George Clooney‘s highly anticipated 1950s set, Coen Brothers-penned crime drama Suburbicon will arrive later this year, but despite the Coens involvement, the film is not the quirky black comedy the brothers are known for, which has led director Clooney to make a tough decision.
Clooney describes the film as a dark and intense tale, which has led to him having to cut Josh Brolin‘s supporting role from the film entirely as he was bringing too much comedy to it, and thus deflating the tension in an otherwise serious thriller.
Clooney mentioned to EW:
“We shot a couple of scenes with Josh [playing] a baseball coach that are really really funny. But after we did our first screening, the one thing that became really clear to me was that [the scenes] let the air out of the balloon, in terms of the tension in the film.
I had to write him this awful note where I just said, ‘You’re not going to believe it. but these scenes really don’t work any more.’ He felt bad, and he thought maybe something went wrong, and I said, ‘I’m sending you the scenes, so you can see, they’re actually the two funniest scenes in the movie”.
Clooney went on to add that he himself has been in a similar position before, having filmed scenes for Terrence Malick‘s The Thin Red Line, before getting the call from the director telling him that his scenes – perhaps even more frustratingly, all his scenes but the final one – were being cut from the film.
While this isn’t the greatest news for Brolin, it’s intriguing news for the rest of us. Frankly a Coens-esque yarn most expected would have been kind of pointless – why not have the Coens themselves direct? – so the fact that Clooney is intent on adapting their script and making the film his way is refreshing and his description of it as a dark thriller is exciting.
Matt Damon, Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac will still star in the film, which opens on Friday, October 27.
#Peace.Love.Suburbicon
