The screwball comedy that inspired George Clooney’s comic timing
It’s quite hard to know where to fault George Clooney, which is quite annoying really. Not only does he give a lot of money away to good causes and have pet pigs, but he also says the right things, wears the right things and has appeared in some of the best movies of the last three decades or so.
Aside from being able to summon porcine companionship to his living room on a whim, Clooney also recently showed that his acting chops are by no means limited to the big screen by selling out a Broadway run of his play Good Night, and Good Luck, smashing box office records in the process, grabbing five Tony nominations and bringing in some $4.2million in ticket sales in a single week.
Of course, that’s not to mention he’s not a bad-looking chap either; now in his 60s, he takes on the air of a seasoned star of yesteryear, perhaps a James Stewart or Cary Grant for the 2000s. While Clooney is primarily known for drama and thrillers, his turns in the likes of Michael Clayton, Syriana and Argo are evidence of the gravitas he brings; many of his roles over the years have been shot through with an undercurrent of humour.
And it’s this versatility, the ability Clooney has to be both a convincing straight man and a figure of fun, that has made him such a bankable star. He seems to be able to switch from a romantic comedy, such as in the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty, to breaking hearts as a stranded astronaut in the astonishing Gravity, to smooth-talking bank robber in the Oceans franchise, without any issue, seemingly always putting in a performance that borders on perfection.
When it comes to the more comedic elements of his ever-growing film catalogue, the actor has been clear about his influences, or rather, the greats he admits a degree of theft from. Speaking on how he wanted to successfully bring out the laughs in his 2008 sports comedy Leatherheads, which he directed and starred in, the Kentucky native said: “I stole from Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges in a big way. I stole a scene. Wait, homage. I homaged the s**t out of Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges and early George Stevens. There’s a film called The More the Merrier that we were trying to rip off a lot.”
The Howard Hawks that Clooney refers to is, of course, the legendary filmmaker responsible for classic cinema such as Rio Bravo with John Wayne, The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart, and, more importantly, the hilarious Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn and Carey Grant.
It’s the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby that may well have primarily influenced Clooney. Although it was made as far back as 1938, the jokes and the timing at play in the movie, about a hapless couple on a madcap adventure while plagued by a rogue leopard, stand up perfectly even now. There are genuine laugh-out-loud moments throughout, something the cast also suffered from during the making of the movie: Hepburn and Grant would reportedly constantly break into laughing fits during production.
Clooney certainly has no qualms in bringing that kind of silliness to not only the films he directs but also the roles that he plays. His enduring partnership with the Coen brothers, for instance, in films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Burn After Reading has allowed him to explore that in some detail. Of the latter movie, he said, “I’ve now leaped heads and shoulders over the other idiots I’ve played; this is my trilogy of idiots with the Coen brothers”.
Far from an idiot, however, the actor has shown just how savvy an operator he is over four decades, choosing the right scripts to work with and making his way up from being seen as something of a ‘hunk-for-hire’ in his early TV work to one of the most respected movie-makers in Hollywood.
