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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
As "The Perfect Storm" bears down on the box office, George Clooney tries to prove -- yet again -- that he's an A-list star
Jun 29, 2000 | WANTED: HOLLYWOOD LEADING MAN. LATE '30S/EARLY '40S. MAINSTREAM GOOD LOOKS. ABLE TO GO FROM ROMANTIC COMEDY TO MACHO ACTION. GENIAL OFF-SCREEN PRESENCE PREFERRED. FAMILIAR LAST NAME A PLUS. PREVIOUS ABOVE-THE-TITLE ACTING EXPERIENCE NOT NECESSARY. SALARY: HIGHLY NEGOTIABLE.
If George Clooney didn't exist, Hollywood would have invented him. Come to think of it, Hollywood more or less did.
Faced with a serious shortage of leading men, the movie industry drafted Clooney -- previous credit: People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive circa 1997 -- to fill the bill. This weekend, his star appeal gets its biggest test yet as Warner Brothers' $140 million "The Perfect Storm" makes its way into port with Clooney at the helm.
A bad wind is already blowing.
Director Wolfgang Petersen's computer graphics-augmented take on Sebastian Junger's bestselling account isn't facing an easy cruise. Petersen's film -- call it "Das Fishing Boot" -- will be racing headlong into Mel Gibson's latest opus, "The Patriot," a Revolutionary War flag-waver that opened yesterday.
Daily Variety foresaw bloody, mano-a-mano combat: "Both films have weak spots. With 'Storm,' it's clearly Clooney, who is no Mel Gibson at the B.O." Clooney tacitly admitted as much last week when, in a shrewd bit of expectations-spinning, he confessed to CNN's "Showbiz Today": "We'll get beat by 'Patriot' the first week. It's Mel Gibson, you know, I mean - that's OK. It's also supposed to be a good film. But I think we'll stick around awhile. We've got good legs."
Before you shout "Man overboard!" consider the fact that a mere six years ago, the affable Clooney was nothing but a 33-year-old journeyman TV actor, the kind of guy who lived for pilot season, when the casting couch fills with handsome hunks for all those cop/doc/lawyer shows that the networks churn out every season.
After a decade of bouncing from show to show ("Roseanne," "The Facts of Life," "Sisters") Clooney finally got lucky. Forced to decide between a couple of projects, he picked "ER"; the doctor thing proved an immediate hit, and Clooney got to play sexy Ben Casey opposite Anthony Edwards' stolid Dr. Kildare. Rosemary's nephew became a TV star.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood stud farm was facing a thoroughbred shortage. Once-invincible international action stars like Arnold and Sly were beginning to run out of steam. Established brands like Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas were pushing 50 -- and beyond. A number of actors in their 40s who were expected to take their place -- Jeff Bridges, Dennis Quaid -- had peaked too soon; suffering one flop too many, they'd been barred from the A list. And though a new generation of romantic boy-men like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were coming into their own, they still hadn't quite graduated from callow-youth parts to full-fledged grownup characters. That left just a handful of all-purpose, bona-fide stars -- Gibson, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner (and to a lesser extent Nicolas Cage and Denzel Washington) -- shouldering the weight. This elite group could hardly meet the demand for seasoned actors with proven box-office track records ready and willing to take on mature roles.
So when the pinup magazines took a shine to that new doc on "ER," Hollywood was only too happy to take a flyer, hoping to groom him into a genuine film star. Unwilling to follow in the footsteps of David Caruso -- who traded one season on "NYPD Blue" for belly-up failure in movies like "Kiss of Death" and "Jade" and wound up as a "South Park" punch line -- Clooney kept his day job while testing the movie waters during his TV hiatuses. His first foray, director Robert Rodriguez's vampire slash-fest "From Dusk to Dawn," was a minor hit, grossing $26 million for Miramax's low-rent Dimension label.
