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| Big star names and a fired-up Sam Rockwell in a tuxedo adorn this stylized poster for George Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind |
Chuck Barris is an entrepreneurial sweet-talker, who becomes a television icon with The Dating Game and other game shows, which he creates and hosts in the late 1960s, while at the same time getting recruited as a CIA hitman.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is George Clooney's (The Monuments Men (2014)) debut as director, and it's a film based on game show creator Chuck Barris' (You and Me, Babe (1974)) same-titled 1984 memoir in which he purports to have also secretly been a CIA contract killer of more than 30 individuals. The CIA have (obviously) denied any connections between them and Barris, who reportedly admitted that it was a lie around the time of the book's publication. But his colorful story flew around Hollywood for years, and Clooney's own father was a game show host in the same period that Barris took new ground with different popular game shows.
Confessions is an entertaining film to watch: Sam Rockwell (Moon (2009)) is charismatic in the lead; Clooney himself is good as his recruiting CIA agent; Drew Barrymore (Donnie Darko (2001)) is incredibly sweet and inspires much commiseration as Barris' neglected girlfriend, and in cameos and bit parts you'll see Michael Cera (How to Be a Latin Lover (2017)) as a boy-stage Barris, Maggie Gyllenhaal (Mona Lisa Smile (2003)) and Clooney's a-list pals Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)) and Matt Damon (True Grit (2010)). The film is cut in a suave editing style and photographed (by Newton Thomas Siegel (Keep Right (2004, short))) and color-edited nicely, enhancing different things in different time periods, which go from the 1950s and onwards. The humor is dry, and the film thematically revolves around the overlaps between reality and fiction and how they affect relationships, love and sex, touching on issues of disillusion, materialism, and the flexibility of the mind.
The film does have its problems: Its use of narration, - both by an aged version of Barris in Rockwell's form and in the form of several seemingly real people from Barris' life in B/W inserts, - are too sprawling and confusing. A simple text card by the beginning of the movie about the uses of these would have been welcomed, although it is likely Clooney's ambition to make us doubtful of the veracity of the different accounts. SPOILER And in the case of the old Rockwell-Barris, who ends the film with his stark (and yet darkly humorous) nihilism, it is unclear where this apathy in the character stems from, and that is really a worse problem than the talking heads confusion: Why exactly is he so depressed? He still has numerous successful shows, is a successful secret agent, - who's also still alive, - and his girlfriend even keeps accepting his dishonesty. A few other things irritate: A title text in such tiny letters that you'll have to pause the DVD and creep up close to your TV to read it. Repeated use of classical music, which seems forced and a clichéd way of trying to 'lift up' the film.
Instead the film could have been if it looked deeper at the man's paranoia, his resistance to tie himself down, or his later years and apathy. Or why his particularly flexible mind might be termed 'dangerous'; after all Barris seems a very sympathetic killer, and never actually dangerous in the film. It jumps a little too friskingly from one conflict point to the next without getting much if any realization out of any of them.
The script is by great screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation. (2002)), who later criticized Clooney for changing it and keeping him out of the filmmaking process.
Related posts:
George Clooney: Hail, Caesar! (2016) - The Coen brothers serve a whimsical, flashy letdown (starring actor)
The Monuments Men (2014) or, George Clooney's The Lecture (co-writer/director/starring actor)
Gravity (2013) or, Survival in Space: The Ride (starring actor)
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
The Ides of March (2011) - Clooney's political thriller looks at the cynical downside of modern politics
The Descendants (2011) - Payne and Clooney score with a Hawaiian story of heartbreak, loss and family (starring actor)
The American (2010) - Corbijn and Clooney's paper-thin, boring, pretentious hitman outing (starring actor)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) - Anderson's technically, visually admirable but a bit tiring animation (starring voice actor)
Burn After Reading (2008) or, Idiocy 2008 (starring actor)
Ocean's Twelve (2004) - Soderbergh returns with jumbled, glossy heist comedy sequel (starring actor)
Solaris (2002) - A suffering space question mark (starring actor)
From Dusk till Dawn (1996) - Tarantino, Rodriguez and chums' enjoyable Mexico vampire extravaganza (actor)
Watch a 2-minute clip from the film here
Cost: 30 mil. $
Box office: 33 mil. $
= Big flop
[Confessions of a Dangerous Mind premiered 11 December (Hollywood, California) and runs 113 minutes. Development had already begun in the late 1980s, when the rights to Barris' memoir were sold. Several big names were attached at different points: Curtis Hanson, Sean Penn, P.J. Hogan, Mike Myers, Sam Mendes, David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Brian De Palma, Edward Norton, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Ben Stiller, Bryan Singer and Johnny Depp. Clooney negotiated Barrymore and Julia Roberts' (Notting Hill (1999)) salaries down and bartered with Miramax to be able to cast Rockwell and have final-cut privilege. Shooting took place in Montréal, Québec, Orlando, Florida, Arizona, California and Mexico from January - April 2002. The film opened #47 to an 87k $ first weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #8 and in 1,776 theaters (different weeks) grossing 16 mil. $ (48.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 2.9 mil. $ (8.8 %) and Japan with 2.6 mil. $ (7.9 %). The poor gross was not helped much by the home video market, reportedly, were sales were also "poor". Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to two notches higher than this one. It won a prize at the Berlin International Film Festival as well as 2 National Board of Review awards. Clooney returned as a director with Unscripted (2005, TV-series) and theatrically with Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005). Barrymore returned in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003); Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile (2003), and Rockwell in Matchstick Men (2003). Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is certified fresh at 79 % with a 7.16/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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