Ocean’s 13 Interview

Lucky Stars (Time) is an interview with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ellen Barkin and Matt Damon. The interviewees literally have no interest in promoting the movie, unless you count them parading their hilarious camaraderie that undoubtedly features heavily in the film as promotion. At any rate, it seemed incidental to just having a whale of a time.

The first question asked them how they kept their cool and turned out a quailty product—according to general opinion, the best of the series— instead of just another crappy sequel. Here’s how they answered the question: “how do you keep it from going off the rails and becoming Cannonball Run 3?”

CLOONEY: Well, we like to think it’s more like Lord of the Rings, in the trilogy sense.
PITT: Wait, what’s wrong with Cannonball Run 3?
DAMON: I don’t even think there was a Cannonball 3. Look, you have us confused with deep thinkers. You’ve already put more thought into why we did the movie than we did.
CLOONEY: You’re thinking that we’re not just whores for money. There’s your mistake.

Having let the boys have their fun, Ellen Barkin got way out in front early in the interview, asking Damon about his character, Linus:

BARKIN: Was that your character’s name?
DAMON: Yeah.
BARKIN: I’m sorry, I only read my lines.

When Clooney and Pitt noted that Damon always played the same character, but with a different style in each movie, Barkin quipped: “It’s important for him to change it up, while Brad and George have no range, so they just have to keep playing the same parts.”

Later in the interview, they talk about fame and how it’s changed in this much more media-intensive century, with Pitt just nailing his line home at the end:

CLOONEY: The last real movie stars were probably [Robert] Redford and [Paul] Newman. And things were different then. There wasn’t this amazing amount of magazines and information about them.
DAMON: We didn’t know anything about them.
…
BARKIN: Think about it. Do we know anything about Robert Redford’s children? Does he even have any?
DAMON: I worked with him, and I don’t know.
PITT: I have four, if you haven’t heard. (emphasis added)

Finally, they talk about how they got started in the business and whether there was competition among the “sexiest men”, with Pitt once again, getting in the zinger:

DAMON: … [To Pitt and Clooney] Is it true that you were the last two actors up for the hitchhiker role in Thelma & Louise?
CLOONEY: It was pretty embarrassing. They brought Brad and me in, and they just made us take our shirts off and stand there for a while, and then they picked Brad.
…
PITT: Aw, they were just grooming you for Batman.[1]