Kevin Spacey and George Clooney
George Clooney sits down again, this time with Kevin Spacey, to talk newspaper lies, films on Iraq and staring at goats.

With three George Clooney films packed neatly into the London Film Festival schedule, Pure Movies got to sit down with the busiest man in Hollywood, this time alongside Kevin Spacey, to talk newspaper lies, films on Iraq and staring at goats.

Pure Movies: The film could’ve gone many ways with Jon Ronson’s material, but it was very important to get the right tone; were there long discussions between you and Grant Heslov about the kind of mood you wanted to make?

George Clooney: The book, and also the documentary that was done, both hit such a unique tone, and I think Peter just nailed the script. It’s a script that’s been around town for a while, we’ve all been aware of it for a bit, it was regarded as one of the best unmade screenplays, and so we were all anxious to get our hands on it and see if there was a way we could do it, and Grant had all the right ideas.

Did you go home and practice some of the techniques seen in the film?

Kevin Spacey: Yes I can admit I ran into a lot of walls. I never got through any of them though. Busted a few clouds, though.

GC: It’s funny, there are things that are made up in this screenplay, but the wackiest things are actually the real ones, so when you read the book, and you read about Django running through walls, they really did try to run through walls, they truly believed that they could. There was the predator scene that I do on Ewan McGregor where I smack him with this strange thing, and it’s all verbatim what this guy actually did to John!

KS: George did it to all of us. It hurts like hell.

I wonder, George, if you could talk about working with Ewan McGregor – you looked to be having great fun on set.

GC: Well, after the restraining order, we didn’t actually have to work with him. But, I tell you, it’s shocking how normal he is – how absolutely fun and normal he is. We would talk about the motorcycle trips he takes around the world and down through Africa. He fitted into this group of actors who’re all really fun to work with, and they’re all very professional; they do their work before they show up so by the time you’re on the set, there isn’t a whole lot of misery. I mean there’s the work between action and cut, and then the rest of the time…

KS: Rubber band fights.

GC: (Laughing) Yes, rubber band fights! But yeah, just absolutely fun to work with, and a great guy, I’m a big fan of his.

As you touched upon, there was a bit of blurring between fact and fiction in this film; did you approach the characters as if you were recreating real people or did you more or less start from scratch?

KS: To me it was all in the script. I think that there are times when you’re playing someone who really lived and there is a kind of responsibility about trying to make that as accurate as you can and even if it’s not an impression, to embody that person, particularly if the audience happens to know who they were, but in this case, nobody really knows who there characters were so you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want and get away with it.

GC: Whatever the script calls for, you’ve got to deliver. With Good Night and Good Luck, we had a big responsibility to make sure we got everything accurate, and this is one where there was something funny to be had, and we could just do it.

It was mentioned earlier that the script had been floating around in Hollywood for a while; was there a ‘eureka’ moment that caused you to go ahead and be in this?

GC: When a screenplay has been around for a while – a really good screenplay – things get attached to them, you know, upwards of thirty producers tied to it and it gets this sort of baggage; it really requires everyone being willing to come in – Kevin and Jeff and Ewan – all being willing to come and play ball, and all have fun on a film that isn’t necessarily a certified slam-dunk. You know, it’s not Transformers.

George, about working with the goat; I know you’re a bit of an animal lover yourself,

GC: Sure, I’m from Kentucky.

As the cliché goes, don’t work with children and animals, how did you find that?

GC: Well, I was only just a fox and now I’m working with goats. I tell you though, this goat was a particularly nice goat, we spent a lot of time together; he wanted to go over dying with me, so we spent a while together. The funny thing is that the goat was a great actor, you’d be like, OK, stare at the camera, and he’d be like bleaugh (a fairly convincing goat impression), and he didn’t flinch. If you could’ve got Ewan to do that it would’ve been great!

Any other projects on the go? Directing?

GC: Any other projects? No more farm animals! And no more children.

Why has it been so difficult to make successful films about the Iraq war and the war on terror, and are we now at a stage we are starting to make films that will work?

GC: Well, there’s a couple of issues here obviously; firstly, any topical subjects, if it’s Hollywood, it’s going to take a couple of years because you’ve got to write it, you’ve got to produce it, you’ve got to shoot it, so automatically, you’re not going to be on the cutting edge. I think we’ve been a little too close to the situation and it’s such a polarising moment, it’s hard to make films that directly deals with that subject matter. We never thought of this as an Iraq war film, this is a very different story completely. I have done an Iraq war film, Three Kings, which holds up and seems to continually be relevant. But I think that his film is just a glancing blow at Iraq – it just happens to take place there, I never felt that it was dealing directly with the war.

George, you can’t seem to stop working with Grant Heslov – producing and writing; I wondered, being directed by him, what’s that relationship like on-set? You’re obviously very good friends, who’s the boss?

GC: Grant has some compromising pictures of me from 1982, so Grant’s the boss. No, Grant’s the director, he’s the boss, that’s the fun of it, with directing, it’s a sort of dictatorship. I had nothing but faith in him, he’s incredibly talented; I’m lucky that he’s been writing for about thirty years.

Kevin, what have you got coming up?

KS: I just finished two films in a row, one called Casino Jack, about Jack Abramoff who was a Washington lobbyist, and a comedy called Father of Invention. I’ve been focusing on building the theatre company over the last six seasons and things are going very well there, so I had the opportunity to do a couple of films that I would really enjoy – enjoy the scripts and enjoy the experiences of doing them. So, yes, I’m doing films when they suit my schedule.

There’s a documentary at the festival here that looks at the way that newspapers make up stories about celebrities, or exaggerate stories. What do you think that the media’s obsession with celebrity is?

GC: I’m the son of a news man, I grew up around the news, I can understand the issue, which is that as papers are losing their subscribers, it’s a tricky thing – you’re going to have to sell papers, I get it. The problem is that there is so little actual reporting as you know, and you probably fight it everyday. One person might write a story and it’ll then be in eighteen hundred different outlets, all stemming from that one story, and you’ll have no recourse; it’ll be false, and you’ll say, it’s not true, and they’ll say we’re not saying that, but a tabloid has said that, so they’re just reprinting and reprinting things that aren’t necessarily true. I understand the problem with it, I understand why it happens.

Kevin?

KS: I don’t get it –I don’t understand the notion of people who might “call” themselves journalists or who are in the profession of journalism, who would just make up stuff. I don’t understand it as a function, as a human being. I don’t understand why that’s of interest to someone to write something that is absolutely false in the hope of eighteen hundred outlets will printing it. Obviously we live in a time – and maybe always have done – where if you even bother to challenge the truth of a story – they will never write that that story is false, they will write that you denied that that story was true. This is not the same thing as saying, what we wrote was absolutely wrong. So there are some people who choose to fight these things in the courts, and some who choose to say, you know what, it’s yesterday’s news, it’s fish-wrapping, and I’m not going to even worry about it.

Finally, Mr Clooney, what is your magic?

GC: My magic? I drink a lot.