|
Long before
the days of Superbowls, Astroturf, multimillion-dollar paychecks and
staggering endorsements, some men played football only for the love of
the game. They were rough, crass, foul-mouthed and hardheaded. They were
Leatherheads.
Clooney stars
as Dodge Connolly, a charming, brash football hero who knows that this
burgeoning sport is currently attracting, at best, a smattering of loud,
drunk fans who can’t conceive of paying top dollar to attend an event.
His games are free-for-alls that devolve into fisticuffs, and the
situation is quickly deteriorating. But the captain is determined that
it’s possible to guide his team and league from bar brawls to packed
stadiums.
After the
players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces collapse, Dodge
convinces agent CC Frazier, played by Jonathan Pryce, to secure his
rising college football star, Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford, played by
John Krasinski, who is filling stadiums with every game-for his ragtag
ranks. Dodge hopes his latest move will help the struggling sport
finally capture the country’s attention. While all looked hopeful, Dodge
doesn’t realize his fight has just begun.
Choosing the
comedy’s principal actors fell into place fairly quickly for Clooney.
Zellweger, who
plays sportswriter Lexie Littleton, caught in a love triangle between
Carter Rutherford and Dodge Connolly, was one of the first actors to
come onto Leatherheads.
“She handles
this rapid-fire dialogue brilliantly, and we knew she could play this
feisty, smart character with savvy, sexiness and sophistication. What’s
so great about Renee is that she also captures Lexie’s vulnerability,
which comes into play when she has doubts about what she’s doing ... and
when she starts to fall for Dodge,” the producer Grant Heslov said.
Zellweger was
attracted to the part because she found Leatherheads to be “the
kind of movie you keep your fingers crossed for.” She responded to the
fact that “it’s a throwback to those great old romantic comedies where
the dialogue is sharp and witty, the story is compelling and interesting
and the characters are full of color.”
The actor adds
that what appealed to her about Lexie was the fact “she’s witty and
smart, clearly a sharp girl who thinks on her feet. Lexie’s a bit of a
spitfire, ahead of her time-but I also appreciated that she was very
likable and, at the end of the day, has real integrity.”
Zellweger
offers, “We discussed the dialogue, the scenes, what the subtext was and
how it worked in the story. But we didn’t over-rehearse; we never
blocked out the scene to a great extent or ran lines too much. With
these lines, that was easy to do, as there were pages and pages of
dialogue. There was homework and memorization every night. But it was
addictively fun, because the lines were so rich and we could take them
in so many directions.”
Krasinski came
next, cast as football star Carter Rutherford. Producer Heslov felt that
Krasinski understood Carter’s conflict as a war hero who might not be as
valiant as first reported. The screenwriters had created a decent fellow
not merely caught up in the hoopla of celebrity but, in fact, trapped by
it. Heslov states, “We always saw Carter as basically a good guy-an
innocent, smart man who got in over his head. John really got that and
played it beautifully.”
Although
Krasinski, best known for his work on the hit television series The
Office, had been in a few feature films, he was impressed by the
Leatherheads script. He says, “I read the script eight months before
shooting, and I just loved it. I said to my agents, ‘This is the best
script I’ve read in a long time. Let me know who gets it.’ But I met
with George in his office, and we just talked; I didn’t audition, so
that was amazing. About a month later, I went on tape. Two days later,
they called; it was surreal.”
Krasinski had
an affinity for the character caught between the worlds of war hero and
football player, and agreed with the filmmakers’ take that Rutherford’s
instant fame would make anyone more complicated. “We thought the key to
him was that he had to be a really good guy who had a bad hand dealt.
It’s not like he’s an evil person who’s been manipulating the situation
and using his fame. He’s just a guy who got stuck with this. I focused
on his innocence when I read the script, and it seemed like that’s what
George honed in on too.”
Offered
Clooney: “Jonathan makes it easy because we know exactly who this guy is
the minute he walks in the room. CC is slicker and smarter than we are,
which Jonathan is; he’s smarter than anybody else in the room and has
interesting instincts. And he’s also a professional who knows exactly
what’s needed in the scene. When actors understand that, it makes it
really easy to direct.” He laughs, “It’s embarrassing to act in scenes
with him, but it makes him easy to direct.”
Pryce, an
award-winning Welsh actor, was cast to play Carter’s manager, the suave
and cunning CC Frazier, a man with an equal eye for the ladies and the
almighty dollar-initially somewhat of a mentor for the impressionable
college player. Clooney and the producers wanted a Svengali who was
smooth and sophisticated, a slick operator, but still not too oily. They
felt the actor really knew how to walk that line.
Pryce
describes CC as “a guy who sees what he wants, goes in and gets it. He
also thinks he has a chance with Lexie ... with any woman. It doesn’t
matter who it is!”
The performer
found inspiration for CC in agents who had previously represented him;
he relished the opportunity to channel them. “I’ve had agents in America
who were CC figures, who had the eye on their main chance and couldn’t
understand why I would want to play Macbeth for the Royal Shakespeare
Company when I could do a movie-however crap the movie was,” Pryce
states. “It was more important to make some money. Mercifully, those
agents are in the past, but it was a lot of fun to play CC, where I
could draw on their ruthlessness.”
|
