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Film Comment Archive
Film Comment Selects
Cronenberg’s take on the American way
Murrow, McCarthy, and TV before the fall
The J-Word
Plus, an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: An interview with Grant
Heslov
The studio that gave us both Ozu and Oshima
Plus, an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE SIDEBAR
The iconclast’s iconclast
Hollywood’s summer slump explained
A remarriage at gunpoint
The Japanese master rediscovered
Plus, an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: The uncut article
Vietnam flashback
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Tell us about your transition from
actor to writer.
I grew up in Palos Verdes, a suburb
of L.A. I was always interested in acting. When
I was in high school, I started studying with real acting
teachers, and when I graduated, I went to USC to
study theater. I met George in an acting class and
we became friends and have remained close ever since.
While I was in school I got a sitcom, Spencer,
and then just pursued acting for a long time. At
some point I just decided I wanted to direct, and
produce and write and do all that other stuff, so
I made the switch. About four to five years ago,
I started working with George and Steven [Soderbergh].
How did Fail
Safe and George Clooney’s interest in
live TV affect the Good Night’s
inception?
Fail Safe was in a kind of odd way the
genesis of this project. We wanted to do another
live gig. We loved it, thought it was great. The
thing we learned the most from it was if you're going
to do something live there has to be an innate reason
to do it—a ticking clock, some sort of event
that moves it along. Or it can be like watching paint
dry.
About seven or eight years ago, George wrote a TV
movie about Murrow, one much different than what
we did. The story was seen through the eyes of a
page working his way up at CBS. Murrow was idealized,
it was a completely different take. It was for CBS
and didn’t go anywhere. They never made it.
And then as we were thinking about what live TV we
could do, a book was sent to us, To Strike at
a King. It was about Milo Radulovich and that
little piece of that story…
When we looked at the book, we thought that going
back to Murrow and that one-year period when he goes
against McCarthy would be really interesting to do
live, and we decided to try it. So we originally
wrote it as a live piece and took it to CBS, because
that’s the only place to do it. It only made
sense to do it here. But they weren’t up for
it.
Why? Too embarrassing?
No, not too embarrassing at all. You’ve seen
the film. CBS are heroes in my opinion. They allowed
these guys to do what they did…
It’s double–edged…
It is double-edged, but at the end of the day the
stuff got on the air. But CBS was going through their
own crap at that time. The thing about the Reagan
miniseries was happening, when they decided not to
show it and gave it to Showtime. They were not looking
to do anything controversial. Also there was the
Janet Jackson thing and the boob. I think they were
just gun shy. We never had that specific conversation,
this is just me speculating. They could have just
thought the script sucked, for all I know.
At that point, however, we said, Fuck it, let’s
rewrite it and do it as a feature. And we’ll
do it exactly as we want to—film in black-and-white,
cast whoever we want — just do it.
How did K-Street color
what you thought was possible to do?
K-Street was born another
way. Some guys came to us who wanted to do a political
show. What was interesting about the show was a) it
was about politics, which George, Steven, and I are
all interested in, and b) James Carville and Mary
Matalin were attached. Actually it was just James
at the time, Mary wasn’t in yet. They’re
fascinating guys, but we didn’t know them at
that point.
They had an idea for the show that was much different
than what we ended up doing. We talked to Steven
about it and he had his own ideas—doing it
unscripted and using James and Mary as themselves.
HBO said yes, and we went off and did it. Steven
directed that show.
Unscripted was more George and me. We learned
a lot about how to work with actors in a different
way, how to get the most natural performances. And
when George went on to make this film, he used a
lot of it. We saw the film for the first time last
night, contrast corrected and everything, and it
looks beautiful.
With Unscripted we took K Street and
applied it to actors and a version of Hollywood that’s
never been seen before. We wanted to make a show
about what it was like when we were young actors,
and what 99.9% of young actors go through. Even in
George’s success he never lived it the way Entourage shows
it. I only wish we had 20 women on rafts floating
around the pool at four in the morning.
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