In Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays a movie star in crisis. The star of Ocean’s Eleven, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Michael Clayton takes on the title character, a beloved actor who sets out on a journey of self-discovery, a little late. “If you make a movie about an actor, you’re inherently making a movie about identity and performance,” Baumbach says. “We come to points in our lives where we’ve settled on an idea of ourselves.” For Jay Kelly, that idea is about to be challenged.
In the film, following the loss of his mentor (Jim Broadbent) and an unpleasant encounter with an old friend (Billy Crudup) Jay has an epiphany: All that time spent on movies has left the rest of his life neglected. He travels with his faithful manager Ron (Adam Sandler) from Los Angeles to a film festival in Italy, where he’ll be honored in a tribute — and it’s a journey that has him reexamining his career and relationships, both professional and familial, along the way. “The character has a lot more regrets than I would have,” Clooney continues. “Luckily for me, fame came much later in life. I got to figure out how to live life before I figured out how to be famous. And I don’t think this character did.”
Unlike young hotshot Jay Kelly, Clooney didn’t truly find his sea legs as an actor until he was 33, as a star in television’s ER in the ’90s (he’d started out a decade earlier with a recurring role on the sitcom E/R). He pivoted to film with a series of winning performances, including Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight and Michael Hoffman’s One Fine Day. Since then, Clooney has worked with a number of acclaimed filmmakers multiple times, including Soderbergh, Robert Rodriguez, and the Coen brothers. He’s also won an Oscar (for 2005’s Syriana), transitioned to directing himself (with films including Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and The Midnight Sky), and taken to the stage (in his hit Broadway adaptation of his own film Good Night, and Good Luck).
Jay Kelly is Clooney’s first live-action collaboration with Frances Ha, White Noise, and Marriage Story director Baumbach, who co-wrote the film with BAFTA-nominated actor (Lovely & Amazing, Match Point), writer (Doll & Em), and director (The Pursuit of Love) Emily Mortimer. Clooney had previously voiced the lead role in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which Baumbach co-penned. It didn’t take much convincing for Clooney to join Jay Kelly. “Even before I read it, I was interested because it’s Noah,” Clooney says. “It’s very funny and it’s very touching and I thought it would be fun to do.”
Clooney understood how to portray a character at a crossroads. “He’s coming to terms with the idea that maybe he hasn’t been such a great friend or father,” Clooney says. “He has just been really good at being a movie star.” That’s the contradiction at the heart of Jay Kelly: A movie star has to be himself, but bigger and more intimate at the same time. And when all of that energy is put into creating an onscreen persona, what’s left for real life?
What drew you to Jay Kelly?
George Clooney: First and foremost it’s the director and writer, who happen to be the same guy, Noah. Noah Baumbach is an incredibly gifted, talented man. The script had some beautiful storytelling and some beautiful moments in it. The idea of being able to do a film about a guy who is still kind of an infant out in the world was a really fun idea.
I’ve always felt, again, very lucky that it took such a long time for me, but also it gave me a chance to learn how not to be Jay Kelly in real life.
George Clooney
As an actor, playing an actor, was there something that particularly resonated with you?
Clooney: Noah and I talked about how one of our great pet peeves is how movies that are about making movies can be so inaccurate. So, we really worked to make sure that we were depicting what we do accurately. Then there are all of the other things that come behind the scenes that people don’t often see, although they’re seeing more and more of it because of things like social media. We really wanted to focus on telling the story, giving everybody some idea of being very famous and also not really knowing how to deal with real-life things.
I’ve met some people who got famous really early in life. My aunt was one of them, actually. She was a famous singer. She acted in a couple of movies, like WHITE CHRISTMAS. Because she was so famous at 19 years old, she hadn’t really been in the world long enough, and so, she didn’t handle fame very well, particularly when it started going away. I’ve always felt, again, very lucky that it took such a long time for me, but also it gave me a chance to learn how not to be Jay Kelly in real life.
Jay Kelly (George Clooney)
Jay Kelly (George Clooney) and Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler)
Jay Kelly (George Clooney)
Jay Kelly (George Clooney)
Peter Mountain
Jay Kelly (George Clooney)
Jay Kelly (George Clooney)
Adam Sandler plays Jay’s long-suffering manager, Ron. What was it like working with Adam?
Clooney: Adam and I have been friends for 25 years or so. I really like him. We play basketball together, throw a baseball around. He’s really funny and he’s got a great family. But I think sometimes what gets overlooked with Adam is his skill as an actor. Sometimes it’s because he does big funny movies that people don’t think require the kind of talent that it actually requires. This is a movie that continues to expose his talent. He’s done some films that have proven that over the years and everybody sees it, but it always kind of gets dismissed. And he likes that, by the way. He likes to sort of downplay it. But what he does in this film is extraordinary. It’s a great character. He plays my manager and he has to sort of work at Jay Kelly’s pace all the time. It’s demeaning at times, and exhausting, and he does it beautifully.
Noah is one of those sort of savants. He knows exactly what he wants.
George Clooney
How would you describe your first experience being directed by Noah Baumbach? As a director yourself, how would you sum up his style?
Clooney: Noah is one of those sort of savants. He knows exactly what he wants. He’s a really good storyteller and I really enjoy being directed by him. I like his ideas and I like how this is a different film for him in a lot of ways. It’s a bigger scale film, cinematically, though almost all of the things we’re shooting are in-camera instead of visual effects.
When you see these transitions to memories that go from a plane to an acting class, there’s actually a plane built and an acting class built on top of it. I did a film called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind that way, so, I really can appreciate the idea of having all of these things play in one shot. The opening shot is a 10-page oner with 30 actors, and it’s really exciting. So, visually, it’s going to be really quite something and a real departure.
Emily Mortimer co-wrote the script. What was it like working with her?
Clooney: When I first got the script, there was no cover page. And so I didn’t know that she was a co-writer. I came to rehearsals and I was like, what is Emily doing here? It’s fun when it’s actors who are writing, because some of the things that she writes about, I really recognize, being an actor. It’s really fun to see her put that to paper, or to a computer, I suppose (I still use paper). But look, what a talent, my God. She’s directing a film [Dennis], she can write, she’s an extraordinary actor as well.
Baumbach is known for assembling incredible ensembles. Can you talk a little about the rest of the cast?
Clooney: I first worked with Laura in 1984, 40 years ago, doing my first film. We were in Budapest doing a movie called GRIZZLY II, which was financed by this Hungarian group. It was literally communist Hungary at the time, and they ran out of money and got stuck in Hungary. Laura and I got to be very close friends and spend time together. The movie never came out for 40 years. A few years ago, somebody got some money together and released it. We get eaten by a bear in the first scene, and now it’s, like, “Laura Dern and George Clooney’s starring in…,” and they put a movie together. It’s just God-awful. So, it’s really fun to just spend time with her and to work with her.
Billy Crudup and I have been friends. I’ve been watching him. He’s so good in everything. I remember seeing him on Broadway, and he’s just a very special, gifted actor. We have so many wonderful actors that we get to work with and laugh with. Riley Keough is just an elegant, talented actress. She’s very unassuming and you don’t understand how good she is. Grace Edwards, who plays my youngest daughter, is really good. Patrick Wilson and Isla Fisher I’ve been friends with for 20-some years. Patrick is one of those actors, every time he’s in something, he’s good. Stacy Keach, my God, he is really exciting. If you aren’t aware of how long he’s been doing it and how many credits, just look him up on IMDb. He’s really sweet and funny. The cast is spectacular and fun.
When you work in my industry, what you’re really hoping to do is buy somebody two hours away from the things that make them crazy: work, family, anything.
George Clooney
It’s a well-known fact that you’re a big fan of Italy. What’s it like filming there again?
Clooney: We have a home in Lake Como and we were [filming Jay Kelly] in Milan, which is about an hour drive away, so everybody stayed there for a little bit. I love shooting in Italy. It’s my favorite place to be. I’ve shot tons of movies and TV series and Nespresso commercials there. When I bought the house in Italy, the first night I got there, I looked out the window in the town, and there were these construction workers walking home, and they had [on], like, those orange vests and no shirt, gut out to here, but they had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine and they were singing.
America is a young country, and we’re in a hurry all the time. We live to work and Italians often work to live — not everybody, obviously. That’s why I stayed there and why I continued to go back. There’s a celebration of life, in a way that we could learn from in the States. We’re always in a hurry to get to the next destination. And the theme of this film is, you know, you’re gonna get to that next destination and you’re gonna be in a hurry to get to the next one. And days turn into months and months turn into years.
What is it that you hope audiences will enjoy most about this film?
Clooney: When you work in my industry, what you’re really hoping to do is buy somebody two hours away from the things that make them crazy: work, family, anything. And so this hopefully is a diversion for a couple hours that does that. And if that’s what we do, then we’ve succeeded massively at doing our job.
This feature originally appeared in Issue 22 of Tudum Magazine.
