After directing six movies, Clooney shepherds Joseph Heller's 1961 classic to the small screen. It’s the day before his 58th birthday when George Clooney phones me from a car as he heads away from “a production meeting sitting with 40 people asking you for things.” As usual, he’s juggling: It’s what this admitted workaholic loves. Free from any financial concerns (he and partner Rande Gerber sold their tequila company Casamigos for $1 billion in 2017), Clooney can do whatever he wants. Lay $1 million in $20 bills on each of his 14 closest friends. Hang with Amal and his twins in Italy. Shoot a dozen Nespresso commercials and funnel cash to various charities. Ramp up movies for Smokehouse’s new two-year first-look deal at MGM. Finish an eight-part Netflix series on Watergate. Launch his next directing gig, the long-awaited John DeLorean biopic. He may or may not take on the title role. That’s his call. He’s in charge. Read More: George Clooney AFI Tribute: Cate Blanchett, Laura Dern, and More Celebrate (and Tease) the Prankster Actor Related 'False Positive' Trailer: Justin Theroux and Ilana Glazer Star in A24's Spin on 'Rosemary's Baby' 'Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. ': Animated Show Has Plenty of Jokes -- but Few Laughs Related 2021 Emmy Predictions: Who's Ahead in Every Category at the Primetime Emmy Awards? Emmy Predictions 2021: Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series -- Good Luck Choosing, Voters Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock And that’s what returning to television 25 years after “ER” gives him. On May 17 on Hulu, Clooney debuts “Catch-22.” The network was willing to back a big-budget six-part limited series adapted from Joseph Heller’s satiric 1961 World War II classic, along with producers Anonymous Content and Paramount Television, which held the rights to the novel thanks to the 1970 Mike Nichols comedy. “Catch-22” could prove to be serious Emmy bait for the popular Hollywood writer-producer-director-star. So far, reaction is good. That’s partly because, although Clooney initially evinced no interest in the project, it was dead-on casting — in more ways than one. Here’s why “Catch-22” is the perfect George Clooney vehicle: Warner Bros TV/Amblin TV/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock He likes absurdist satire. The whole point of “Catch-22” is to reveal, in all its absurd glory, the rampant insanity of sending humans to war to kill other humans. As soon as Clooney and his Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov (who also executive produces, acts and directs two episodes) read the script by Oscar-nominated Luke Davies (“Lion”) and “Animal Kingdom” writer-director David Michôd (who left to direct another project), they were enthusiastically on board. That’s because the movie isn’t just about World War II. It’s about corporate greed and the burgeoning military industrial complex (see Daniel David Stewart’s entrepreneurial mess officer Milo Minderbinder). It’s about the crazy lengths people will go to look good to their bosses (see Kyle Chandler’s apoplectic Colonel Cathcart), no matter how illogical their actions (see Lewis Pullman’s ludicrously promoted Major Major Major Major). The infamous Catch-22, for example, is a bureaucratic rule explained to bombardier John Yossarian (Christopher Abbott), who is trying dodge missions by reason of insanity. A concern for one’s own safety in the face of immediate danger, Doc Daneeka (Heslov) tells him, is the process of a rational mind, while a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions. A request to be removed from duty is evidence of sanity and therefore makes him ineligible to be relieved. “It was not an easy project to get made,” said Clooney. “It took balls for Hulu to make a period classic novel like this, which is tricky. You can get into trouble with the complicated tone. There’s fun in it, but not a lot of likable people. The lead character is an unreliable jerk at times.” It was a challenge to find an actor to carry off Yossarian, who’s in every scene, constantly running away from danger and far from heroic. Clooney wanted to find a young Sam Rockwell, the star of his 2002 directorial debut “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.” “He’s the perfect actor who can do comedy and drama,” Clooney said, qualities he also saw in “Girls” star Christopher Abbott. Rethinking “Catch-22” in six one-hour TV episodes allows Heller’s characters and stories to play out in full. “It gives you the ability to care about each of these characters you are going to kill,” said Clooney. “It was a great luxury in storytelling. To watch my friend Mike [Nichols’] movie again, that was one of the difficulties: when you are killing a bunch characters you haven’t gotten to know, you can’t relate to them enough. Here you can see Nately fall for a lady of the evening. Getting to know the different characters and then have them not make it was important to us.” Heller holds up after 40 years. “We forget how absurd it is that old people make the decision and young people have to go kill each other,” Clooney said. “There is an absurdity to it all, as absurd as everything going on today. Heller really captured that. We loved the scripts, we worked on the endings a bit, so they glide to the next.” Clooney was worried that Major Major, for example, might come out dated or camp, but Lewis Pullman (son of Bill Pullman) “made made it not feel like farce,” said Clooney. “It’s a testament to his acting that he made it work.” When they screened the first episode, Clooney and Heslov had to remind Hulu that while Yoyo starts out unlikable, he has to grow into what he becomes at the end. “We treated it like a six-hour movie,” Clooney said. “It has to build somewhere. We have the confidence to say he’ll do some rotten things and earn his compassion along the way.” The final episode delivers an heroic Yossarian with a soldier dying in his arms. “We know the story has a specific pattern,” said Clooney. “He does end up losing his mind and naked. We had to earn that somehow. Chris shows off his chops in that scene.<doc-sep>There are certain books that seem to strike fear into the hearts of screenwriters and Hollywood producers — and with good reason. Moby Dick and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road must rank high on the list; so does Joseph Heller’s World War II novel, Catch-22. When Mike Nichols took a stab at Heller’s classic in 1970, he had everything you can ask for. Buck Henry wrote the script, Aaron Arkin starred as Yossarian, and Jon Voight played Milo. (Orson Welles and Tony Perkins also starred.) Yet reviews labeled it “a disappointment,” something Nichols didn’t get very often. In a new series coming to Hulu, George Clooney had another go at Heller’s novel, but he also had more room to work with. Rather than trying to pack 450 pages into two hours, Clooney and his team got about six hours’ worth of screen time along with a solid budget. Clooney co-stars, executive produces and directs two episodes (as does Grant Heslov) of Catch-22. Here’s when you can watch it on Hulu. ‘Catch-22’ premieres May 17, with all 6 episodes available immediately. Clooney as Lieutenant Scheisskopf in ‘Catch-22’ | Philipe Antonello/Hulu The new version of Catch-22, produced by Barbara Hall (Big Little Lies) along with Heslov and Clooney, goes live on Hulu May 17. As viewers get with a new Netflix production, all six episodes of the series will be available that same day. Christopher Abbott, best known for his recurring role on Girls, plays Yossarian, the lead. Kyle Chandler, of Friday Night Lights and First Man fame, plays the deranged Colonel Cathcart. Clooney tackled the role of Lieutenant Scheisskopf, another military madman in the tale. Fans of Hugh Laurie will get a look at the actor as the shadowy Major de Coverley, a man who manages to unnerve everyone around him. (Given this group, which includes the plotting Milo, that’s saying something.) Martin Delaney (Towser), Graham Patrick Martin (Orr), and Tessa Ferrer (Nurse Duckett) also appear in the production, which was filmed on location in Sardinia, Italy. Clooney recommends watching multiple episodes at a time. Hugh Laurie as de Coverley in ‘Catch-22’ | Philipe Antonello/Hulu It’s unusual but welcome to get tips from stars on how they recommend watching their productions. In Clooney’s case, the star suggested going on a binge to get into the material. “I think you have to watch a couple in a row,” he said at the show’s premiere. “What Grant did so beautifully with this [first] episode is hard because you have to … set it all up to get to know the characters. It gets easier to know the characters and easier to tell the story as it goes on.” As you can tell from his comments, Clooney went all-in with the production of Catch-22. While he originally planned to play the more prominent role of Cathcart, his behind-the-scenes duties forced to take a smaller on-screen presence. For those worried about after-effects of his scooter crash during the shoot, Clooney appears to be in great shape. We’ll soon be able to see if his adaptation of Catch-22 turned out the same. Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!<doc-sep>George Clooney returns to television this month with an adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Photo: Reuters Twenty years after he left medical drama ER, George Clooney returns to television this month with an adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a novel whose complexity the actor said made it ideal for a six-part series. The Oscar winner, known for films like Syriana, Gravity and The Monuments Men, also served as executive producer and directed two episodes of the Hulu series set during World War Two about a member of a U.S. bomber squadron fighting the higher-ups in the military bureaucracy. "I thought it was a fun way to tell this story. It's hard to tell this story as complex as it is in a two-hour movie," Clooney said at the series premiere in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening. "It's never been about the medium although television and streaming has gotten much more interesting and more fun, it was more about telling the story. It's about telling good stories." George Clooney returns to television this month with an adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. (Photo: Reuters) Heller's 1961 novel, previously adapted into a 1970 movie, follows U.S. bombardier Yossarian who is infuriated that the army keeps raising the number of missions he must fly to be released from duty. Yossarian's only way to avoid the missions is to declare insanity, but the only way to prove insanity is a willingness to embark on more of the highly dangerous bombing runs, thus creating the novel's absurd Catch-22. The Sinner actor Christopher Abbott stars as Yossarian while The Wolf of Wall Street actor Kyle Chandler plays his commander, Colonel Cathcart. Clooney portrays training commander Scheisskopf. "It's a heightened piece, it's satirical, it's dramatic, it's harrowing, it's very funny," Abbott said. "It kind of lives in a world on its own but I think the themes are kind of universal because they're really just about the human condition." At the premiere, Clooney also talked about his friend and former actress Meghan Markle, who married Britain's Prince Harry last year and gave birth to their first child on Monday. Clooney, who attended the couple's wedding last year, has previously criticised the media for harassing Meghan and said the arrival of their son would lead to increased media scrutiny. "I think it'll intensify it, of course. But it's never about the media following you around because...if you're a royal, that's part of what you have to do," he said "It's the other versions of it: going to interview people's parents, that kind of stuff that it starts to step into a really dark place...It just, sort of, the press turned on them and...I think people should be a little kinder. She's a young woman who just had a baby."<doc-sep>Watch : George Clooney Doesn't Like Archie Harrison Stealing His Thunder Nearly two years ago, George Clooney's life changed forever—he came a father. It was back in June 2017 that the Oscar winner and his wife, barrister Amal Clooney, welcomed their first children together, twins Alexander and Ella. "This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives," a rep told E! News in a playful statement at the time. "Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine. George is sedated and should recover in a few days." Of course, the Catch-22 star emerged a proud new dad ready to tackle his latest personal role. "Every single day of my life, I just feel lucky," he told The Hollywood Reporter a few months later.<doc-sep>
These days, if you’re looking to see the latest performance by megastar George Clooney, you just wait for a Nespresso commercial to come onto your TV. While that might sound like a joke, those ads are the only new material from Clooney we’ve seen since 2017. That’s not to say he hasn’t been busy. After all, he got a paycheck in excess of $230 million in 2017 following the sale of his tequila company, Casamigos. Meanwhile, he’s been producing a YouTube Premium series starring Kirsten Dunst. But you’d be right to wonder one thing: What about his acting career? Late in 2017, he addressed that question. “It’s not all that often you get Michael Clayton kind of scripts,” Clooney said. “And if you’re not going to get those, there’s no real point [taking on roles] at this point in my career.” That’s going to change in 2019. While Clooney has a smaller role than planned in Catch-22, his new Hulu limited series, the star finally found his next Michael Clayton. Clooney got the right script of Joseph Heller’s classic novel. Kyle Chandler, Christopher Abbott and George Clooney attend the premiere of Hulu’s “Catch-22” on May 07, 2019 in Hollywood. | Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Hulu Of all the projects someone might take, you might find it curious Clooney chose a classic book like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Before the May 17 premiere of the series on Hulu, Clooney acknowledged how hard it is to tackle such a project. “You don’t want to take on famous novels because you can just get slaughtered for it,” he told Variety. To complicate things, Heller had a very 1961 approach to prostitution (and women in general) that Clooney found “terrible.” However, the script he read by Luke Davies and David Michôd convinced him it was time to get back to work. He signed on as an executive producer and eventually decided to direct two episodes. And he even took the part of Colonel Cathcart, a prominent figure in the story. That turned out to be more than anyone could handle this side of Better Things. Clooney ended up staying in the series but in a lesser role (Lieutenant Scheisskopf). But fans will still see him back on the screen — and watch him play one of the book’s more entertaining characters. Clooney appears in 3 episodes of ‘Catch-22’ as Scheisskopf. Clooney in the role of Scheisskopf in ‘Catch-22’ | Philipe Antonello/Hulu If you’re going to re-introduce yourself to fans, why not play the maniacal World War II commander who’s obsessed with boot-camp parades? That’s the essence of Scheisskopf, a man whose wife sleeps with several on the base where they’re stationed. Clooney appears as Scheisskopf in three episodes over the course of the show’s six hour-long installments. All episodes will go live on Hulu following the May 17 release, and Clooney suggested taking in more than one at a time to get started with the show. Christopher Abbot, who played a recurring role on Girls, has the meatiest part (Yossarian). Kyle Chandler, known best for his work on Friday Night Lights, tackled the role of Cathcart. Considering he waited several years — after reading dozens of scripts — we’re going to take Clooney’s word that Catch-22 is worth watching. It’s hard to imagine many of the actor’s fans doing otherwise. Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!