The King of cruel

By LESLIE FELPERIN

Before he's even sat down to our interview in Venice to talk about his new film Intolerable Cruelty, George Clooney is smacking his hands together, ready for action. "Who are we gonna talk bad about first? Let's start off with someone," he chirps, settling his houndstooth-suited figure into a chair.

I suggest Bill Murray, since the word is already out on the Lido that the two were out partying together last night. Clooney isn't much up for dissing Murray, though. They had too much fun together racing wheelchairs around the Hotel Cipriani after a few too many bellinis.

He may appear to be the embodiment of laid-back charm, the last international jet-set playboy, but I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of George Clooney. Twenty-four hours earlier, for example, despite just been "married" in a mock ceremony to an Italian journalist, the jolly mood was broken when Clooney snapped at someone during a press conference because he'd been asked why the film is being called a "work in progress". This, after the journalist had opined that the film is the Coens' "least personal and least referential film".

Barely concealing his irritation with the interlocutor for "craftily burying a question in an insult", Clooney explained through gritted teeth that the film - a deliciously tight-wound screwball comedy in which he plays a divorce lawyer who falls for Catherine Zeta Jones' professional gold-digger - will have two more scenes cut into it soon. "Next," he called. The cowed room of journalists went back to asking just how much he loves living in Italy, where he owns a villa on Lake Como, and so on.

Still, even Clooney admits that there's a lot riding on this film for him, given that his last two movies, his directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, were both flops. Does he see Intolerable Cruelty as the Coens' crack at the mainstream?

"When I did Out of Sight with Steven Soderbergh, it was seen as Steven selling out and going mainstream, and when I did O Brother, Where Art Thou? with the Coens it was seen as them selling out and going mainstream," Clooney says with a wry smile.

"So I guess it's really me that's the mainstream part of it. Maybe this is a mainstream film, and I'm thrilled to be getting the chance to do it, but I haven't had much luck in the mainstream lately anyway."

Look back over his CV and this self-deprecating assertion is partly borne out. Despite being constantly name-checked as the ultimate target of female lust, few movies Clooney has starred in have been financial smashes, apart from The Perfect Storm and Ocean's Eleven. Notoriously, his most mainstream film, Batman & Robin, was the least successful entry in that franchise.

Thereafter, Clooney turned largely to lower-budgeted, more provocative work, such as the Gulf War film, Three Kings, Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, and the films he's made with Soderbergh. In addition, he's been generous with his cameos for friends, wheeling in briefly for Welcome to Collinwood as a paraplegic safe-cracker, and breezing through two of the Spy Kids movies as a spymaster. Meanwhile, with the production company he created with Soderbergh, Section 8, he's had credits with such estimable works as Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven and Christopher Nolan's Insomnia.

Why should he need the mainstream when he does such good work outside it?

Clooney wants to be challenged and work with the best, and the Coens are right up there for him. "They're one of the few unique voices out there that are consistently pushing the envelope and consistently doing things that surprise," he says.

"Over a period of 20 years, if you hold up the films they've done, it's a pretty amazing record. People say, 'Their worst film is ... ', but their worst film is better than almost everybody else's best. They love what they do. Also, if you spend a lot of time with them, they're fun and nice guys. You get to a point where you wanna work with people like that. I don't wanna work with jerks, I don't wanna work with angry people. It's no fun."

They seem to bring out a certain energy in him, I suggest. "Yeah, but it's more about a licence to try stuff because, look, I wouldn't do what I did in O Brother for very many directors," he admits, alluding to the Clark Gable-esque buffoon he played in the Coens' previous movie.

"It was a scary thing to do, I have to tell you. No one was really willing to let me do that, or think that I should do that. And Ethan said, [goofy voice] 'Why don't ya try it? Let's do it!' It's much braver to do that kind of thing for a first-time director, however. That's why I was shocked when Sam Rockwell did the things he did for me in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I wouldn't have done those same things for me! But the Coens open up the door for you. You feel a lot more confident."

Clearly, it still pains him that Confessions, his surreal semi-biopic of TV presenter Chuck Barris, who claimed he was a CIA agent, didn't do well either financially or critically.

He trots out more or less the same quote he gave in a Vanity Fair interview about how it particularly stung him that critics implied it was Soderbergh who really directed it, and recounts once more how he sent a stroppy letter to the Washington Post insisting that it was all his own work and put "Letter Actually Written By Steven Soderbergh" at the end as a joke.

Asked about why Confessions flopped, he says, a little wistfully: "I know many of the reasons why it didn't work, and I never expected it to be a commercial hit. But I do feel that if we're going to survive, we're going to have to find a way to get back to real storytelling."

Has his experience as a director influenced his acting? "I don't like directors any more!" he laughs. "Um, I've learned a lot, but they're the same lessons I was learning as an actor: it's about the ensemble, it's about the script, it's about working for the director, not your own character," he says. "I always talk about my Aunt Rosemary as a singer, because as she got older she said she was a better singer, even though she couldn't hold the notes, couldn't hit the notes.

I asked her, 'So why are you a better singer then?' She said, 'Because I don't have to prove I can sing.' It's a really good acting lesson, too: stop trying to swing for the fences in every scene - serve the piece. It was a really good lesson as a director, watching other actors come in and say, 'I'm delivering pizza in this scene, but the reason my character is doing it is because my parents were alcoholics.' I'd say, 'Great. Do that. Whatever. I just need pizza in this scene'."

Doubters might nitpick that there's no great depth to his character in Intolerable Cruelty, but it is an impeccable display of actorly simplicity and razor-sharp timing.

Our time is almost up, so I ask him what makes him laugh.

"Da Ali G Show cracks me up, and South Park still makes me laugh out loud. Anything on Comedy Central, and the news show there is brilliant. John Daly just did a debate there using videotape with Governor George Bush versus President George Bush. He'd ask, 'What do you think about going into the Middle East?' As governor, he'd say, 'We should stay out of it, we're not an occupying people.' And then, as president, he's saying, 'We gotta get in there.' It's hysterical."

He cracks up at the recollection. Clooney definitely has a wicked side, but you're glad it's directed at the right people.

- INDEPENDENT

* Intolerable Cruelty is released on October 23.