In his lament for a vision of what our country was meant to be, the great Joe Henry sang, “We push in line at the picture show, for cool air and a chance to see, a vision of ourselves portrayed as, younger, and braver, and humble, and free.” In The Boys in the Boat, George Clooney‘s latest directorial feature, Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) and many of his compadres who made the Jr. Varsity Rowing team at the University of Washington in 1936 are working through tough times; they certainly became the epitome of what we all wanted to be at some point.
Christmas this year brings us the next directorial feature from Clooney. The Boys in the Boat is based on the best seller by Daniel James Brown and tells the true story of how an underdog team of rowers made it all the way to the Berlin Olympics and defied all odds to bring home the gold. With the anchor of the brilliant Joel Edgerton as Coach Al Ulbrickson, Clooney tells a classic feel-good tale that both touches the heart and thrills the audience.
ClutchPoints spoke with Clooney and Edgerton about getting the specifics of rowing crew correct, bringing these real-life characters to screen, and how (as brilliant as he may be) David Fincher got some aspects of the sport wrong in The Social Network.
George Clooney, Joel Edgerton The Boys in the Boat interview
ClutchPoints: George, I'd probably be a millionaire by now if I had a dollar for every person that told me that one scene in The Social Network made them love rowing all of a sudden, and there are plenty of films that exist in the past about crew. Did you feel a certain pressure to have that portion of the film reach a certain height, otherwise the whole thing would fall apart?
George Clooney: Sure. You know, that montage in [The] Social Network is one of the most beautifully shot — you know, it's David Fincher — but rowing is not the greatest rowing, right?
If you talk to rowers, they don't love that part of the film. I love the montage, I think Fincher's a genius.
We needed to get rowing right. There've been only a few rowing films, and technology, probably for more reasons than not, kept it from being able to be as exciting as it should be. You can't be far back and see it — you have to be in close and it's hard to get in close, the oars are really long, the boats are 60 feet long. So it's really hard to get in close.
So we had some advantages with using long arms and long lenses that made it easier for us to get in close and make it exciting.
CP: Joel, on another hand, you're playing a real person, but the idea of that sports coach has such a pantheon in film history. Are there like certain pitfalls you're trying to avoid in playing that role?
Joel Edgerton: I almost felt like it was maybe a little bit of the opposite of really leaning into what could be — feel like a bit of an archetype or cliche of the kind of angry, not angry. Angry is a bit too much of a thick brush to paint him with.
The stressed coach, or the coach that lacks a certain amount of warmth [and] is not quick to encourage. It's more about just seeing the mechanics of the sport. It's about statistics, the quality of the water in the lane, what they need to do at what pace in order to win a race, and it lacks a certain humanity that we're then moving towards is that inevitably spending time with anyone you start to like them and show a bit of empathy.
I mean, by the end of the shoot I even liked George a little bit! [laughs]
GC: That's cause he drinks. He's always drunk.
CP: There's a part in the script that's like, “Say you like George!”
GC: [smiles] Yes, there's a sign over here just below you that says, “Say you like George.”
CP: Both of you have what I would consider a very rich history on both sides of the camera. And very specifically, the stuff you do when you're not in front of it. Does that help the working condition between each other, or does it even show the working condition between each other on something like this?
JE: I think so.
GC: Yeah, for sure.
JE: I love being directed by George knowing that he knows better than I do how to make moments work in front of a camera and having an outside eye to sort of just guide me in the right ways when I'm a bit uncertain about some things.
GC: He wasn't very uncertain very often. There's a huge advantage when you're working with [an actor of Edgerton's caliber].
First of all, Joel's just a phenomenal actor. He's also a phenomenal filmmaker. When you work with a really good filmmaker, I'll know, like, “Okay, we're losing the light and we have to get this shot,” and Joel will be like, “What if I go over there and stand there and then do it from here to there?” You can combine both things together.
You go, “That would really be helpful.”
So it's really nice to work with a filmmaker, you know, it makes a big difference.
The Boys in the Boat will be released on December 25.
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