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While watching last Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, wasn't it refreshing, in amongst the gibberish-heavy acceptance speeches that sounded like Teletype malfunctions (Sarah Jessica Parker: "Eee...eee...eee..."; Renée Zellweger: "Omigod, omigod, omigod!"; Liz Taylor: "Y'all, y'all, y'all"), to see one -- count 'em, one -- lone performer who accepted his award with aplomb, who carried himself with grace, and who even worked in a passable wisecrack about John Ashcroft? Who came off, among that pack of jabbering gibbons, as a true movie star? In other words, wasn't it refreshing to see George Clooney?
We don't really understand George Clooney. Of course, yes, we get the obvious things -- the olde-tyme matinee idol good looks; the roguish smirk-grin; that damned, irresistible, insouciant charm. (Okay, that's enough -- we better stop now before we start writing "Fametracker + George Clooney" on our Finder Binder.)
But what we don't get is his whole career. Never mind the recent years, in which, following an initial run of notably inauspicious films (From Dusk Till Dawn, One Fine Day, Batman and Robin, The Peacemaker) Clooney somehow managed, just like that, as easy as pie, as though anyone could do it if they put their mind to it, to reel off an improbable run of notably auspicious films (Out of Sight, The Thin Red Line, Three Kings, O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Either he fired his agent, sold his soul to the devil, or both. Sure, he's offhandedly mentioned in interviews that, after the Batman débacle, he decided to do projects that really meant something to him and not worry so much about the paycheque, but come on -- we seem to recall Val Kilmer saying something similar after his own private Batman débacle, and last we heard he was in The Saint, At First Sight, and Red Planet.
No, what really stumps us about George Clooney is all that time he spent, before ER, wandering in the wilderness of Hollywood like some kind of cut-rate Jan-Michael Vincent. His pre-ER credits are so laughably bottom-of-the-barrel, so ludicrously struggling-actorish, that you can't help getting suspicious that maybe he planned it all as a huge practical joke. As though he bragged to some buddies circa 1981, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if, before I become the huge movie star I am so obviously genetically programmed to be, I bummed around for ten years doing Combat High? Grizzly 2: The Predator? Return of the Killer Tomatoes?" How plausible is it that, in a city crawling with casting agents and talent scouts, not one of them spotted Clooney as "Chic Chesbro" in TV's Sunset Beat in 1990 and thought, Hmmm, maybe that kid's got something?
Because, to watch Clooney now, it seems pretty obvious that he's got something.
No matter. Consider he nabbed the Golden Globe for his very charming turn in O Brother, and he has enticing future projects like Charlie Kaufman's Chuck Barris bio, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven remake loaded in the torpedo tubes, we think he'll be just fine. As such, we aren't so much calling for Clooney to receive more fame as we are sounding the klaxons and unleashing a great Aaah-ooo-gah! Aaah-ooo-gah! to warn the citizenry: hug your loved ones, stock your pantries, and find shelter in doorways and under desks, because Clooney is about to start sucking up all the fame in a hundred-mile radius like the great, huge fame-sucking vacuum he has become.
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