GEORGE CLOONEY
Prestige Drama Star's Campy Roots
George Clooney has had a long and lucrative career. He first gained recognition for his role as Dr. Doug Ross on the medical drama ER, which he was on from 1994-1999. For his role, he was nominated for two Primetime Emmys. His film breakthrough came when he was cast in a leading role in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s action/horror From Dusk till Dawn. These days, Clooney is most known for his role as Danny Ocean in Ocean’s Eleven, and its subsequent sequels, as well as his Academy Award winning role in Syriana, and his Academy Award nominated performances in Up in the Air, The Descendants, and Michael Clayton.
Clooney branched into directing in 2002 with the feature film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. From there, he went on to direct five episodes of the ten-episode comedy series Unscripted, as well as the feature films Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads, The Ides of March, The Monuments Men, and Suburbicon. Clooney also directed two episodes of the Catch-22 miniseries in which he starred. Now, he’s busy with a new directing/acting project, The Midnight Sky.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, The Midnight Sky follows Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), a scientist living alone in the Arctic. When he discovers that a team of astronauts, led by Sully (Felicity Jones), are on their way back to earth, he must work fast to stop them from returning to a global catastrophe. The Midnight Sky comes out on Netflix on December 23, 2020. The Midnight Sky, like the rest of Clooney’s popular work, sounds very prestige, but Clooney did not get his start in big budget projects.
One of Clooney’s earliest known films is the 1987 horror comedy Return to Horror High, where Clooney plays a self-centered actor who thinks he’s destined for stardom, only to get killed early on. While this movie is sometimes considered his first major role in a feature film, that distinction actually goes to Grizzly II: Revenge, a movie made in 1983 that never saw the light of day, until now.
Grizzly II: Revenge is the sequel to 1975’s Grizzly, about a killer grizzly bear, although the only thing both films have in common is that they center around killer grizzly bears. Grizzly II: Revenge follows a grizzly bear who goes on a rampage in a California national park during a music festival after being angered by the murder of her baby bears by poachers. Clooney is not the only major star in this movie. He acts alongside Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen. And while you may think they are the film’s leads, the trio gets mauled to death in the film’s first six minutes.
Grizzly II: Revenge was plagued with production issues, and the project remained unfinished and unreleased for decades. But now, the film’s producer Suzanne C. Nagy has finally finished it, and soon you will be able to see this masterpiece. It was acquired by Gravitas Ventures for distribution and will be available to buy or rent this coming January. Who’s excited?
