Word: hbo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Clooney and Soderbergh don't get much in acting and directing fees, owing to their willingness to swap cash for creative control. "I got paid more on K Street as a union camera operator than as a producer," Clooney says of the political-drama series they did for HBO. But on Ocean's Eleven, Clooney the actor made such a phenomenal amount on his percentage of the gross that he's still living off it. "We're basically living Ocean's to Ocean's," he says...
...addition to the Murrow movie, Section Eight has eight projects awaiting release, including an improvised sitcom about actors, premiering on Jan. 9 on HBO, and is developing a mini-series for FX comprising 10 short dramas based on the Ten Commandments, as well as 12 more films. Both partners are heavily involved in all of them. "They each put in several years of work on The Jacket," says Mandalay Pictures CEO Peter Guber about a small-budget thriller he's making with Soderbergh and Clooney, starring Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley. "They really get into the details of the business...
...physically nondescript Peter Sellers (a pair of glasses, really, with a man attached) was known for vanishing wholly into his characters. He disappeared into Inspector Clouseau, Dr. Strangelove and Being There's Chance the Gardener. But did he have a character of his own? It is a credit to HBO's The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Dec. 5, 9 p.m. E.T.) and its star, Geoffrey Rush (Shine), that this TV biopic sometimes makes you want to know. We meet Sellers as a young radio comic supported by a loyal wife (Emily Watson) and driven to want more...
...story that has launched a thousand network-sweeps movies--star with parental issues, beloved by the public but cruel to those closest to him, wildly successful but never satisfied. The HBO difference is in execution. Most notably, Rush, like Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, steps into several roles, delivering monologues in the characters of Sellers' father, his mother, his wife, Edwards and Kubrick...
Rush's performance is undeniably a tour de force. (Oscar winner plus HBO movie plus multiple roles--they probably engraved Rush's Emmy months ago.) And Life and Death is stylistically ambitious, but it never becomes more than a style exercise. As Sellers did, it desperately throws stunts at you to keep your attention. When it sheds light on Sellers' craft as an actor, it is fascinating. But above all, this is the story of a man his first wife lambastes as a "bore of a little boy." Life and Death finally proves her right. --By James Poniewozik