George Clooney

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is an actor. He's one of Hollywood's biggest stars. Films such as The Three Kings, The Perfect Storm, and Ocean's Eleven have in the last few years put him at the very top of the tree.

Presenter0:40

Well connected, his father was a television presenter, his aunt a famous singer, he moved to California to try his hand in the entertainment business. It nearly didn't happen. And even when after a long apprenticeship and some terrible parts he emerged as Doctor Doug Ross in ER, the final transfer from small to big screen proved tough. In the end though, versatility, good looks, and an ability to take risks have won through. He's also just made his directorial debut with a film called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Presenter1:12

I'm much more successful than I ever thought I'd be, he says. It's harder to be nice when things are going badly. That's when you find out if you have any character. He is George Clooney. So now you're nice all the time, George, aren't you?

George Clooney1:26

That's right, now I'm just nothing but nice.

Presenter1:29

And did you discover you had character?

George Clooney1:31

No, but I'm at the point now where I can actually buy character. I mean I think that works out really well for me.

Presenter1:37

But did you have character? Did you discover you had character when you were doing such terrible things? People always, I know, confront you with these things. Revenge of the what, tomato?

George Clooney1:45

Venge of the Killer Tomatoes. That gives you character, by the way. What gives you character?

George Clooney1:50

Well what does give you character is the fact that they'll rerun it every once in a while. You have to apologize to send out letters of apology to pretty much everyone.

Presenter1:58

But there were some terrible parts, and I'd like to talk about more of them later.

George Clooney2:01

Okay, thanks. That'll get me some character.

Presenter2:03

But when ER came along, when that part was offered, mid nineties, did you spot it for what it was? Did you realize this is the one that's going to make me?

George Clooney2:12

The minute that we got the Thursday night at ten o'clock on NBC, I knew we'd we had a hit show. I knew we had a seven-year show.

Presenter2:19

A seven-year show.

George Clooney2:21

Sure, uh there'd only been two shows in that time slot in twenty years.

Presenter2:24

Mm.

George Clooney2:25

Before that, Hill Street Blues and uh LA Law.

Presenter2:28

But did you think you had the right part?'Cause of course y you ended up being Doug Ross, as I say, the the the heavy drinking womanizer. You wanted to be the nice guy, didn't you, Mark?

George Clooney2:37

Well yeah, I did, I auditioned for Mark. No, it was interesting, you know, when you see the pilot, I'm in five scenes. I mean, it's really the s by far the smallest part. I d I didn't care. I gotten to the point where I realized that I wanted to be in good projects and I didn't care w the size of the part. I just thought being it you it's never harmful to be in a good film or to be in a good television show.

Presenter2:51

Just

Presenter2:58

The problem, of course, was not that all the women of the Western world fell in love with you, and some men do.

Presenter3:06

But that everybody thought you were this person, this heavy drinking woman I saw.

George Clooney3:10

Well, you know the funniest thing is

Presenter3:10

Uh

George Clooney3:12

In the opening scene in the pilot I come in drunk.

George Clooney3:15

And I in the pilot I try to pick up my three different women.

George Clooney3:20

After that,

George Clooney3:21

I didn't I don't believe there was ever another scene where I was drunk in the whole in five years of doing it. But it's whatever you sort of get you know, whatever your first scene is, is pretty much what you are. So he was the

Presenter3:31

It's everybody's fantasy, you see, that's what it is.

George Clooney3:33

Yeah, that well it was mine. I liked it and it was fun.

Presenter3:33

Oh, please.

Presenter3:35

This is a fantasy. There are there are no women and no alcohol on this desert island we're sending to you as far as we know. So that's what I hear. But there is your music. What's the first disc that you'd like to play on it and why?

George Clooney3:41

That's what I hear.

George Clooney3:47

Well, I thought if I'm going to be on a desert island I should have uh Hank Williams I'm salon so I could cry just so I could feel sorry for myself while I'm sitting on an island.

Speaker 43:58

Will the sea robin

Speaker 44:04

When leaves began to die

Speaker 44:10

Like me, he's lost. No will to live. I'm so lone, somebody could

Presenter4:20

Crane

Presenter4:23

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, written and sung by Hank Williams. And that's George Clooney's first disc that he'd play on his desert island. You were familiar, of course, George, with kind of small time fame, as opposed to what you have now when you were a little boy, because your dad was a television personality in Kentucky, wasn't he?

George Clooney4:40

Yeah, he he had an interesting life, my father. He's he's still alive, he's still working, he writes for uh he has a syndicated column in about a hundred cities.

Presenter4:47

So he's a workaholic like his son is.

George Clooney4:48

He is. Oh, he at one point he had five full-time jobs at the same time. That sounds like uh impossible, but he was doing a 6 to 10 a.m. radio show. He was doing an 11:30 variety show from 11:30 to 12:30. He did the 3.30 money movie. On Mondays, he would fly to New York, and he would do five episodes a day of a game show called The Money Maze. And he was doing a play called Barefoot in the Park at night. Great play.

Presenter5:14

Great play.

George Clooney5:15

Yeah, it's a great play and he was

Presenter5:16

But what was this show he was doing when you were a little boy and you were on it?

George Clooney5:20

Well, he had the Nick Clooney show. We worked, it was a live T V show, and we would every day be on the show. And, you know, if we were doing commercials, we'd do commercials and it would be for Hussman's potato chips. And I'd, you know, put on an outfit and my dad'd interview me about Hussman's potato chips. Or if it was St. Patrick's Day, I'd put a leprechaun outfit with a cigar, and my dad would say, This is a big day for you, is and I'd be yes, oh, it's a big day. Easter, I'd be in an Easter bunny outfit. It didn't matter. It was Christmas, I was an elf, you know.

George Clooney5:50

If it had been left out.

Presenter5:51

But what about at school? You must have been teased something wrong.

George Clooney5:54

Sure, it w because we moved around so much. It was sort of Gulliver's Travels and you could reinvent yourself each time. So I would go from being the smart kid to being the athlete to being the dumb kid. It didn't matter. You could sort of you could pick what what you wanted to be really.

Presenter6:09

But the children of famous people get a lot of stick.

George Clooney6:12

Yeah, you do. It depends. You always get a lot of attention and that's y you know, my sister didn't like it and I was okay with it. I understood how to handle it. I knew that if I made jokes about it, I'd be okay.

Presenter6:25

But you also must have understood the roller coaster life of being famous because of course there was one point when you were quite small, I think, that that his show was just dropped overnight. He was unemployed, wasn't it?

George Clooney6:25

Yeah.

George Clooney6:35

Well, he it's actually he dropped the show. They came to him and asked him to get rid of the band who were all of his friends and were working for him and the singers. There were singers on the show and changed the s the format of the show. And he said that he had a responsibility to these people and he wouldn't do it. So he pulled the show and then was banned from working for a year within a hundred mile radius. And he fought it and won with like two weeks left. And he went back to work. So we had a year of unemployment that was really tough because we ended up moving into a trailer and living sort of a very you know it was it was a difficult time because my father was always very good at taking care of the family. And I think that was a tough time for him.

Presenter7:13

Die.

Presenter7:14

Tell me about record number two.

George Clooney7:14

Tell me about records.

George Clooney7:15

Record number two, I think I went for oh, I went Pink Floyd Breaking the Wall. You know, you can't go wrong with Pink Floyd, and why not have a bunch of people singing so that you feel as if you're not alone on the island?

Speaker 47:27

To leave their kids alone

Speaker 47:37

Yeah.

Speaker 47:38

Teacher!

Speaker 47:39

Believe in kids of old

Speaker 47:46

All in all, it's just a metal brick in the wall.

Presenter7:54

Pink Floyd and Brick in the Wall. So eventually you went to university to study journalism, but as I understand it, you just didn't. I mean, you didn't study anything.

George Clooney8:02

I pretty much didn't study. Yeah, I tha you know, because I was raised in a really strict household, the the minute I got away to fr to school, I was just thrilled to be out of the house. And I, you know, I was out living the life very quickly, which was fun. It was probably my greatest learning experience. Journalism was the the only class that I stuck it out because I thought I was going to be a news reporter like my father started out. That's sort of the great thing about my father is he started out as a news reporter. He ended up then for about an eight-year span having a variety show in that sort of time when variety shows were very big. And then he did almost the impossible, which was reinvent himself, to becoming a really good news presenter again.

Presenter8:46

And he made it big then in Cincinnati, didn't he?

George Clooney8:48

Huge, yeah, he was the biggest by far.

Presenter8:50

Is is that in you then? Is that determination, you know, even when the chips are down? Do you feel that's in you or are you as quite often the kids of such parents are, you know, a a bit softer than that, and haven't quite got that drive?

George Clooney9:04

Well, I wi I have that drive. I don't think I have the integrity my father had. You know, my father lost

George Clooney9:09

Most of his jobs over the years because he held people to stand by the letter of their word. And I worked very hard to do that myself, but I will fall short that mark.

Presenter9:23

Does he think you fall short of the ma

George Clooney9:24

No. I don't think so.

Presenter9:25

What does he think of you these days?

George Clooney9:27

We've become really great allies. We we're both sort of hopelessly liberal Democrats and politically sort of active. And it's very fun. You know, I'd say twice a week we're on the phone for about two hours sort of rehashing things that are happening in life. And he's certainly the touchstone whenever you know, I I got in some trouble in the States a couple of months ago because I went after the Bush war policy and I was getting killed by the the sort of the right wing radio and television, really killed, you know.

George Clooney9:59

Beaten up really badly'cause of course it's not the time to talk about that. And so I always have to make sure I'm doing the right thing. I called my dad up and we talked for a couple of hours and

Presenter10:07

And what did he say? You should shut up, that you were a hard star and he said, no, my dad.

George Clooney10:09

Oh, no, no. No, my dad's the guy that says, don't come back and look me in the eye if you don't say something. You know, his is, when we were kids, very, you know, Kentucky was very sort of, it was only, you know, I was born in 1961, so we weren't really all that far ahead of having black and white drinking fountains. You know, it was really segregated. We'd go to dinners with my father. You know, people always, he'd go to some function or some dinner. And the minute that anything would lean towards any kind of bigotry at the table, my sister and I knew that we had to start woofing down the food as fast as we could because my dad was going to make a scene and leave.

Presenter10:46

But it when you made Three Kings, which of course was was made about the Gulf War, ninety nine ninety one Gulf War, and that was extremely um critical of the American regime, wasn't it? Saying what a ridiculous position they put these boys in out there. Presumably he he approved of that.

George Clooney11:03

Of the sh

Presenter11:04

What now then? What do you feel now about did you join the Peace March in London?

George Clooney11:08

I was in Berlin. I got to march with the Br in Berlin.

Presenter11:10

Yeah.

George Clooney11:11

It was an amazingly different feeling because there is a difference when people are marching in praise of their government stance as opposed to trying to fight against it. There was a real joy, and it wasn't just about the fact that they were all showing up, but they were proud of sort of their the stance of their government. It's really interesting. I mean, look, my dad.

George Clooney11:31

You know, is proud when I stand up and talk about things that people don't talk about. I think it's important to right now.

Presenter11:38

Which Hollywood stars do they normally do?

George Clooney11:41

The administration did a very smart thing. First of all, trying to tie September 11th to Hussein is to say it's a stretch is an understatement. But it was a smart thing. And then to stand up and say you're either with the administration or you're with the enemy.

George Clooney11:57

Which works directly opposite of the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of dissent. It's the founding principle, and it's not just your right, but your patriotic duty to question the actions of your government. So it's become a very difficult time for us because anyone who speaks up gets, you know, there's a sort of a blacklist going on right now, or a very quiet blacklist. I don't think so. I think that we don't unify quite like that anymore. We have trouble putting together Peace March. So I don't think a blacklist is a really viable thing anymore.

Presenter12:20

And you're on it.

Presenter12:36

Record number three, two

George Clooney12:37

Record number 3-0, Dinah Washington, Destination Moon. I love the song, I love Dinah Washington. You just have to have Dinah on a deserted islander.

Speaker 412:48

Take a trip in my rocket ship.

Speaker 412:52

We'll have a lovely afternoon.

Speaker 412:55

Kiss the world goodbye

Speaker 412:58

And away we'll fly destination moon

Speaker 413:03

We'll travel fast as light till we're out of sight. The earth will be like the toy balloon.

Speaker 413:11

What a thrill you get riding on my jet

Speaker 413:15

A destination move.

Presenter13:18

Dinah Washington and Destination Moon. Um it seems to me you've had this rather checkered career all through the eighties in t I mean, w okay, what was the worst part apart from the tomatoes, what was the worst part?

George Clooney13:29

I did a show called Sunset Beat where I played an undercover cop on a Harley during the day and a rock star at night.

George Clooney13:37

That's a script I should have read before I

Presenter13:39

Took the job. You do read them now though.

George Clooney13:41

Oh yeah. And after Batman and Robin for films was when I really realized that if I was going to be the guy that was going to greenlight a film, get it made, that I had a responsibility not just to the role and to getting a job, but to get the films that I thought were proper to get made.

Presenter13:58

So we're not going to see Batman and Robin Two.

George Clooney14:01

Well, you know, if uh every movie I do tanks for the next couple of months, yeah.

George Clooney14:07

I don't know, I've I've destroyed that franchise, I believe.

Presenter14:09

Yeah, you you hope not, huh?

George Clooney14:10

Yeah.

George Clooney14:12

Oh, I hope I have destroyed certain franchises you should destroy.

Presenter14:16

You getting back to this workaholic thing, it seems to me when you did ER, which you did for five years, you honoured your contract, although you started to make it big. It was a full-time job, but during the whole of that time you made eight feature films. Now, I mean, was this sounds like escapism of some kind.

George Clooney14:32

That's exactly what it was. Escaping from what? Exactly. My past. My bad television past.

Presenter14:34

Escaping from what? Exactly.

George Clooney14:40

I needed to sort of start to establish films while I was doing a T V series if I was going to hope to go past that point. And I realized that it was a perfect time for me. I was thirty three years old. I was in the right age to start to be, you know, a little bit older leading man.

Presenter14:59

And you did you did several movies, but it seems, looking at your career, would you agree with this, that it wasn't until you did Out of Sight with Jennifer Lopez that somehow, although you'd done a film with Michel Pfeiffer and with Nicol Kignon before,

Presenter15:12

Somehow that was the one, 1998, wasn't it, when it all began to take off. Now, why was that? You must have analysed it.

George Clooney15:19

It's so hard to find a really well written part.

George Clooney15:22

This film came around. I read the screenplay. I thought it was beautiful. When Steven was attached later as a director, that seemed like the great choice. Stephen Soderbergh.

Speaker 215:30

Stephen Soderbergh.

George Clooney15:31

The surprising thing is that

George Clooney15:34

I always thought that when I got to the position I'm in right now, that the scripts that you would get are just.

George Clooney15:40

j they're j they're all great. And the truth is I read, you know, six or seven scripts a week still to this day. And I read maybe a script a year that I'd like to do, two at the at best.

Presenter15:52

Really?

George Clooney15:53

There really aren't very many.

Presenter15:54

You said that's because Hollywood kills scriptwriters.

George Clooney15:57

Because they don't write screenplays out of love anymore. They write them out of development deals. The problem is that that it ends up being sort of a a pasteurization of a story that they would have told, and that takes all of the the life out of it.

Presenter16:11

Yes. Until someone like you comes along and I want to talk to you about I think what's now called actor power'cause that can change all of that. We'll talk about it in a minute. Tell me about your fourth record.

George Clooney16:20

You know, you gotta have a classic in there, and I I went for Frank Sinatra singing nice and easy,'cause if you're stuck on an island, you've got to have a little Frank.

Speaker 416:27

Let's take it nice and easy.

Speaker 416:32

It's gonna be so easy for us to fall in love.

Speaker 416:45

Hey baby, what's your hurry?

Speaker 416:49

Relax and don't you worry

Speaker 416:54

We're gonna fall

Presenter16:57

Frank Sinatra and Nice and Easy does it all the time.

Presenter17:01

M

Presenter17:02

I mentioned actor power. Isn't that what your and people like you are now wielding in Hollywood? I mean, aren't you in many ways forcing Hollywood to brain up?

George Clooney17:12

Well, we go through periods of time where we dumb down. I mean, we've gone through one that was very much recently about just spoon feeding the entertainment. People and the audiences really eat it up.

George Clooney17:25

But

Presenter17:26

And and by that you mean do you

Presenter17:28

Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger making more and more and more of the same.

George Clooney17:34

Well, you realize that either you're going to be responsible for this or it will eat you alive. I mean, the problem is, of course, Sylvester is having a difficult time doing anything else. Now, if he had quit after the first Rocky and he wins the Oscar, he's a hero. And so the problem is finding some place to go from that point.

Presenter17:52

So timing is important, knowing when to

George Clooney17:54

Well, it's always important.

George Clooney17:57

You have to understand that no one's encouraging any actor to do what we're doing. No agents, no lawyers, no one, because we're not making money.

Presenter18:07

Indeed, on the contrary, you're losing money. I mean, as I understand it, you've given a lot of money back in order to get films finished over the years.

George Clooney18:09

Well we lost it.

George Clooney18:13

We've actually, you know, but then again, I made a lot of money on Oceans Eleven because it was all back end and the movie made money, so I made a lot of money.

Presenter18:20

Yes, but it was a gamble and you persuaded all those other guys, didn't you? Brad Pitt and Matt Damon and Robert St to do the same.

George Clooney18:24

You should have

George Clooney18:25

Right. And the gamble is of course that those films may very well not do well and you have to do probably one in about five has to really do well or you can

Presenter18:34

But you know, the audience has some say in this as well, and maybe now the audience is getting more what it wants. I mean, th it it really got American beauty up there, didn't it? Which was a kind of a bit of a turning point.

George Clooney18:34

Ready?

George Clooney18:43

Yeah.

George Clooney18:45

It was a it was a turning point because it was also a studio film. And if you look at the films that I've done inside the studio system, Out of Sight is not your typical studio film by any means, especially the way it was shot. Uh Three Kings is certainly not a typical Warner Brothers film. Oh, Brother isn't uh is doesn't f fill into the typical studio film.

Presenter19:03

So you didn't even take a fee on O'Brother, did you?

George Clooney19:05

No. Well, I mean, a hundred and twenty five thousand bucks, so that's more money than most people make. So yes, I did, but not the kind of money that I

Presenter19:12

And gave half of your feedback on Three Kings, I think, in order to get away from the past.

George Clooney19:14

Three kings they gave exactly halfback, yeah.

Presenter19:17

Yeah.

George Clooney19:18

But the reason is because those films won't be made otherwise. So it's an interesting sort of battle.

Presenter19:23

And it's different. This hasn't happened before, has it?

George Clooney19:25

Well, it has in a way. You know, Jimmy Stewart took a percentage and Betty Davis took a percentage, and they were people who were smart about getting films made. But it is coming back around again. And the good news is that

George Clooney19:38

With the success of some of the films that Stephen and I have had over the last couple of years, it's starting to get more attractive to people to make them like that.

Presenter19:48

Echo number five.

George Clooney19:48

Yeah. Well, see, the thing is, I'm a big Bobby Darren fan. And I was going through all of the Bobby Darren songs that I really love. And Mac the Knife just plays over and over again. I love it, but I've heard it a million times. And there's some really obscure ones.

Presenter20:01

This is your father's influence in it.

George Clooney20:03

Well, not really. This is even this was sort of a little bit of Rosemary, but my friends and I all listened to Bobby because he could do anything. He'd sing rock and roll like splish splash and then he'd sing great old standards. But Artificial Flowers is sort of the most overproduced song you've ever heard in your life. You know, this was a huge, huge hit in the States in the 60s. And it's one of those songs where no one actually really listened to the words. They just loved the tune so much.

Speaker 420:30

With paper and sheets, with some wire and wax.

Speaker 420:36

She made up each tulip and mine.

Speaker 420:40

As snowflakes drifted into a tennis room.

Speaker 420:47

Her baby little fingers grew numb from making artificial flowers.

Presenter20:55

That was Artificial Flowers sung by Bobby Darron and I have to say, it's a terrible song, did you?

Speaker 421:01

I just love it.

George Clooney21:01

Yeah.

Presenter21:03

It's mortgage and awful depressive on this, does it either?

Speaker 421:03

Kills him in

George Clooney21:03

Uh

Speaker 421:04

Oh, it's awful. Press you on

Speaker 421:07

You did something.

Presenter21:08

So let's come to two of the films that you've now made through your own company, one way or another. The first one, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, based on the bizarre autobiography of Chuck Barris, who invented what we call actually Blind Date, not the dating game, and The Gong Show, didn't he? Who it turns out that's his day job, and by night he's a CIA hitman. Can this be true? Well, he says it is. It is a great story.

Presenter21:35

How was it for you behind the camera for a change?

George Clooney21:39

I loved it. I I loved it um because it was you know, I came in really prepared. I I did with the storyboard artist I worked, we did nine hundred and eighty drawings. I I I sketched out every shot in every scene.

Presenter21:50

There's going to be a lot of people, fans, upset if you disappear behind the camera for good. You're not going to do that, are you?

George Clooney21:56

No, no, I like acting. I'm still trying to figure acting out. I'm not looking to direct again. I'm if I find a script that I have an understanding like I had of this one, then I'll do it again.

George Clooney22:06

This is a script that has been sort of held up as the best unproduced script ever. It sort of fell in between the cracks. It wasn't cheap enough to make as a small independent, and it wasn't big enough to make it a studio. And it

Presenter22:19

So are we into the power of George Cluny here?

George Clooney22:21

Oh, this one was a force feeding of me because the film had been put into turnaround, basically put in a trash bin. So I picked it up and said, look, I think I can get the film made. My feeling is, if you look at sort of the way my career has gone, Out of Sight flopped, didn't make any money at all, and it's a really good film. And now people have come around to thinking it's a really, you know, it's a wonderfully made film. Stephen's very talented, Steven Soderbergh. Three Kings barely made its money back. Oh, Brother was right on the border, made a little bit of money back, but not that much. So my feeling has been with films like Confessions and with Solaris, I can stick around for five or six years and see how they hold up. Because the trick is to make them last longer than an opening weekend.

Presenter23:08

Well, quite. And then you've got a body of work. That's what you're trying to do, isn't it? Create a body of work that you can actually stand up and be counted by.

George Clooney23:12

Trotty

George Clooney23:15

Right. Well, you don't want it to be Batman and Robin 1, 2, and 3.

George Clooney23:20

And you know what I mean? You get to a point where you go, well, I have money.

George Clooney23:23

You know, I have some money, I'll be okay. And I can and I'm perfectly capable of, if I have to, of downgrading if I have to as well financially.

Presenter23:32

Mechanical number six.

George Clooney23:33

This what do we oh well I went for Bill Withers. Pretty much every song Bill Withers ever sang is great, but I went Who is he and what is he to you? because it's just a great funky song.

Speaker 423:46

Tells me he's not someone just passing by.

Speaker 423:55

Hi and when you cleared your throat

Speaker 423:59

Was that your cue?

Speaker 424:05

That committer

Speaker 424:07

Who is he and what is a he to you?

Presenter24:12

Bill Withers with Who Is He and What Is He to You? Um your other latest film uh is one in which you're very much in front of the camera uh the whole time I think in Solaris. You're in practically every shot there, isn't it?

George Clooney24:22

I think pretty much every shot just about it.

Presenter24:24

Yeah. It's quite deep. It's it's about a psychiatrist who's sent uh to a space station where the crew's going quietly mad and there he meets his wife who died and it's kind of is there an afterlife? Um is there a god? What's it the most difficult role you've acted?

George Clooney24:38

What's it

George Clooney24:39

Oh yeah, by far. But that I knew going in, you know, we also knew that we were going to make a film that was really polarizing, that people are going to come out and really love it or really hate it, you know.

Presenter24:51

But that film and Confessions, I mean, they've both been very much your babies in different ways as we've just described. You have spent hours, sixteen hours, twenty hour days on these things. It's used you all up. I mean, is that when you're at your happiest, when you're immersed in work?

George Clooney25:06

Yeah. Right now that's where I'm happy. You know, you have a window of opportunity where you get to call the shots and you get to at the end of the day say, this was my stamp on this. This was what I think of if I had the opportunity.

George Clooney25:19

I don't think that window is open for a very long period of time. So, in that period, I want to work and I want to try and get things done.

Presenter25:26

What do you do when you're not completely immersed in work? I read stories of kind of ridiculous boys' house parties with practical jokes and

George Clooney25:32

But I know that.

George Clooney25:33

Well, there's a lot of practical joke. I had the greatest friends, you know, for the last twenty years, so it's not a bunch of sycophants, you know, it's they're good friends.

Presenter25:41

That would be very painful if they were. What do you do there when you hang out together? What do you do?

George Clooney25:43

Yeah, it would be a good idea.

George Clooney25:45

Well, we you know, we all have motorcycles and we ride or we go to you know, we play basketball every Sunday and we watch movies and sometimes it gets sort of mushed into this idea that it's somehow the Playboy Mansion or something. You know, these are all fam guys with families and kids and we all want to be together. We're all close, really close friends. We're proud of it now. Now we've gotten to the point where it's a real source of pride for us, you know.

Presenter26:08

But you're forty two, yes.

George Clooney26:10

41, thanks. Don't rush me.

Presenter26:13

You're forty one, famously single.

George Clooney26:15

Yeah.

Presenter26:16

Um

Presenter26:17

I read you have a lot of fear of becoming an ageing Lothario.

George Clooney26:21

Oh, well, you know, everybody has that.

Presenter26:23

Well, at what stage do you get to be aging?

George Clooney26:26

Well, probably about five years ago. Um No, you don't

George Clooney26:30

That's the funniest thing about this is that

George Clooney26:33

You don't sit around going, Okay, that's it, I'm staying single or you know, that's not the idea, obviously. The question is when that changes and I don't know when that changes. Everybody's sort of looking to be happy and do all you know, we all have the exact same wants and needs, you know, it's just finding sort of something that fits into the life that you've worked out.

Presenter26:52

Sure, but there isn't any space in your life from what you describe at the

George Clooney26:54

Not recently there hasn't been, because of the work.

Presenter26:57

But you're not saying never.

George Clooney26:59

No, I but I you know, th I said never once in one interview with Barbara Walters about nine years ago after I'd just gotten divorced. And I've been living that one down ever since, so it's okay, it doesn't matter.

Presenter27:10

You're cool. Number seven.

George Clooney27:12

Okay, well now every once in a while you just have to put a song on that every time you hear it you stop and you listen to. You know, that you just don't get sick of it. There's some movies that I have like that and there's songs and Moondance by Van Morrison. Can't go wrong.

Speaker 427:27

There and then all my dreams will come true There and then I will make you my own And every time

Speaker 427:36

I touched you, you just trample inside.

Speaker 427:41

Then I know how much you want me that

Speaker 427:47

John High

Speaker 427:49

Can I just have one more dance with you, my love?

Presenter27:56

Van Morrison and Moondance. Well, now you have to play our game, which is this desert island game, George. You have to imagine you're marooned on a desert island. I mean, do you have any idea? Seriously, could you cope? Would you cope?

George Clooney28:08

I'd be okay. I'm scrappy. I could build things. I used to work in construction. I'd find a way.

Presenter28:13

You strangle the rabbits, you can do it.

George Clooney28:15

Yeah, I d I don't know that I'd be uh the the great hunter, but I'd probably be I'd find a way to make coconuts taste like beef.

Presenter28:24

That would be clever.

George Clooney28:25

Yeah.

Presenter28:25

Uh that's the practical side of it, but what about, you know, the spiritual side about it of it? What about you being on your own, you know?

Presenter28:34

Talking to yourself.

George Clooney28:35

Talking to yourself? Well, um

Presenter28:37

The character building stuff we were talking about earlier.

George Clooney28:39

Yeah, I don't know that I'd love that part of it. That'd be that'd be by far the most difficult

Presenter28:42

And would you try to escape? Would you kind of put out to sea? Oh, if I suppose if perfect storm is anything to go by, you'd never make it.

George Clooney28:46

Yeah.

George Clooney28:50

Well, I wouldn't make it. I didn't even say I'd make it.

Presenter28:51

Yeah

George Clooney28:52

No, it'd be more like Papillone. We wouldn't know if I made it or not.

Presenter28:55

Mm-hmm.

George Clooney28:55

I would try to I'd be building a craft of some sort to get out.

Presenter28:59

You would.

George Clooney28:59

Yeah, why not?

Presenter29:00

But you might like being there. Considering the kind of life

George Clooney29:02

Considering that

Presenter29:04

You know, you're sort of I was going to say lumbered with, but I mean, you're obviously enjoying it, but you might just enjoy just leaving all this stuff.

George Clooney29:11

Well, y you know, it's the funniest thing because you don't really understand before it happens what

George Clooney29:18

It is. So you sort of go running right towards it, like, yeah, this is exactly what I was seeking. And then when you get there, you realize that the things that are that you thought would be great about it are not.

George Clooney29:31

But there are much more interesting things that come from it that you really appreciate. I love the ability to sit in an office at Warner Brothers and just by virtue of the fact that I say this is something I want to do, they'll make it.

Presenter29:45

And you're prepared to sacrifice your personal life and privacy for that.

George Clooney29:48

I think that I have an understanding of the history of this. I also understand that it doesn't last for a particularly long time. We had a show called This Is Your Life with Ralph Edwards, and he'd have Charlie Chaplin on there at 65 years old, and he's sitting there, you know, slumped over. And he'd go, Charlie, you owned all the studios. Everybody fell at your feet, and then tragedy struck. And then they're always kind of sitting there with their heads slumped down. And you realize that's what's going to happen. So you have to sort of be prepared for it and understand that, all right, there's going to be a lot of things about this that are uncomfortable. Mostly, what they don't understand is mostly it's just embarrassing. It's embarrassing to walk into a restaurant and have some sort of a commotion when other people are eating. It's embarrassing if you have any sort of a modicum.

Presenter30:35

But essentially the moral is, you know, seize the day, obviously.

George Clooney30:38

Well, for me it is right now. I mean, I feel like, okay, this is now what I have. There's no taking it back. You can't undo it.

Presenter30:44

And put your grateful for it.

George Clooney30:46

And I'm grateful for most of it. And I also understand, because I used to cut tobacco for a living, that you're not allowed to complain. Because anything that you're doing is better than cutting tobacco. So that makes sense to me.

Presenter31:00

That's really good.

George Clooney31:01

Okay, you're gonna like this one.

George Clooney31:04

What I figure is you need a reason to get off the island.

George Clooney31:07

And if you play William Shackle.

Presenter31:09

I thought we had that with the bobby terror.

George Clooney31:11

But no, if you play William Shatner singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, then you will hollow out your own leg and make a canoe out of it to get off of this island. So.

Speaker 431:22

Cellophane flowers.

Speaker 431:24

Of yellow and green towering over your head.

Speaker 431:30

For the girl with the sun in her eyes.

Speaker 431:34

And she's gone!

Presenter31:52

That was William Shatner with Lucy in the Sky with Duns, and it is truly awful.

George Clooney31:55

It's a classic.

Presenter31:58

Now, if you could only take one of those records instead of all eight, I guess it would be the William Shatner record.

George Clooney32:02

Guess who

George Clooney32:05

Well, that's just to get me off the island. Um, you know, if I could only take one, I might take Dinah Washington,'cause I tell you her voice just it would sound pretty great out in the middle of nowhere.

Presenter32:13

Destination Moon. Now, we give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. They're already there, they're waiting for you. What one book would you like to take?

Presenter32:22

Of your own choosing.

George Clooney32:22

Well, I was going to bring war and peace because there may not be toilet paper. And I d you know, and it's a huge book. Not that I'm against the book, but you know, you might need a lot of paper and it's huge.

Presenter32:32

And what about a luxury?

George Clooney32:34

Well, I came up with a luxury item should be a yacht.

Presenter32:37

As long as you promise not to escape in it, really. These are the rules. You have certain rules. Yeah, yeah. You can't escape from this island. We can't give you anything that's going to help. I mean, you can have it if it's just going to be anchored there and you sit on it and lie in the sand.

George Clooney32:39

Oh really? You have certain rules?

George Clooney32:43

P you

George Clooney32:47

At least I'll have some comfort there.

Presenter32:49

And you promise me you won't escape.

George Clooney32:50

You can come you can fly over and check it out whenever you want.

Presenter32:54

There's an offer. George Cooney, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

George Clooney32:58

Thanks.

Speaker 233:05

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive.

Speaker 233:09

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio for