George Clooney is a very discreet director. Too much, some would say. Because on the stage of the press conference You were a manIn his new film he sits in the second row behind his leading actors Callum Turner and Joel Edgerton.
He willingly lets you and Grant Heslov, his producer and long-time friend, have the floor and prefers to answer the journalists' serious questions with the usual jokes. Because George Clooney doesn't like being in the spotlight. The 62-year-old actor, whose personal life with his wife Amal and their two children Ella and Alexander regularly lands on the front page of gossip magazines, stays away from the flashes of the paparazzi and other more or less news hunters. TRUE.
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George Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney at the premiere of “The Boys in the Boat” on December 11 in Beverly Hills, California.
But if there's one reason George Clooney leaves his British home or his Italian villa, it's to promote the films he directs or stars in. In “They Were One Man,” whose screenplay was written by Mark L. Smith (we also owe him that of “Midnight in the Universe,” by and starring Clooney), the filmmaker delves into the extraordinary fate of the University of Washington rowing team represented the United States at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, opened by Adolf Hitler.
A complex shoot
Among the young athletes coached by Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) stands out, having a miserable childhood after being kicked out of his home at the age of 13. A true story that was the subject of a book written by Daniel James Brown, They Were One Man, is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when students learned to row to stay in college because they did not have the means to pay the costs.
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Actor Callum Turner at the film's premiere in Beverly Hills on December 11th.
“They didn’t even have anything to eat, these students were lumberjacks! “We must not forget that Washington State was then unknown to the general public and that it was extraordinary that the university could have a rowing team, a sport reserved for prestigious institutions,” emphasized George Clooney during the press conference for the occasion the presentation of the film to the media, in which the QMI agency took part.
One of the difficulties George Clooney faced on set was the challenge of filming this sport, which was very popular at the beginning of the last century. “It's not easy at all because you can't see the speed of the boat on the screen. We had to find different ways to film to make the rowing energetic and interesting. We couldn't film up close or the boat would tip over. So we shot from a distance with lenses.”
The secret of rowing is the perfect synchronization of the boat's nine rowers… an element that also had to be worked out by the actors.
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Actor Joel Edgerton also walked the red carpet at the premiere on December 11th in California.
“We started training in the snow in mid-February without ever touching an oar in our lives,” says Callum Turner, recalling the challenges of filming this sports drama.
“After three weeks we were feeling better and George came to visit us. I could see the fear behind his smile. Not only did we have to learn to row, but above all we had to be in harmony, which is the most complex part of this sport.”
For George Clooney and the cast, one of the central messages of They Were One Man is hope and the need for collective collaboration. “The country hasn’t been this angry since the Civil War,” he notes.
They Were One Man hits cinemas across the province on December 25th.