George Clooney says there are 'misconceptions' about Suburbicon

George Clooney says there are 'misconceptions' about Suburbicon

The film starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac is not a comedy, insists the director

The Matt Damon-starring Suburbicon (out Oct. 27) has been routinely described as a “comedy” in the media — albeit a black one. But director George Clooney explains that really isn’t the case.

“There’s some misconceptions,” says the Ocean’s Eleven actor, whose previous directing credits include 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck and 2011’s The Ides of March. “They keep calling it a ‘comedy’ and you’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of funny in it. It’s a pretty angry and dark film, which is sort of what we wanted to make at the time. Every time I see someone go, ‘Yeah, it’s a black-comedy!’ you go, ‘There’s a couple of laughs, but it wasn’t designed to be ha-ha funny.'”

In the film, Damon, Julianne Moore, and Noah Jupe (The Night Manager) play a ’50s-era family who are the victims of a home invasion, while Oscar Isaac portrays a suspicious investigator. The script was originally written by Clooney’s regular collaborators the Coen brothers but has been reworked by the director and his producing partner, Grant Heslov.

So, how would Clooney describe the film?

“It’s very very dark,” he says. “It starts out feeling like a Disney film and, by the end, it feels like it takes a pretty dramatic, serious turn to, like, an acid trip of some form.”

Sold!!!

PigPen wrote:Or- it was supposed to be funny- but didn't turn out that way.. so now it's a drama

PigPen wrote:Or- it was supposed to be funny- but didn't turn out that way.. so now it's a drama

Josh Brolin was cut from final version of Suburbicon

“We shot a couple of scenes with Josh [playing] a baseball coach that are really really funny,” says the director, who appeared alongside Brolin in the Coen brothers’ 2016 Hail, Caesar! “But after we did our first screening, the one thing that became really clear to me was that [the scenes] let the air out of the balloon, in terms of the tension in the film. I had to write him this awful note where I just said, ‘You’re not going to believe it. but these scenes really don’t work any more.’ He felt bad, and he thought maybe something went wrong, and I said, ‘I’m sending you the scenes, so you can see, they’re actually the two funniest scenes in the movie.’ I remember sitting there with the editor going, ‘F——-ck! I can’t believe this!’ But I’ve sort of been in the same situation. I did a bunch of scenes in Thin Red Line and then got a call from Terry [Malick], saying, ‘We’re cutting out everything except the very last scene.’ I was like, ‘Please cut me completely out of the movie! Don’t leave me in one scene!’ But, [on Suburbicon], it is one of those where we were just, like, ‘There was no option.’ He was so great in the film. I never like talking about those kind of things because it can be really unfair to an actor, except to say he was just absolutely great in the movie.”

LizzyNY wrote:Katie - From what he's saying it sounds like not funny, period. Seems he's trying to sell it as more of a film noir crime story or some sort of political commentary. Starting to sound very different from what it seemed at first.