George Clooney The Boys In The Boat Matthew Perry $150M SAG-AFTRA offer Brad Pitt Sequel – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: In a tense second through the protracted SAG-AFTRA strike when guild negotiators weren’t speaking to studios/streamers as movie staff confronted dwelling foreclosures with no paychecks for six months and no finish in sight, George Clooney led different high A-listers in providing to uncap dues and contribute $150 million over three years to guild coffers to assist qualify extra actors for well being advantages and different issues. While he has lengthy loved the spoils of an above the road life, Clooney has by no means forgotten the struggling showbiz underclass he was a part of earlier than ER modified his life.

Just in time for Christmas, Clooney faucets squarely into these themes together with his new movie The Boys within the Boat. An adaptation of the Daniel James Brown bestseller, the movie tells the underdog story of the 1936 University of Washington rowing group that got here collectively underneath a stern coach who promised those that made the group meals and an schooling at a time these alternatives have been out of attain for many as America reeled from the Great Depression. The unheralded squad bested better-funded faculties to win Olympic Gold on the Berlin Games in 1936. Is there nonetheless a spot for a shifting uncynical and provoking sports activities story within the theatrical market, and the Oscar race? Clooney certain hopes we now have room in our hearts to make this successful.

DEADLINE: The Boys within the Boat is at coronary heart an inspiring true sports activities story, nevertheless it has the tug of what’s nice about America. Unless you’re a current immigrant, you won’t perceive what was going through children who grew up within the Depression, no jobs and no prospects. Your film exhibits that we are able to rise to the event when obligatory. But it’s a couple of group of fellows rowing a ship, which isn’t what we often see on a film display.

CLOONEY: I are likely to do issues that I haven’t completed earlier than. Sometimes it really works out, generally it doesn’t. But I benefit from the thought of, let’s do one thing actually cynical, or let’s do one thing that’s actually simply pure emotion. This is a e-book Grant [Heslov] and I chased for years. We misplaced out to a bunch of individuals, after which we went over to MGM. They had this e-book, and a screenplay that we didn’t even learn. We had this author Mark L. Smith, who’s terrific and we simply love.

DEADLINE: He did The Revenant after which Midnight Sky for you.

CLOONEY: Great author, and I simply love the e-book. I grew up in a small city in Kentucky, my father and mom are Depression period youngsters. They talked about what it was like, three folks sharing a mattress and all that stuff. The thought of pulling your self up by your bootstraps is a very nice thought, except you don’t have bootstraps. That was how our youngsters within the Depression actually had it.

I’ve all the time liked that time period, and this concept that we needed to do stuff collectively to succeed. I could be cynical at instances, however I’m all the time fairly optimistic about who we’re, at the same time as a rustic, as humanity, even after we undergo actually horrible durations of time. The thought of this story is, we’re on this collectively and the one method this works is collectively. You can’t do it by yourself. Even if you happen to have been the perfect athlete, you’re going to lose except you have been prepared to be a part of a system. That jogged my memory of so many different components of American society. We do think about ourselves nonetheless an underdog nation, which is humorous, as a result of we’re a superpower. But we weren’t born to royalty, so there’s all the time a room to advance, there’s all the time an opportunity. That wasn’t essentially the case in 1936. I really like Hoosiers, Rudy, going again to Pride of the Yankees and movies like that. But there’s additionally, you ever watch these 30 for 30 movies on ESPN?

DEADLINE: Seen ’em all.

CLOONEY: There’s one I’ve seen 40 instances I wager you, referred to as Survive and Advance. It’s Jimmy Valvano and NC State. It’s the one I exploit an instance for this film. If you’ve completed any analysis, you recognize the rowing group wins the Olympic Gold medal. So it’s the approaching collectively, the journey that issues. You watch that Valvano factor, you’re crying and also you’re laughing and also you’re going, there’s not a star within the group, they usually’re going to beat Clyde ‘The Glide’ Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson. The biggest period of school gamers, ever, they usually beat all of them. Greatest underdog sports activities story ever. And that’s what this felt prefer to me. And we saved driving this dwelling, which is, they’re going to beat these giants they usually’re doing this to eat. They’re doing it to remain at school, to place a shelter over their heads.

DEADLINE: We’re in an age of spectacle. Is it simply more durable to get these sorts of movies made now?

CLOONEY: I feel it’s. It’s not a giant funds movie. It was a fairly fascinating course of. Some good got here out of Amazon shopping for MGM helped us. When we have been doing it as straight up MGM, the funds offer was so low that they made me give my directing price again, per week earlier than we began taking pictures. They have been like, the funds, you haven’t met the funds, so the one method you are able to do it’s if you happen to give your price again, which I did.

We needed to construct these boats. We needed to prepare these youngsters, and taking pictures on the water all the time slows issues down. And this isn’t a Marvel movie and there aren’t large stars in it. So some great benefits of not having the bills of massive stars, in addition they assure that get you a funds. They have been like, right here’s what we’ll spend. And we have been like, effectively, shit man, I don’t know if we are able to do it for that. Grant and I sat down with cinematographer and first AD Martin Ruhe, and deliberate out a really particular, very detailed taking pictures schedule. Rowing is difficult. Teaching them to row is difficult. Also, you possibly can’t row ’em for very lengthy as a result of they’ll crumble. And we wanted to maintain coaching them. They needed to prepare for 5 months altogether to get to the place we wanted them by the tip. You’ve received quick days in London in February. We needed to be so particular as a result of Grant and I have been on the hook for the overages. If we got here in massively over, if we got here in over in any respect, we needed to pay for it. We got here in underneath funds they usually gave us our a refund ultimately. But it was actually difficult to get it completed. And I suppose it was as a result of the e-book is the star, Daniel James Brown is the star, and there’s a panic that occurs whenever you don’t produce other issues. To me, it’s an important story, however studios, it’s arduous to get these much less grand movies made.

DEADLINE: When was the final time you made such a private gesture, being prepared to present again your directing price for a film that you simply simply needed to do?

CLOONEY: Well, it’s a humorous factor. It was type of irritating, I’ll inform you, as a result of we have been screwed. We have been cornered. We’d already skilled all people. We’d already employed all people. And we have been per week earlier than we have been about to shoot. So there was no method we weren’t going to shoot now. And I mentioned, all proper, effectively, okay, we’ll do this. But I don’t know, I’ve completed this a bunch. I received paid minimums for every part on a variety of issues I did, beginning with Good Night, And Good Luck. I simply wished to do the initiatives, and I’ve a day job the place I can receives a commission fairly effectively if I must receives a commission. So I don’t thoughts doing that. It will not be in regards to the cash at that time. I’m fortunate sufficient to have bought a tequila firm, so I’m in a position to afford it. It could be a little obnoxious sooner or later the place you go, all proper, I’ll provide the a refund, put myself in danger. Then, the primary week we began taking pictures, the entire forged and I received Covid.

DEADLINE: The Covid Boys within the Boat? No method.

CLOONEY: Yeah. So I’m taking pictures, I’m directing from an iPad in my bed room. The just one who didn’t get it was the lead, Callum. We simply shot a bunch of stuff with him, solely his facet of every part, simply to remain on schedule. And I might direct him, on an iPad.

DEADLINE: Everybody else in that boat was convalescing?

CLOONEY: We didn’t shoot the boat stuff instantly, as a result of we wanted them to get them higher at rowing. None of these guys rowed. What’s so fascinating about that is, we felt like our greatest problem was to guarantee that we handled rowing very well. You haven’t seen a lot rowing in movies; expertise has helped in a method that we’re in a position to shoot it in a extra fascinating, extra compelling method. Fincher did a couple of minute of that, with the rowing in The Social Network. That’s simply probably the most spectacular montages I’ve ever seen in my life. But the rowing itself, the precise rowing, will not be as elegant as you’d need the rowing to be. We have been advised by all of the rowers, too. We needed to get that proper. We labored our method to that second the place the fellows might actually row. So we shot all the opposite stuff, but when Callum and one of many different actors was nonetheless sick, we’d shoot with whoever was out there on their facet. Two months later we’d come again and shoot the opposite facet. It was an actual scheduling nightmare.

DEADLINE: Are you up the creek with out a paddle with a good funds, when everybody within the boat will get Covid?

CLOONEY: You received these quaint storyboards, you pull them down and say, owe that shot and have to come back again and get it. I used to be speaking with Callum final night time about how he wasn’t even there for the opposite facet of the scene he was in, in 5 – 6 scenes. When Joel Edgerton says, we’re going to take the junior boat as an alternative of the senior boat, that large scene with these folks, that was shot two other ways, two very months aside with the boys all there once they received higher. We have been all inoculated, it was simply unhealthy luck. It was the Delta one which got here within the second spherical and nailed all people. Thank God we have been inoculated. I’ve bronchial asthma and I might’ve been correctly in bother; I used to be fairly sick simply with it. My son and I, we now have the Irish lungs, an Irish liver, so I can drink all I would like. You received to select your vices. So yeah, hear, each film has a complication. For us, it was water for probably the most half. As you recognize, water’s a giant deterrent for doing movies. I did Perfect Storm 20 years in the past.

DEADLINE: I bear in mind how arduous you mentioned that was. What was the problem right here?

CLOONEY: Go out, bounce in your pool and simply attempt to run. Everything simply slows down. It’s molasses. That final race, there’s eight boats lined up, and these boats are enormous, 60 ft lengthy, and the oars stick method the hell out on both facet. You can’t get near the boats you’re in. We’ve received eight or 9 motorboats round. We have to remain behind them as a result of if we get in entrance of them, we capsize their boats. I can’t get near ’em as a result of the oars are there and since the boats are so lengthy. So we’re on an 80 foot arm on our boats on a two or 300 millimeter lens down low, attempting to make these pictures look dynamic. And it was, thank God that we had the expertise now to have the ability to shoot that as a result of that’s not the best factor on the planet to shoot.

And then we needed to attempt to sustain with them as a result of as soon as they get going, they get shifting fairly quick and also you’ve received to get all these eight boats lined up and the wind is blowing they usually’re not anchored, they usually’re all flopping round in numerous instructions. And there’s historic accuracy each time you hear ’em go, effectively, they’re developing on Hungary. We need to guarantee that we’re behind the Hungarian boat as we come up. So there’s a bonus when it’s factual. You know precisely what it’s important to do, however the drawback is you possibly can’t cheat it. For me, this was probably the most paint by numbers technical movie, not the emotion, however simply getting in there and going, I would like 11 pictures of this to make this piece work. The rowing sequences, it’s 600 cuts. I imply, the entire movie Gravity I feel was 450 cuts.

DEADLINE: The trick is convincing jaded audiences to come back out to the theater and be moved by this story…

CLOONEY: You appreciated the film. I’m a sports activities movie dude too. And it is a movie that we actually need folks to take a look at. We simply had a packed home for an Academy screening, and the entire viewers was simply…rowing. They’re rocking forwards and backwards, rowing, they usually get up and cheer on the finish and it simply makes you’re feeling good. And that’s what we wished.

DEADLINE: The movie on Jesse Owens on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin performed up Hitler and his Nazi thug squads being incensed when Owens ran the German sprinters off the observe. The specter of WWII hung heavy within the air. You didn’t go there a lot; your movie is extra a completely American underdog story. Why that selection?

CLOONEY: It’s a difficult factor, how we inform tales. We have to have a look at what was identified and once they knew it. We suspected Hitler was a fairly shitty autocrat, and a few folks had higher information. Some  had learn Mein Kampf. But we couldn’t be as sensible as we have been by 1942 or 43 or 44. There have been nice issues. The Americans didn’t salute Hitler, they didn’t do the Nazi salute when all people else did. It was clear they have been obnoxious and the Americans weren’t pleasant with them, nevertheless it needed to not make it that they understood how unhealthy this was going to get; it might be traditionally inaccurate by such an extended stretch. Those are tempting issues; whenever you want unhealthy guys in storytelling, you bought the wealthy youngsters, and you bought Hitler. What extra do you want?

DEADLINE: Callum Turner we noticed as a child within the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and subsequent in Masters of the Air. Why was he the suitable selection for the lead?

CLOONEY: It’s humorous, I solely met him doing an American accent, and solely the final week have I heard him be a Brit. And it actually messes me up as a result of now I really feel like I don’t even know him. He did the American accent on the set. There’s a bunch of qualities that made him the suitable man. Let’s neglect the athleticism, which he has. And he’s a giant child, 6’ 2.” He’s received a Gary Cooper high quality about him. He must be a man who didn’t discuss their emotions. That’s why we like outdated warfare movies. They don’t sit round and go, man, I really like you, man. There’s stoicism to those guys. When we did Good Night, And Good Luck, we had that factor the place you possibly can’t hug one another, you possibly can shake one another’s hand. It was only a completely different degree of what we have been prepared to point out as notably as males at that second. You want a man which you could lower to and that with out saying something, you’re feeling the urgency, you’re feeling the anger, a variety of burning anger. That’s Gary Cooper. We had the identical factor with Joel Edgerton, who performs the coach. We don’t have the massive rousing speech on the finish. He simply says, ‘I’m pleased with you.’ Anybody who’s ever performed sports activities and has a coach as type of a father determine, that second when he punches you within the shoulder and says, I’m pleased with you, is probably the most stunning second you’ve ever had in your life. These nice stuff you always remember.

DEADLINE: You took a punch or two from a coach?

CLOONEY: Yeah. Big athlete. I performed basketball, baseball at school and had two tryouts with the Cincinnati Reds.

DEADLINE: Did you tear one thing?

CLOONEY: No, I simply lacked talent. I had every part else. I had an excellent hat, I had an excellent uniform. I simply lacked the flexibility to play the sport.

DEADLINE: Vexed by the curveball?

CLOONEY: Curveball received me. I bear in mind I went out and mainly they only care about pace and arm. They can educate you how you can hit. So after the second yr after I got here again, I might throw fairly effectively and I used to be actually quick and I received to lastly make it the subsequent spherical, which is to take batting apply. It’s a minor league pitcher, and he’s throwing me 82 mile an hour fastballs, down the center. I’ve received just a little 32-inch Louisville slugger. I used to be a leadoff hitter and I’m simply poking these pitched all around the discipline. Just enjoying nice. And I used to be like, I’m going to be enjoying with the Cincinnati Reds man. And this man’s taking a look at me like I’m an fool. And I’m considering, that is it, man.

He throws an 82 mile an hour curveball, at my head. I actually fell backwards, and the ball ended up on the skin a part of the plate, and all people laughed. The sound it made and the motion on the ball, from a minor league pitcher… I used to be like, oh dude, I’m not going to be knowledgeable baseball participant. This is a special degree. I didn’t perceive that till proper then. But sports activities are so necessary to me. I nonetheless play a variety of hoops, and I’ve such nice affection for the individuals who do it at a degree that’s insurmountable to most of us.

DEADLINE: The film comes out for Christmas, and it is sort of a throwback vacation movie, a bowl of rooster soup about overcoming the Depression. This enterprise has been via the ringer. What is your feeling in regards to the strike and the place it leaves the image enterprise?  

CLOONEY: I don’t assume anyone actually is aware of. I’ll say there’s a few issues. First of all, it’s not simply the strike; we’ve all been at one another’s throats for fairly a while now. I appreciated the film for Christmas as a result of it reminds us that we’re all type of on the identical facet, and all of us type of root for each other for probably the most half. These [negative] issues on the fringes that we see, they’re not nearly all of us they usually’re not the driving power of all of us. I like that concept for the movie, and that’s why we actually thought it was a Christmas movie. I feel it is a movie that folks will actually really get pleasure from, and sports activities are a fairly fascinating unifier. Even when folks don’t get alongside, there’s nothing higher than when it’s the Olympics and we have been rooting for the United States or no matter. So I feel there’s that. Talking in regards to the strike, it’s an fascinating time.

When I appeared on the strike, I assumed in regards to the nice points. One of ’em is clearly healthcare, which is a giant a part of it. It additionally felt like whenever you have a look at what occurs with the streamers, and I feel the streamers are an important factor, there’s a variety of actually fascinating work will get completed that wouldn’t be made in movies anymore. But what was taking place is if you happen to did a collection 5 years in the past, six years in the past, you get 22 episodes. Say you made 20 grand an episode, you probably did all proper, now you do seven episodes, you’re taking the identical period of time. It nonetheless takes you 9 months to do it. So you’re getting paid mainly a 3rd of what you used to receives a commission with no residuals on the backend. So it was attending to be, whenever you have a look at it, unfair. Particularly for individuals who have been working type of on the fringes, which means they have been working actors who have been in a position to make their insurance coverage, and all of that was being taken away.

It’s a pretty big quantity. Some would possibly go ballistic about this, however I’m not as involved as others about AI at this second for quite a few causes. One of ’em is that once they’re speaking about AI for changing actors, the price of having an AI actor is a lot dearer than having somebody on a weekly or a each day charge that it’s prohibitive. If you’re speaking about background actors, I imply Gone with the Wind used dummies. We’ve used this stuff referred to as sprites, for years. We’ve all been supplementing that. You shoot plates and tile folks in, that’s one thing we’ve completed for an extended time period. There’s a number of actors, I might put myself in all probability in that class that we fear about being put in a tampon business in 20 years or after I’m toast that I wouldn’t like, and I prefer to maintain my eye on that.

I feel the place it’s actually performs out is in voice actors. You can steal lots. I’ve associates of mine who do Walla Walla work, all of the filling in of background noises. It feels prefer it’s going to only get cataloged and utilized in any method they need. So there’s going to be a giant hit to the business, slowly. But I don’t assume it’s what the grand panic was. I feel that that was simply one of many speaking factors. I feel the larger panic was simply that though there was extra work, and there’s infinitely extra work, you possibly can’t deny that the flexibility to make a residing whereas doing it has develop into trickier and trickier. I feel that the massive elevate in pay scale, it’s a giant deal that’s going to make a giant distinction.

I don’t understand how the pool of cash goes to work. I feel that’s going to be a trickier factor. We had a few concepts as effectively of how you can attempt to fill a few of these buckets with cash, however how do you dispense it? I feel that’s going to be sophisticated, and I feel that’s going to be arduous for the union to determine that out. But I feel they’re in very succesful palms, Fran and all these guys, they know what they’re doing. And I really feel like we’re in a reasonably good place when it comes to all people’s again to work. We’re getting alongside. I fear about what number of exhibits have been canceled and the way few have been picked up. And I really feel like that’s an indication of how a lot harm went via six months of individuals being unemployed.

And I feel after each strike like this, it takes a yr to get again in your ft. And that’s what it feels prefer to me. But I’m additionally fairly optimistic that folks want content material. Actors are actually those which are going to deliver that in and the writers are going to have to put in writing the tales. I perceive AI for Writers is a really completely different factor. If you wish to go to AI and say, okay, write me an idea of All within the Family, however within the model of Shakespeare, AI does it and then you definately usher in any person else to repair it and make it work. But the created by credit score all of the sudden goes away, which is how folks make an excellent residing. So I feel AI for writers is lots trickier, and that’s going to be infinitely extra sophisticated as time goes on. Have you felt that in any respect in your online business?

DEADLINE: Not a lot, however it would take six minutes to have this interview transcribed via an AI program. I suppose it expedites issues, however you want folks in journalism. Hustle, character, skepticism, empathy, judgment, are all human traits.

CLOONEY: I have a look at expertise. I’m the son of a journalist. I fear about tons of issues being too quick and never in a position to be checked, and issues having the ability to be faked and that’s terrifying. Having mentioned all of that, I even have an important admiration and nice fondness and nice perception within the human spirit. And I feel we’ll, as we’ve discovered methods to maneuver ahead, I feel we’re going to proceed to have to do this and discover our method via this mess.

DEADLINE: You and quite a few you’re a-list friends made what I assumed was probably the most beneficiant gesture, providing to uncap the dues you pay to SAG-AFTRA and have them use the cash as a method to assist extra working actors qualify for advantages. Is {that a} standing offer? And why wasn’t it embraced instantly? It was $150 million over three years…

CLOONEY: Fran [Drescher][said that that was against the rules, and there’s some union rules against it. But you adjust things. That wasn’t the only thing. The other thing we talked about was a piece that Ben Affleck had worked on, because he started a company with this idea of paying all the actors back end, creating these sort of buckets of ways of getting to those residual payments that are not really residuals as much as a profit participation. We thought it was a pretty good plan, and would be very helpful.

Fran and the team had other ideas. That’s okay. I mean, we were just trying to help out. We didn’t want to be part of the people sitting on the sidelines. We all gave a million dollars to the SAG Foundation. We all wanted to help out, to make sure that we were part of the solution. And we have direct lines with some of these other people and we wanted to see if there was some shortcut because people get into these arguments, and they stop talking. And the one thing I don’t like is this negotiating tool of people not talking to one another, when there’s a hundred thousand other people who aren’t actors or studio heads, who are losing their homes. And so we just wanted to keep the urgency going. I have no doubt that all of those guys have the exact same feelings, the same sense of urgency. We just felt like if we could be part of the solution, we wanted to be part of the solution. We stood back and said, listen, if you don’t like it or don’t want to do it, fair enough. We are offering ideas. That’s all we could do. It is a union. We are still part of it. And we’ve all been broke unemployed actors for long periods of time in our careers, so we understand what it’s like to struggle. You don’t get to start the clock on us only when things worked out. I had no insurance for nine years, so I know what it’s like to struggle. And so we all wanted to be part of the participation.

DEADLINE: Matthew Perry’s death must have hit you hard. ER and Friends launched the same year. Both Warner Bros, NBC shows, on the same and Thursday night. Each a huge hit.

CLOONEY: We were side by side on the soundstage. We were the 10 o’clock show and we were doing 25% bigger numbers than they were the nine o’clock show. And for the 10 o’clock hour show to be doing those kinds of numbers that quickly? We had 40 million people watching us. It was a real, and hourlong shows tend to peak about year three. It starts to run out of storylines and then you start to repeat ’em a little bit. The show went on for 10 years and there was a lot of really wonderful quality, we were changing the way television was. And then the next show to come in to do that was The Sopranos. There was a big difference in the way we told stories at the speed we were telling it. And then Friends. There’s a thing about really good sitcoms, going back to Jack Benny. The really good sitcoms get better with age. Felix Unger walks into a filthy room and you just start laughing. Once we get to know the characters, it’s situational comedy, so you don’t have to do punchlines anymore. We know them. And all you knew about Jack Benny was that he was cheap and that he was always 39 years old and he was bad at the violin. And anything after that didn’t matter. You could watch it. So half hour shows can really develop into much better shows as they go that our shows have trouble doing for the most part. Shows like The Wire were interesting, they would shake it up, but most of the time, half hour shows are the shows. And Friends, man, that was a fun time to watch those guys. We were all really close. We were at the Upfronts in 1994 in New York.

DEADLINE: That must have been something. Hard to believe next year will be the 30th anniversary.

CLOONEY: They brought us up. They’d picked us up for Thursday night at 10 o’clock, and them up at Thursday night at nine o’clock. Those were the Cradle of Love time slots because Seinfeld was there and we knew it. We all knew it. We knew that that was the time slot that we knew we were going to have a year, anyway, if people liked to show. We were backstage and there were six of them and six of us.

For us, it was Noah Wyle and Tony Edwards and Eriq LaSalle and Sherry Stringfield, and Julianna Margulies, and myself. And for them it was their six and we were all sitting backstage and none of us were stars but Tony Edwards was the most famous person and Courteney Cox. They were the two people who everybody knew, and the rest of us were kind of unknowns. They showed a trailer for both shows. And then we came out on stage. And I remember at that moment thinking, this is a really special moment. It ended up being one of those crazy, I can’t explain it things. Two weeks after we debuted, we were on the cover of Newsweek. Everything changed for us after that.

DEADLINE: Sounds like a little fraternity there, and Matthew was first to die.

CLOONEY: I knew Matt when he was 16 years old. We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid. He was a kid and all he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, was, I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth. And he got on probably one of the best ever. He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him. We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.

DEADLINE: You’d been on so many pilots and short lived shows. How much did that help when success did happen for you?

CLOONEY: Two things, Mike. First is that when the show hit, I’d already been on seven series, seven. I’d done 12 pilots. So I knew when we got Thursday night at 10 for ER…first we were getting Friday night at 10, which is a bad time slot. They gave that to Homicide and switched us at the last minute. They did a test screening. It’s funny because the guys always take credit now for it, but Don Ohlmeyer and Warren Littlefield could not stand the series when they saw it. That’s a true story. They were like, what did you do with our money, our two and a half million dollars? It’s too dark and it’s too fast and no one knows what these words are, and all this stuff. Then they tested it, and then they didn’t believe the testing. So they brought in a Jay Leno audience and tested it again and it tested off the charts.

And then they moved us from Friday to Thursday at 10, and it became what it was, which is we were head to head on Thursday night with CBS with Mandy Patinkin and Chicago Hope. Everybody picked Chicago Hope to just destroy us. They said that they would double us and instead we doubled them. That was one of those crazy flips that almost never happens because their show had Mandy and famous people and we had nobody that was famous. It was just one of those surprising things that don’t happen very often in your life. But when we look back at it, and particularly with the Friends cast who we have this great affinity for because we’re close to them still, is how incredibly lucky we all got.

I was lucky, I was lucky that I’d failed in all those other ones. I wouldn’t have gotten to ER if they were moderately successful, and ER changed my career. That’s not because of my brilliant acting. It is because I was part of something that is a little bit like Boys in the Boat. I was part of a really wonderful team of writers and directors and actors and crew doing something really unique and special. And I knew it immediately and was able to appreciate it. I remember Noah Wyle, we were doing 40 shares and Noah’s like, is that good? And I was like, yeah, that’s good. You can buy that car you want.

I also said, you’ll never have that again, which was true. I didn’t know that all the numbers would change so drastically. I also had another advantage. I had an aunt named Rosemary Clooney, who was a big star. I didn’t really know her very well. She lived in LA and I lived in Kentucky and I had a cousin, Miguel Ferrer, who I was enamored with, but I’d seen him five or six times in my life. He came to Kentucky to do a movie. When I moved to LA I stayed at her house for a period of time, and I really got a good lesson in how little success has to do with you. My aunt was the biggest singer in the business in 1950. And female singers, I think they made up about seven of the top 10 singers at the time.

And then rock and roll came in. She was on the road and she believed it when everybody told her how brilliant she was. And then when she came off the road and she was ready to record again and they’re like, where have you been? And she’s like, what are you talking about? I been working the whole time. But now, rock and roll was a male dominated sport. And she was done. For 20 years she did a lot of drugs and a lot of drinking. She ruined her life for a period of time because she believed the first part where she thought she was brilliant when she was 19, then she had to believe the second part, which told you how she’d lost all her talent. Of course, she didn’t do any of those things. She ended up having an incredible career later as a wonderful jazz singer, but she had to come to terms with all that stuff.

And so I had a good example of what not to buy into. So I know what Matt Perry had, and maybe part of it is what he didn’t. I know his family was in the business, but maybe there wasn’t that thing that said, this is going to go in waves where our careers are concerned. The people who I loved and got to know, Paul Newman and Gregory Pack, they’d always talk about how your career is not as constantly going up. There are down moments, and struggles. And then it comes back up and you got to ride it all out.

DEADLINE: From what I’ve read, he got hooked on several drugs including Vicodin and Oxycontin for an injury on a jet ski. From what we know now about the latter, once you fell into the grip of addiction with that drug, it was very hard to get free. And it was heavily marketed and dispensed so aggressively.

CLOONEY: The Sackler family, who’ve been working their way to get out of it forever, they should actually go straight to fucking jail for the things they did. They paid off everyone and they put people on their board who were at the FDA and they did everything you could do to be part of spreading one of the great killers in our history. We’ve had these horrible, addictive moments going back to morphine after the Civil War. And when a million guys came home with one leg and they were all addicted to morphine, this is that same idea, where they paid people to say it’s not addictive. Are you kidding me?

DEADLINE: A question about streaming series. You did all those series and kept afloat until you hit with ER. We read all these stories about seminal Netflix series like Orange is The New Black, and castmembers saying, oh yeah, I got a residual check and it was $27. Was it a better world for a young actor when you were hustling for the big break than now, where these streamers are vamping and cutting to curry favor with Wall Street and stock value? Back then if you were a hit and went five seasons, chances are you were set with syndication sales and residuals. Now, good shows get scrapped all the time. In this course correction moment, what ought to happen?

CLOONEY: I don’t know because I’m obviously not well enough versed on all of it now. But I remember there used to be a bar in the Valley called Residuals where you could go in and if you had a residuals check for under a dollar, they’d put it up on the wall and give you a free drink. You would always get some really shitty residual checks. I mean, that was part of it, but they were in cycles. When I was doing Facts of Life, let’s say 15 episodes in a year, all of a sudden in the mailbox I’d get 15 checks each for $1,200, which is spectacular. All stacked together. And then the next time you get a check, it’d be for $500, then the next time it’d be for $200, it would go down, but then it would cycle back.

That was a way you could make money to pay for insurance because insurance was really big deal. That’s what it was for me. Now, I don’t know about how Orange Is The New Black worked. The argument is always that from the studio’s point of view, or from the streamer’s point of view, they’re paying more. They’re paying the residual in the front end as opposed to the backend. But I don’t think that that necessarily was fixing the problem. Because part of this is about, what you really need is for money to come through during the lean times. That’s how you can continue your insurance. Maybe it’s a little bit more money in the beginning, but that’ll solve the problem for that year. But then the next three years that you’re not working, you’re not able to help your way through getting insurance.

You have to make a certain amount of money to get the insurance and that price has gone up. It’s a tricky thing and I don’t know what the solutions are for it. Somehow, you’re going to have to figure out how to understand what people are watching, because people watch things for 30 seconds as opposed to watch it all the way through. I always thought that because we are taking so much longer to do an episode of television on those shows, that we should forego the idea of paying per episode on those shows and go back to weeklies, almost like a studio system in that sense. Because if you’re going to work for nine months on seven episodes of television, rather than getting paid seven checks for seven shows, you should be paid for nine months of work. Because when you’re doing 22 episodes for nine months of work, it’s a very different pay scale. It probably wouldn’t be a very popular thing. And I’m sure there’s a million reasons why that’s a bad idea. But I see people really getting messed with. My buddy Richard Kind does series work still, all the time. And he’s like, I’m doing these streaming series now and I am making a third of what I used to make. And it’s not because I’m being paid less, it’s because we’re doing less shows.

DEADLINE: You and Brad Pitt teamed with Spider-Man’s Jon Watts on Wolfs, with Apple paying a big premium for it. All the traditional distributors wanted it and Sony will give it a big theatrical. We seem to have realized that aside from money generated by a theater run for films like Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon, films with P&A spends become stamped as a tangible pop culture thing, which increases the wannasee from streaming customers. The ones that premiere directly on places like Netflix don’t create that kind of awareness. Is this the solution?

CLOONEY: I think that was the mistake that everyone was making. They were like, this is our direct to video thing. Grant and I have a deal over at Warner Brothers. We met with David Zaslov and he was like, look, I think every movie we do that will go to streaming, but we want it released first because there’s an actual benefit in having your movie out, be successful, be promoted. And it actually changes how many people watch it in streaming.

Brad and I made the deal to do that movie where we gave money back to make sure that we had a theatrical release. At the time, that wasn’t as popular an opinion as it has become in the last year and a half now. I think Netflix is considering buying theaters even, I’m not sure. But you look at Oppenheimer and Barbie, and establishing them as massive box office hits makes them massive hits on streaming as well. We made The Boys in the Boat for MGM, but then MGM was bought by Amazon, which means they could have said, okay, well it’s just going on to streaming.

And we were like, don’t do that. We actually put it in the deal when they sold it to Amazon, said, yeah, we’re going to give you a theatrical release. Because first of all, this is a movie you want to see with other people. You don’t want to see it just at home. You can, it’s fine, but at least give it a chance with other people. You also want to see it on a big screen. You want to spend the holidays going out, doing something fun like that. And then after a couple of months, put it out on streaming. It works out fine for everybody.

DEADLINE: It seems the best future course for all these star packaged films that are being snapped up by streamers and studios…

CLOONEY: We’re already talking about a sequel for this film I did with Brad and Jon Watts. It was a great shoot and Jon is an extraordinarily talented guy who’s also really joyful. He loves what he does. We had a blast doing it and we’ve seen it. It’s an off the charts great film and it’s fun to work with Brad again. We had a really good time.

DEADLINE: Last question. You mentioned Richard Kind, and I can’t help but recall that prank you pulled on him when you lived together, he was giving his cat medicine and you took dumps in his cat box and he was sure his feline was dying. When you direct a movie like Boys In The Boat, is there room for a good prank on these young actors?

CLOONEY: Not really. I mean, you don’t have time anymore, you’re so busy on a film like this. Tight schedule and they were training all the time But I have two six year olds, and now I just teach them. I had them putting Nutella on their shoes and they come in to a crowded room and I ask if they’ve stepped in poo., They say, let me see and start eating it. That just brings the house down and they love getting a laugh. My evil thoughts are still alive, I’m just living them vicariously through my two children.