John Wells interview (George mention)

by Katiedot Tue 14 Dec 2010, 10:48

From Movieline

excerpt from his interview - the rest is at the link above.

By Mike Ryan
13 December 2010

John Wells, the director of the recession drama The Company Men, knows very well what it’s like to be fired. In 2009, the creator/producer/director of TV institutions like ER and The West Wing lost his new prized show, the critically praised Southland, when NBC made the decision to remove five hours of prime-time per week in favor of Jay Leno.

As Wells makes the point in The Company Men — currently having its Oscar-qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles before opening nationwide Jan. 21 — we all have different way of reacting to the news of professional mortality.

Movieline spoke to Wells about the stories so bad that he couldn’t even use them in the film, how George Clooney almost ended production of The Company Men before it even started and if he now feels validated for his comments about Leno.

The Company Men is a nice complement to Up in the Air. Were there any worries about one film stepping on the other’s toes? There’s a version of the George Clooney character briefly in this film.

"You know, we were doing the final episodes of ER and I was directing George in a scene that I had written for ER when he came back. And he was telling me about this film that he was getting ready to do and I was like, “Uh oh.” He gave me the script to just kind of let me read it on the set, briefly, and I realized the interviews in the piece that Jason [Reitman] did, we’re actually following the people that were interviewed. If you saw Up in the Air and wondered what happened to that guy, that’s what we’re trying to do — what happened to the guy on the other side of the desk."