LET GEORGE DO IT
Hollywood icon does it all — acts, directs and produces Catch-22 series
Catch-22,
Citytv Now, on demand George Clooney is coming back to TV. And it’s not an ER reboot.
“Don’t you think that’s a good idea?” Clooney asked with a laugh. “I play a patient now!”
Kidding aside, the 58-year-old Clooney’s new TV project is a six-part take on the satirical dark comedy Catch-22, for which he is the executive producer and director on some of the episodes. And he has a minor role as a training officer and parade enthusiast named Scheisskopf.
All six episodes of Catch-22 are available online in Canada. Viewers can catch the first episode broadcast on Citytv May 21. But the full season is available only on Citytv Now online, on demand and on the app.
Catch-22 stars Christopher Abbott as Yossarian, a U.S. air force bombardier in the Second World War who is less scared of being killed by the Germans than he is of being killed needlessly and carelessly by his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly in order to complete their service. The cast also features Kyle Chandler and Hugh Laurie.
Clooney answered some questions about the new series.
Q Do you use the phrase catch-22 often?
A Of course, I use it all the time. It’s a funny thing about that phrase. I thought there was actually a catch-22. (Joseph Heller) wrote the book (which came out in 1961, although he began writing it in 1953) and at first he called it Catch-18, and then Leon Uris wrote a book (Mila 18), so he changed it to 17, but Stalag 17 had came out, and he changed it to 11, and Ocean’s 11 came out. Then he tried 14, and his publisher said, “14 isn’t funny.” I think 14’s funny. Then he settled on 22, and that’s a part of our vocabulary now. But I didn’t know it was made up by Joseph Heller. I didn’t know that it wasn’t part of the lexicon before that.
Q What’s your history with the novel?
A I read it because you had to in school. And it was dense, it’s hard reading. But it’s nice when you go back to a book 40 years later and it doesn’t let you down. That doesn’t happen all that often. It’s like when you see movies — my wife is considerably younger than me, and I’ll say, “Oh, you gotta see this film, it’s one of the greatest films you’ll ever see.” And we watch it, and it’s terrible. What was I thinking? I won’t name names.
Q Is Catch-22 about something different now, because we’re telling the story in a different era?
A I think almost all entertainment is. If you watch most films that had a sensibility 20 years ago, that sensibility has changed, and sometimes that’s what dates films or television shows. And sometimes it makes them more prescient.
This is one where, I think the reason the book is a classic is because the basic standard tenets remain, which is s--rolls downhill, authority is to be made fun of, red tape and bureaucracy, particularly in war, is insane … You’re not trying to get somewhere different than, you know, Saving Private Ryan, you’re actually kind of a different branch completely. This is a way to tackle this story that you couldn’t do in two hours (there was a film version of Catch-22 in 1970, directed by Mike Nichols). We kill a lot of people, and not always so nice, the way they die. But when you kill ’em in the movie, it doesn’t really have the same resonance as you can do with a six-hour piece, where you get to learn about the characters. You say, “I liked that kid, he had a family and a life.”
Q Right at the beginning, your character is just so aggressively crazy, it reminded me of John Cleese in Monty Python. And some of the insults that come out of the mouth of your character, and the mouths of other characters, are certainly from a bygone era. It seems the worst thing you could say to a man back then is that he was feminine in any way. Did you have any discussions about leaving those insults out?
A You can’t completely erase history. I remember seeing a movie about the Second World War where not one person smoked. You can’t change the way people spoke. That’s part of this. My hope is, in sort of the way Norman Lear would use Archie Bunker, it just exposes how ridiculous and embarrassing it is. Certainly some of us who are saying those terrible things don’t really come off as the smartest people in the room by any stretch of the imagination. That’s what I hope would be the take-away. billharristv@gmail.com
Certainly some of us who are saying those terrible things don’t really come off as the smartest people in the room by any stretch of the imagination. GEORGE CLOONEY