since you've been in that situation. No, no.

43:23Jay Kelly:I ride the train through France all the time. Really? And people are okay? Yeah, I mean, yes, people, you know, train cars are interesting. And we really took part of that in the movie. You can handle that because there's 30 people in that car. And if everybody gets a picture or says something, that's, you know, a half an hour. And then you've got a three and a half hour ride to Paris and you can get through it. You know what I mean? I mean, it's when there's much more unmanageable sized crowds. So train car isn't so bad. And also, you know, Europe is a little, you know, they're a little more, you know, like the French, whether they care or not, they love to feel that they don't.

44:12Jay Kelly:And I'm happy with that because it buys you a little bit of anonymity.

44:15George Clooney:Well, one of the things, though, that that scene raises, there's a kind of a prolonged glance, if I recall correctly, about where Jay's looking at just an older lady eating, opening up and eating her sandwich or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody behaving essentially like normally around. And I think the thing that I assume, not being an actor, but I've read enough about it and heard people, interviewed people, it seems like what allows somebody to be an effective actor is you've, among other things, really observed humans behaving naturally, process that, and redeploy that at some point. Sure.

44:53George Clooney:But what happens when people stop behaving normally around you, which at your age, you became famous at like 33, right? So later than a lot of people, but still quite young. It's been half your.

45:06Jay Kelly:Pretty late for fame, for that kind of thing. Pretty late. And also I'd been sort of on the periphery of it for about 12 years. I was doing a lot of shows that didn't work or almost worked or worked, but not with me. so I had a better grounding underneath me than most you know I'd failed enough that I was I understood when it worked out that I was like not quite the genius that you would think you were but yeah you're right people people do act differently and it is always a challenge to try to get them to you know be honest with you or to I mean there's that is a constant battle you People love to talk about living in L.A.

45:53Jay Kelly:in a bubble. That's not really factually true. Most of the people that I know aren't from L.A. originally. Julia's from Texas, and Brad's from Missouri, and Matt's from Boston. And the bubbles, it's like, I remember I was doing one of those Q &As, the SAG Q &As. I think it was for Up in the Air because it was about firing people. some kid and I was talking about you know how lame it is it was laying people off and the kid was like when was the last time you know you had to worry about that or money or anything else and I was like stand up dude I said how old are you he's like 23 and I said when I was 23 I couldn't afford a jacket like that I didn't have insurance for 7 years I didn't have health insurance you don't get to start the clock on me now that it all worked out You don't forget what it's like to not have insurance and to be four rails up in a tobacco barn in August hanging tobacco.

46:54Jay Kelly:You don't forget that. Do you find and get around and are surrounded by some really nice amenities as time goes on? Yeah. But I remember doing the Charlie Rose show, and I said if it all fell apart, I could move into a one-bedroom apartment. And he's like, you could never do that. And I go, dude, I'm an actor. I'm on the road. I'm in a one-bedroom apartment, you know, nine months out of the year. It's not, you know, it's not hard to remember and to be part of those things. As long as you don't create a world that your fear is that those could never be accepted again, that you could never be broke.

47:37Jay Kelly:You know, most actors who, even the most successful ones, you know, They end up broke or they end up auditioning for things that you would never imagine them auditioning for early.

47:50George Clooney:There's a cool device in Jay Kelly where you essentially, as Jay, wander literally right into his past and you have the younger version of you, this guy Charlie Rowe playing him. But in a way that you had deployed or employed on Confessions, Confessions, your directorial debut, where literally it's all, I guess you would say, practical sets. So you're on a plane, and then you walk literally into an acting classroom, right, or from decades earlier. I guess as both a filmmaker and as an actor, just talk about what that does, what that does, and why that's valuable for an actor.

48:32Jay Kelly:There's a couple of reasons. One is because there's no visual effects in the movie now, right? So what it does is it creates an energy in the room, kind of like doing a play, where everybody is holding their breath a little bit. Like, is this going to work? I'm going to walk from the back of the plane, but the plane's actually attached to a theater. And there's 30 kids in there doing a scene as I walk through it. And I have to make sure that I step across just in time for the camera to come through to reveal that. And other ones where it's like I'm looking through a mirror, and then the next shot is it's not a mirror.

49:05Jay Kelly:It's a glass, but you think it's a mirror. And then I duck underneath the camera like I'm washing my face. But underneath it, I'm ripping off my shirt. And I've got a plaid shirt on. And I'm walking into my own over the shoulder. You know, when we did Confessions, I remember I did a scene with Sam Rockwell where he's looking in the mirror. And then we did a close-up of him as Drew Barrymore gives him the idea of the dating game. And we push in on his face. We keep pushing on his face. And I remember when I was prepping it, I had dinner with John Frankenheimer, and I said, how did you get Robert Ryan from one set to the other in Snows of Kilimanjaro, live television?

49:46Jay Kelly:And he's like, well, shit, you just push in until you can't see either side of their head, and then you rotate them, and you pull out, and you're in another fucking set. So we do that. So we push in on Sam until you can't see outside of his head, and then we slowly rotate. And while we do it, we change his clothes, give him props. and we start to pull out and the trick is because he's looking right in the camera but now he's going to pull out and he's going to be talking to a room full of executives in a whole other scene so as we pull out the trick is just as you get to a certain stage he has to blink and then look in a different direction right or otherwise you're going to still be looking at the camera it was really complicated and Sam Rockwell of course is the most consummate actor and was beautiful but it was so exciting in the room.

50:33Jay Kelly:And when you watch that scene and you watch the scenes with Noah, there's a different energy to them. There's a feeling of something's going on. Like the 12-page one-er that we start with in J. Kelly. There's an energy to it because whether you're paying attention or not, it's a one-er. There are no cuts and everybody has to get it right.

50:55George Clooney:Beyond their game.

50:55Jay Kelly:And it's really fun. And it took us... We didn't get it right at all the first day.

50:59George Clooney:I don't remember you said that. That's crazy. But no, it's really, it is exciting to watch. And I do want to come back to, you just referenced the mirror scene in J. Kelly, where he's at one point looking in the mirror, gets a moment by himself and saying, staring at himself, saying a bunch of names. I think Cary Grant and whoever else, and then J. Kelly, J. Kelly, J. Kelly. And I wonder what you interpreted that to be about. Is he a character or an invention? like, you know, an invention? How is he, why is he thinking about Jay Kelly in the third person?

51:32Jay Kelly:Well, I think he's thinking about, I think he's only dealt with himself in the third person for a long time. And I think that in order for that to work, he wants to be held in the same category as the people that he's naming. And so he's comparing himself. And I think in his honest moments looking in the mirror, he's falling short of those. And I would think that maybe those same actors that he names you know might feel the same way when they look at themselves because remember Cary Grant always said everybody wants to be Cary Grant I want to be Cary Grant I think that there's that element of coming to terms with who he is you know there's I remember an actor who was very ill and was dying and told me he was afraid of going to hell which I don't really believe in and I said you're not gonna go to hell don't worry about it you promise I go I promise you're not gonna go to hell he died like the next day and I remember thinking if you're worried about that on your deathbed that means every time you looked in the mirror you knew you were not a good person and that's hell quite honestly and so there is that element of looking at yourself in this and trying to hold the mirror literally up to what people think of you and then what you think of you and I thought that that was a, I thought it was a really sort of beautiful moment in the film.

52:56Jay Kelly:It's, you know, Noah found these moments that don't read in the script, like with Adam putting makeup on me at the end. It's sort of like the dresser, you know, in a way. Once again, he can't do it on his own and he needs, you know, and those are those kinds of moments that a really good director is able to find.

53:19George Clooney:I'm teaching a class in the fall right now and for the second year in a row at Chapman University's film school. Oh, wow. And it's called The Movie Star. And it's looking at the evolution of stardom from the silent era, Florence, Lawrence, whatever, right through you and your contemporaries. And one of the things we're looking at is how things have changed in terms of, you know, obviously now movies have to compete with so many other things for people's attention. we're looking at the loss of the ability to be kind of known just for what you do on the screen all of that kind of thing and what the final assignment for these kids is is to write a paper arguing whether or not you Tom Cruise essentially your contemporaries are are the not just you know as a cliche but actually can you argue are you guys the last movie stars because partly because it was just possible to be or whatever else.

54:18George Clooney:I wonder what your opinion is. Is it possible for somebody to still be a movie star in the way that you and your predecessors were?

54:27Jay Kelly:Well, I think my, I would say my era is somewhat diminished from the, you know, the last year of the really greats, which I would say Newman and Redford and, you know, Peck and all those guys the kind of last version of that um we had an advantage um my generation of some of the guys who made it because studios still you still got five picture deals and they would sort of foster you through a certain amount of kinds of films and figure out what one which genre you know worked for you i was lucky in a way because i wasn't all that successful at some and so i didn't get pigeonholed into one or the other.

55:08Jay Kelly:So there's that. I mean, I will say I got famous from television, not from movies. I got famous from ER, which was at the time arguably the biggest hit of all time. And I was on that show with these amazing actors and it broke everybody out. And I remember flying to Las Vegas and I got off a plane with Kevin Costner and he was a movie star. You know, he'd been just done Dancing with the Wolves and he was a big star. We got off the plane and everybody, you know, who's standing outside saw him. They're like, Kevin Costner. And they were all whispering and pointing, whispering and pointing. Kevin Costner, he's a big star.

55:46Jay Kelly:And then I got off and they're like, George! And they come up and they hug you and stuff. Because Kevin Costner is a movie star and you saw him 12 feet tall and you paid money and you got dressed up to go see him. And And you could make me talk or not talk with the remote. And you could watch me in your underwear. And you knew me personally. And so I was very much accessible in that way. And luckily, because at the time, and you might remember this, but most people don't, there was very little crossover. I mean, the conversation was always, I mean, I'd done five or six films while I was doing ER.

56:28Jay Kelly:Some very good ones that didn't succeed. Out of Sight didn't succeed. Three Kings didn't succeed. And so the big question was, am I going to make it in the movies? And the answer was no. Until I left ER and the next two movies I had were sort of a perfect combination of The Perfect Storm, which was a big hit, having nothing to do with me, having to do with The Big Wave. But listen, I took a lot of shit for Batman and Robin Solt took credit for The Big Wave. And Oh Brother, Where Art That Was a critical hit. but up until then that was not the case now i could make the argument that i just think everything is there's just so much access to everything you know i talk to kids all the time i talk to kids at sag and things because i'll you know they're always they're all on instagram and everything you know and when i was directing and i was casting and i was it was between two actors and the casting director in the studio would come to me and go, well, she's got, you know, 175 ,000 followers on Instagram and the other girl's got 30 ,000.

57:42Jay Kelly:And that was literally the discussions we had. And I said to all these actors, get the fuck off of it. Get off of all of it. Because if you're not on it, you have nothing to be compared to. And also I think that access, I get it. You can monetize it and you can find ways to drink a certain kind of water and they'll pay you 10 grand and fair enough I get it I understand it but trying to maintain a career and answer all of the questions that every individual has for you you're it's diminishing your ability to to be bigger than life it's inevitable and I don't think that you know I'm sort of swimming upstream and I don't think that there's much you can do about it.

58:23Jay Kelly:But I do think it's, I think it's better to not be as available.

58:28George Clooney:Well, this was supposedly what Sidney Poitier said to Denzel. If they, if they see you for free during the week, they won't pay to see you on the weekend, which is, there might be some logic to that. But almost at the end here, I do want to ask you, I find it interesting that you had your little devil with superhero stuff, which you, but as a, clearly like a student of the business also, So isn't it interesting that, you know, people will show up in huge numbers for a Marvel movie, but then those people, when they do a non-Marvel movie, they don't necessarily. That's right. It's the same. And by the way, same with, you know, somebody can be massive on a Netflix show.

59:06George Clooney:Sure. So I guess I just wonder, now, as you mentioned, we've got AI coming in the picture, like AI actors and actresses, whatever, quote unquote. So I guess to kind of come back to what we were starting to talk about earlier a little bit, but just do you think it's actually possible? Like the idea to me, what it seems like what the best definition I've seen of a movie star is somebody that you will pay to go and see what they're in essentially regardless of what it is.

59:36Jay Kelly:Does that exist? But that didn't ever really fully exist. There were times, I suppose, back in the 30s and 40s where you'd go see an actor no matter what they did. But in general, you'd go to see a Jim Carrey giant comedy, but if he did a really interesting small drama, they weren't flocking to see it because that's not what they were used to or looking for. Again, I feel like sometimes my longevity has come from sort of not having any of these sort of massive successes in certain genres. But, you know, and it's an interesting thing as we look at AI, and it's very disturbing, some of the stuff you're seeing, because, you know, they are creating worlds where there are people who fill these, and they're very real.

1:00:21Jay Kelly:I mean, you know, and I've seen stuff with me in it that's pretty disturbing stuff, stuff I've said that I've never said, talking, you know, great stories about Hitler and stuff like that, where you just go, Jesus Christ. But I will say that AI is going to have the same problem that Hollywood has always had, which is it's still hard to find a movie star. Your AI movie star is still just as hard. And I don't remember that senator, but there was some senator who said, I don't know how to describe porn, but I know it when I see it.

1:00:52George Clooney:Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. Oh, that's right. Right, that's right.

1:00:56Jay Kelly:That's the same thing about movie stars. I don't know how to describe it. I don't know what makes somebody where you go, I like them and I want to follow them. It's not just talent, you know, because the most talented kids in my acting class weren't the ones who made it. So there's a combination of all of these things. And I don't know what that is. So AI is going to have a tough time trying to create that same thing. And I don't know that they will have any more luck than we have had. But I will say that there's still, you know, I still look at actors, young actors. I think Zendaya, for instance, sort of overrides all of those things.

1:01:35Jay Kelly:She can do television. She can do commercials. She can do movies. She seems to have that ability to rise above it. I think Glenn Powell is doing interesting stuff as a young actor. I mean, he's not young, but he's kind of hitting around the time I hit. and he seems to be doing, wants to direct and produce and write and doing all those things that, and doing it with a little bit of humor about himself, which I think is an element that's important if you look back. I'm not ready to call it all dead yet. I see some interesting people out there. I get it. I understand why it's not the same. Certainly you can't just put Gregory Peck in a movie and hope it'll open now because it's just a different time.

1:02:21Jay Kelly:But movies aren't opening the way they used to either. Look, but let's do it on a different level for a second because I think it's important. We get into this morose thing about the industry, and there's certainly some big fears out there. When I moved to L.A. in 1981, I got my first gig on. It was a sitcom called ER. You would go to the back pages of the LA Times on Monday morning, and there were 64 shows. About 20 of them were magazine shows, like 48 hours and 60 minutes. So really you had about 44 shows, and you looked up where on that list you were to see if you were going to stay on the air or not.

1:03:10Jay Kelly:You know, were you in the top 20, that kind of thing. The studios were doing four films a year then. the idea that there's 600 shows now so there is a lot more work now the pay is tricky and people aren't you know able to make a living in some of these things and all that needs to be adjusted of course but on a on a more positive note and a way of accepting sort of where we are in this and streaming and all of those things there is a world where there is a lot more work out there for crews, for actors. We have to be better at monetizing it, which we are trying to do. And there's certainly terrifying other elements, darker clouds out there.

1:03:56Jay Kelly:But remembering that this is a better environment than it was when I first started by a long shot, by a factor of 10.

1:04:06George Clooney:That's great. Well, can't thank you enough for doing this again. I hope you keep doing it for a long time to come and that we can do this again in a few more years. We do it every five and a half years. Yeah, thanks, George.

1:04:18Jay Kelly:Thanks, guys.

1:04:43George Clooney:platforms we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.

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