Here is the danger of agreeing to an extreme close-up shot for a magazine: everyone will spend too much time looking at your face and trying to figure out if you’ve had work done. Personally, I believe George Clooney had some work. I think it went down a few years ago (that’s when he began looking strangely “tight” and like he was wearing a toupee), and his face still retains some of the weird tightness. Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, Clooney covers the new issue of Variety. The tag-line is “The Epic Battle to Make ‘Monuments Men’”. See, this pisses me off. I like Clooney as an entertainer/humanitarian. I think he’s a smart guy and he’s proved a lot of his worst critics wrong in the long term. But every single thing in Hollywood does not have to be an “epic battle” and Clooney is definitely angling to make this “process” sound controversial. Making The Monuments Men was not an epic battle. This article reads as a fairly mundane story about a famous and wealthy actor/producer/writer/director pulling together a film with the full support of a studio. There’s nothing epic about it. And here’s another peeve: I hate the Clooney keeps calling The Monuments Men a “great untold story of World War II.” You can’t call something “the untold story” when there’s been a bestselling book and an award-winning documentary about the exact same story. I watched the documentary on PBS years ago and I loved it. Anyway, you can read the full Variety piece here and here are some highlights:

Storytelling: “One of my favorite films is ‘Big Fish,’ which I think is a masterpiece. I grew up in a family of storytellers, but Google has destroyed us, because you can fact-check everything. We’d always like the stories to be a little better than they were.”

He never wants to be a politician: “I like the ability to shine light and make it loud. But boy, the idea of administrating and legislating. What a nightmare.”

He asked Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Bill Murray & Jean Dujardin to take pay cuts: “If you pay everybody a full boatload, it’s a $150 million film,” says Clooney, who managed to stay under his $70 million budget. “You just can’t do it. Everybody worked for super cheap, like crazy cheap.” He says the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies operated under a similar business model, although the actors in the Steven Soderbergh franchise earned roughly a quarter of their normal salary. For “Monuments Men,” they were paid a 10th or a 15th of their going rate, but with a meaningful backend if the movie makes money, Clooney adds.

Losing the Oscar to Jean Dujardin: “The first time I saw him was at Telluride,” Clooney recalls. “He’s standing next to Harvey Weinstein, and I put my arm around him and said, ‘If you learn to speak English, you’ll win the Oscar.’ I should have kept my mouth shut.’ ”

Filming in northern Germany: “It starts to snow,” Clooney recalls. “You couldn’t get f–ked worse.” Fortunately, his actors came to the rescue. “There’s John Goodman and Bill Murray and Matt Damon all picking up camera boxes and carrying them down this hill with the crew,” Clooney says. “Bill and John would come to the set when they weren’t even in scenes. It was really sweet.”

“The untold story…”: “I had some understanding that Hitler was stealing s—t. I didn’t understand he was taking all of it. They don’t teach that in school. That’s why I loved the story. We figured at this point, we’ve done so many WWII movies, there really aren’t any new ones. You have to get around to someone as smart as Quentin (Tarantino with ‘Inglourious Basterds’), who can burn Hitler in a movie theater to do something different.”

His home in the Valley: He volunteers the fact that he bought his hideaway on three acres almost 20 years ago — at the start of his “ER” days — for just $900,000, adding that he clearly had to sink a good amount of money into refurbishing the property, which now features a detached house for his assistant, Angel; a basketball court; a swimming pool with an automatic fountain; and a covered dining area and bar. He lives there with his rescue dog, Einstein, a cocker spaniel mix who seems to trail him wherever he goes. When teased by a reporter for being a “Valley” boy, Clooney accepts the challenge with a wink: “Hey, there are some great restaurants in the Valley.”

[From Variety]

Again, it’s not like the effort to recover and save plundered and/or nearly destroyed works of art was a SECRET. Gen. Eisenhower made it a top priority at the tail end of the war and art historians and art experts were literally drafted to help with the recovery effort. The progress was well-documented by war reporters. I’m just sayin’. The way Clooney talks about it, you’d think this was a secret CIA incursion.

Also: the Jean Dujardin thing is interesting. I thought it was a great move for Clooney to hire Jean Dujardin just after Clooney lost the Best Actor Oscar to Dujardin, but it looks like Clooney is still a little bit sore about that, right?

Photos courtesy of WENN, Variety.