How ‘Fail Safe’ became responsible for George Clooney’s two favourite movies: “It’s a dual pick for me”
George Clooney has been a byword for Hollywood for decades, embodying so much of what we love about Tinseltown.
He’s been a part of some truly monumental films, both good and bad, and knows just about everyone there is to know at the very top of the industry, so you could say that his opinion is worth listening to.
He once described It’s a Wonderful Life as the only perfect movie, and when it comes to actors, he’s a big fan of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and other ultra-suave heartthrobs from Hollywood’s glory days, however, when it comes to his all-time top flick, there’s only one answer…actually, make that two.
Speaking to author Cindy Pearlman as part of her book, You Gotta See This: More Than 100 of Hollywood’s Best Reveal and Discuss Their Favourite Films, Clooney refused to pick just one beloved movie because the two films he loves have the same origins.
“It’s a dual pick for me,” he explained, “It’s two that go hand-in-hand, because they’re both from the same book. My favourite films are Dr Strangelove and Fail Safe. They’re just brilliant films that say a lot about the world. They talk about issues of nuclear proliferation. They’re also so brilliantly made. [Sidney] Lumet made one and [Stanley] Kubrick made the other. One is hysterically funny, and the other is terrifying. They’re just beautifully made films. Wait, I already said that, but write it down again, please.”
The book Clooney is referring to is Red Alert by Peter George, also called Two Hours to Doom in some countries, which is about a rogue US Air Force General who launches a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, a plot you might recognise from Kubrick’s much-celebrated farce, but the book takes a decidedly more serious tone when dealing with the threat of nuclear annihilation; however, things are not as straightforward as they seem.
Lumet’s Fail Safe, which was released the very same year as Dr Strangelove, feels like it is also based on Red Alert but in reality, it was inspired by a novel also called Fail-Safe (with a hyphen this time), written by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, whose story was very, very similar to George’s.
Thus, George and Kubrick brought a lawsuit against the authors and the makers of the movie, and while things were settled out of court, this whole affair did serious damage to Fail Safe’s reputation, which is one of the major reasons why you don’t hear much about it these days.
Despite Kubrick’s take on the story being way more popular than Lumet’s, it’s clear that Clooney loves both interpretations equally. He once even fronted a remake of Fail Safe, which was presented as a live television play, and sure, that failed to catch on either, but at least he tried.
