George Clooney To Direct Adaptation Of ‘The Tender Bar’ For Amazon Studios

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]


[size=37]George Clooney To Direct Adaptation Of ‘The Tender Bar’ For Amazon Studios[/size]

By Justin Kroll





Senior Film Reporter
@krolljvar

More Stories By Justin

July 24, 2020 11:31am





[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)
EXCLUSVE: After finishing production on the Netflix pic Midnight Sky, George Clooney has found his next film to direct. We are hearing Clooney is in negotiations to direct and produce The Tender Bar at Amazon Studios.
Amazon had no comment.
If a deal closes, Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov would produce through their Smokehouse Pictures banner. Ted Hope is also a producer. William Monahan penned the script.
Clooney had been considering MGM’s Boys in the Boat, an adaptation of the Daniel James Brown book about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that won gold at the 1936 Olympics. Sources say he’s still attached but felt the timing wasn’t right given the complexity of shooting such a film in the backdrop of a pandemic. He decided to make The Tender Bar his next directing job.



It’s unknown at this time if Clooney would also appear in the film but as with every film he directs, that option is always a possibility.
Based on the J.R. Moehringer novel about a boy growing up in Long Island who seeks out father figures among the patrons at his uncle’s bar, the film was originally set up Sony with Ted Melfi directing. When Melfi fell off, Sony put the film into turnaround, allowing Amazon to grab it.
Clooney has always been particular about the projects he decides to direct, last helming the upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller Midnight Sky for Netflix and Anonymous Content. Clooney also stars in that film opposite Felicity Jones playing a lonely scientist in the Arctic as he races to stop Sully and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.
Prior to that, his last film in theaters was the Paramount thriller Suburbicon with Matt Damon and Julianne Moore starring and he executive produced and helmed a handful of episodes on the acclaimed Hulu miniseries Catch-22 while also appearing in the series as dimwitted commander Scheisskopf, opposite Christopher Abbott’s Yossarian.
Clooney is repped by CAA.

Ooh, sounds interesting - an opportunity to film in NYC?


By the way, it occurred to me the other day that Suburbicon was a bit ahead of its

time................

PAN - The new one does sound interesting. I'm not sure about them being able to film here with all the virus restrictions, but who knows? Maybe that will all change by the time they're ready to start filming.

Re: Suburbicon. No, it wasn't ahead of its time. He could have made that film any time from 1863 until now and it would have been relevant. Sadly, it will probably be relevant for years to come.

Yes, Lizzy, but I was really thinking about the timing vis a vis Black Lives Matter....


By the way, anyone heard from Donnamarie lately?

PAN - I pm'd her yesterday. She's o.k., just busy. She said she'll be back soon.

Perhaps this is the sort of film that could be made in a film studio rather than on location?  Just wondering. Or perhaps Amal has another teaching stint in NY and filming there would tie in nicely for him?

Just like with live theater, I don't see how actors can work together safely and still give good performances. So much depends on collaboration and close contact. Risky.

I'm thinking that maybe if it was a film with only ever one or two actors in a scene, and maybe if they did their own makeup and so on, it might be possible?

I guess it could be done if everyone was really careful - just no really hot love scenes and definitely nothing x-rated.

On another note, does anyone else think 'The Tender Bar' is a really bad name for a film?

It's confusing to say the least. Doesn't give even a hint of what it's about, in spite of the word "bar" being in the title. Either they'll have to change it or do a lot of publicity making it clear what it's about.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

( having a problem cut and paste)
[size=34]He’s now even directing a newie titled “The Tender Bar.” It’s based on J.R. Moehringer’s memoir about growing up on Long Island and seeking out father figures among the customers at his uncle’s bar. Which, of course, that’s back when we had bars.[/size]

Hello pigpen - nice ot see you again!

LizzyNY wrote:It's confusing to say the least. Doesn't give even a hint of what it's about, in spite of the word "bar" being in the title.

Yep. Made me think of a bar of metal, but made of something soft.

Yes, terrible title. It either leaves you scratching your head, or reaching for associations like "maybe it's a place where people get together and give each other care and kindness" or "somebody tried to be cute and make up a name for a standard of gentle treatment." Or a bar made of soft metal.

This should help,

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The New York Times bestseller and one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2005. In the tradition of This Boy's Life and The Liar's Club, a raucous, poignant, luminously written memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar.

J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.

At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. The alphas along the bar—including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler—took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak—and eventually from reality.

In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.

Great story. Still a terrible name for a film.