Editorial Staff
George Clooney’s next venture as director is the Coen brothers-penned crime drama “Suburbicon”. Unlike some of the projects Clooney has collaborated with the Coens on previously, this one – despite how the first trailer made it seem – is almost devoid of laughs.
Clooney tells EW that he’s so hellbent on having the film play as gravely serious as possible that he’s had to axe Josh Brolin’s character from the film – because his scenes in the movie were too funny.
“We shot a couple of scenes with Josh [playing] a baseball coach that are really really funny. But after we did our first screening, the one thing that became really clear to me was that [the scenes] let the air out of the balloon, in terms of the tension in the film.
I had to write him this awful note where I just said, ‘You’re not going to believe it. but these scenes really don’t work any more.’ He felt bad, and he thought maybe something went wrong, and I said, ‘I’m sending you the scenes, so you can see, they’re actually the two funniest scenes in the movie.’
I remember sitting there with the editor going, ‘F–k! I can’t believe this!’ But I’ve sort of been in the same situation. I did a bunch of scenes in ‘Thin Red Line‘ and then got a call from Terry [Malick], saying, ‘We’re cutting out everything except the very last scene.’ I was like, ‘Please cut me completely out of the movie! Don’t leave me in one scene!’”
The movie, which also stars Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac, tells of a husband and father (Damon) whose wife is killed in a home invasion. Moore plays the aunt who comes to live with them and together they seek revenge on the villains responsible.
“Suburbicon” opens on October 27th.
