George Clooney Looks in the Mirror

Jay Kelly is a big brave joint effort by director/screenwriter Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) and one of several current candidates for “last movie star” the artistically and intellectually ambitious George Clooney. The film signals early its intent to measure itself against the greats of the silver screen in the much beloved — by Hollywood — movies about people who make movies genre.

Photos of stars from the movies golden age are strewn throughout the film which borrows heavily both in style and structure from Fredrico Fellini’s majestic 8 1/2 (1963), Woody Allen’s much underrated Stardust Memories (1980) and Robert Altman’s poison pen letter to the industry The Player (1992) among others. It’s a simultaneously courageous and dangerous strategy which threatens to constantly remind viewers of better films that trod similar territory. Regardless, Baumbach and Clooney pushed on.

Clooney is the titular Jay Kelly. Kelly is a superficially suave, sartorially splendid, elegantly coiffed, gracefully greying, vainglorious movie idol cum luxury-products pitchman navigating the sunset of his jut-jawed leading man career. (Think a more compact To Catch A Thief (1955) era Cary Grant which is essentially Clooney.) This while the theatrical movie industry which gave birth to him is struggling with its own ride into the sunset.

As the curtain rises, the now 60 year old Kelly (Clooney is 64) begins to wonder what it’s all about — cue long self-regarding looks in the mirror, legacy assessments and mad scrambles to determine what’s real and who really loves him. Early in the movie, a scene playing out on a background television in Jay’s studio lot reflects the pressures building on Jay.

In the clip from Billy Wilder’s prescient indictment of modern celebrity Ace in the Hole (1951) a doomed Navaho relic hunter is slowly being buried alive under a collapsing mountain. The ill-fated adventurer (Richard Benedict), shown in dramatic close-up, bears an eerie resemblance to Clooney.

As per the rules of the genre there are the envious, whiney, previously-neglected family members, lovers, former friends, colleagues and assorted hangers-on seeking affirmation or at least a moment’s attention to bask in the glow of Jay’s fame or get a chance to prick his bubble. These are encountered real time or during Jay’s recollections. His present day self steps into these memories a la Marcello Mastrioanni’s equally reflective and in crisis master director of 8 1/2.

Adam Sandler excels as Jay’s manager Ron Sukenick (more on that name later): the genre’s required self-effacing-to-the-extent-of-self-erasure manager and ego enabler. Though more aware of the needs of his own family than Jay, Ron is more than willing to sacrifice those needs to serve Jay. Ron abandons his anxiety prone daughter Vivienne (Sadie Sandler, Sandler’s real daughter) mid game — mid serve actually — during a father daughter tennis tournament when summoned by Jay.

All must be sacrificed for the greater good of his star’s career: a career Ron can no longer distinguish from his own. “I’m Jay Kelly too!” he asserts at one point and in a way — without swerving dangerously into Single White Female (1992 ) — territory he is. Jay Kelly is, at least in Ron’s mind, a work of “art” and he and Ron are its authors. If Picasso can get away with being both a creator and destroyer why not Jay and by extension and more passive-aggressively Ron?

So what if the road to this gift to the wider world that made “millions happy” is littered with a few ruined marriages and a gaggle of disappointed offspring? Ron’s wife seems strangely unable to respond to his repeated plea to tell him she loves him while calling her after a disastrous day of “death and firing.” She just wants to know if he’s still representing Jay. Meanwhile, Jay’s Mom drank too much and his Dad (Stacy Keach) is a rage-prone, son-sabotaging, attention-seeking rattlesnake. If this is what you get from sacrificing for a family, then maybe embracing the supposed ultimately shallow rewards of fame and fortune might not be such a bad alternative, especially, when you consider the Dior ambassadorship for Jay that gets thrown into the package.

Back to Sandler’s character’s name. The name Ron Sukenick is the film’s important nod to niche experimentalist author and reality skeptic Ron Sukenick. In his work Sukenick examined the relationship between fiction and reality and how parts relate and sometimes don’t relate to wholes. No accident then Ron plays a pivotal role in helping the alleged “empty vessel” Jay, the consummate “man of parts,” come to terms with and embrace his mosaic and partly fictional nature.

Standing out among the impressive collateral damage from Jay’s rise is abandoned early friend from back in the day: partner in arms, co-striver and roommate Timothy Galligan (Billy Crudup). Crudup’s turn as the seemingly centred but internally seething Timothy is terrific. His slow burn after he encounters Jay at the funeral of a director Jay also disappointed is one of the highlights of the film. A hastily organized and poorly advised post-funeral 35 year reunion at a bar is arranged. A worried Ron wisely advises his client to not go, or if he does, to stick to beer. Jay bravely decides to ignore the advice and go alone.

As the two old pals drinking in the rosy glow of one of their old haunts become increasingly at ease a patronising Jay, feeling generous after a few large scotches, obliviously inquires whether anyone from the old acting class gang still gets together. An initially sanguine but increasingly agitated Timothy replies they, in fact, have an annual reunion each year. Jay is the only one who doesn’t show up.

As the drinking, bromides and faltering camaraderie continues, Crudup masterfully manages the slow drip of three decades of bile. Jay we learn pulled the rug out from young Timothy, the better actor, at a pivotal casting call thus snatching a key, life-altering role. “You kind of stole my career.” the now child therapist laments. A slightly befogged Jay tries to cut the impromptu get together short to avoid further confrontation but a fan asking for an autograph slows down his exit long enough for Timothy to take a boozy long fantasied slug at the smug mug that has been tormenting him all these years.

Crudrup as an actor is all in. Timothy’s preparatory manic dukes-up dance, bouncing around prior to taking his long imagined swing at Jay in that sad LA parking lot, adds immeasurably to the humor and pathos of that scene. Jay’s reaction — part wide eyed hurt part incomprehension as to how he can generate this level of resentment — is some of the best acting Clooney has done in years. Or does he have some real life experience to bring to the scene?

As the scope of Jay’s existential crisis grows a large part of the plot turns on the now frantically reflective Jay’s attempt to avoid repeating the parenting errors he made with the child of his first marriage who is now alienated from him. That child Jessica (Riley Keough), now 35 years old and glacially immune to Jay’s charms, is long past any significant reconciliation. The failed actress-cum-schoolteacher openly wonders if Jay as a human being “really exists”asking “is there a person in there”? Then makes a lethally good point when she confesses to her erstwhile Dad, “Do you know how I know you didn’t wanna spend time with me? Because you didn’t spend time with me.” Game, set and match.

In response, an increasingly anxious Jay sets out to avoid a replay of this familial fiasco with his much younger second child Daisy (Grace Edwards) from his second failed marriage.

Daisy is the genre’s standard know it all, wise-beyond-her-years, “I’m the adult in this relationship” teen. Coiled up in her poolside chair at her father’s Hollywood mansion she is all slouches, arched eyebrows and well deserved recriminations. Who needs that? But to his credit Jay tries. Using credit card information provided by her friend’s mother he and his ever dwindling Land Rover entourage shadow Daisy on her pre college trip across Europe en route to a Tuscan film festival honouring him with a lifetime achievement award.

Of course, Jay’s public, who don’t know him, display heartfelt adoration when they encounter him. At one point — in search of himself — he even slums it by taking a second class railway car. There he watches amazed as the little people eat their sandwiches. He marvels at how tasty their peanuts are: revels in their tales of his impact on their mundane lives. One acolyte exults, “When I look at you I see my whole life!”

Jay even engages his adoring public in more polite genuinely interested conversation than he has ever had with key members of his entourage. Topping that, at one point, in a bit of My Favorite Year (1982) audience wish fulfilment, Jay even becomes a real hero. During a stop of that train our 60-year-old protagonist, against all understanding of the aging of cardiovascular function and sports performance, manfully runs down an off-his-medication young European cyclist who stole an old women’s wallet despite at least a 20 yard lead on him. Now that’s movie magic.

Stylistically Baumbach’s repeated efforts to employ something akin to Altman’s overlapping dialogue tends to fall flat.

In Altman’s work the multiple dialogues gain power by coming across as an unintended added bonus, something that slipped into the soundtrack. The viewer has to work a bit to absorb these snippets and this effort adds to their enjoyment of the film and sense of a deeper, more revealing immersion into the immediate milieu. In Jay Kelly the seemingly randomly-captured dialogue on everything from a recent podcast’s revelation that “We are always all our ages,” to a piece of a conversation about the end of cinema are not muffled and don’t overlap any other dialogue. There is no extra effort required to process these snippets. As a result these snippets come across clear as a bell and as something the director wants you to hear and thus lose their power as “found” elements.

Similarly, Baumbach’s efforts to recreate the energy and inane chatter and constant desperate invasive importuning of the crowds surrounding his star during lush events doesn’t quite reach either the levels of magic found by Fellini or the often hilarious exchanges exploding from these milieus in Allen’s Stardust Memories. However, the painful “You don’t remember me do you?” sequence where a woman repeatedly peppers a get-me-outta-here Jay comes pretty close. Baumbach gets closer to the mark in deft details like the sharpie used to color Jay’s grey eyebrows and the powerful closing chapter of the tale set in Tuscany. The final massive outdoor party and festivities orchestrated to pay tribute to Jay do take on Fellini-esque proportions both visually and emotionally. Turns out Jay really did need that tribute! He prayed his life “had to have meant something” and it turns out it did.

Overall the film, bloated in places, could be improved by shortening its ample two hours and thirteen minute run time by about thirty minutes. Tighter pacing is what made Altman’s The Player soar and would do wonders for Jay Kelly. This would be easily achieved by jettisoning a few superfluous subplots and culling some of the far too many nonessential characters seemingly created just to provide cameos to European actors Baumbach wanted to squeeze in.

Repeated lingering wide shots of Jay’s six Land Rover motorcade could also be helpfully excised. Most painless of all would be saving what seems like about ten minutes by just tossing the sledgehammer-to-the-head symbolism of the film’s constant references to Jay’s erroneously grandfathered rider requirement for cheesecake. Somebody loved this idea. They were wrong.

In the end the combination of Clooney and Sandler’s star power chemistry plus an occasional unblinking honesty propel Jay Kelly through to the final round. Clooney, Sandler and Baumbach have created a watchable effort which pits itself against the giants of the genre and goes the distance.