GEORGE CLOONEY IS SO COOL
Directs THE TENDER BAR with Ben Affleck
George Clooney first gained recognition for his twice-Primetime Emmy nominated role as Dr. Doug Ross on the medical drama ER, which aired from 1994 to 1999. His film breakthrough came when he was cast in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s action/horror From Dusk till Dawn, where he starred opposite Tarantino. Clooney played a criminal who must survive the night at a vampire bar. He is best 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.
But Clooney did not get his start in major Hollywood productions. He began in smaller-budget, campy horror films, where he was not the lead. One of his earliest 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 die early on. This movie is sometimes considered his first major role in a feature film, however that distinction goes to Grizzly II: Revenge, a movie made in 1983 that sat on the shelf until it was released in 2020.
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 bears. Grizzly II: Revenge follows a beast on a rampage in a California national park during a music festival after poachers murder her baby bears. Clooney is not the only major star. 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.
Clooney began directing in 2002 with the feature Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. From there, directed five episodes of the ten-part comedy series Unscripted, as well as the features 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 project, The Tender Bar. The film is a coming-of-age movie about a boy who seeks to find a replacement for his father who went missing after he was born. Throughout the movie, he bonds with his uncle and patrons at a local bar.
Clooney directed the movie from a script penned by William Monahan, who adapted it from J. R. Moehringer’s memoir of the same name. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Daniel Ranieri, and Ron Livingston as Moehringer during three stages of his life. Also among the cast are Ben Affleck, Lily Rabe, Christopher Lloyd, Max Martini, and Sondra James in her final film role. The Tender Bar will get a limited theatrical release on December 17, 2021, before its Amazon Prime release on January 7, 2022.
