<\/p>\n
George Clooney<\/a> is not Jay Kelly<\/a>. That much he is sure of.<\/p>\n But when a famous movie star of a certain age decides to take on a role as a famous movie star of a certain age, full of regrets and realizing that he\u2019s missed out on so much of his own life in pursuit of greatness and fame, it does invite some questions.<\/p>\n Clooney, 64, wasn\u2019t thinking about all that when Noah Baumbach<\/a> called him about the part. He was just thinking about how hard it is to get good roles the older he gets.<\/p>\n \u201cI was predisposed to want to do it before I even read it,\u201d Clooney told The Associated Press in a recent interview.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t the only one. Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Billy Crudup were just a few of the many stars of \u201cJay Kelly,\u201d streaming on Netflix on Friday<\/a>, who pretty much signed on script unread. Baumbach\u2019s name, as the writer-director behind \u201cMarriage Story\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Squid and the Whale,\u201d has that kind of effect on actors, from those he\u2019s worked with before, to those who\u2019ve just admired him from afar.<\/p>\n \u201cJay Kelly,\u201d which Baumbach wrote with Emily Mortimer, wasn\u2019t just a clever character study but a lovingly clear-eyed portrait of the strange business of Hollywood moviemaking and the personalities involved \u2014 the managers (Sandler), the publicists (Dern), the makeup artists (Mortimer), the best actor from acting class who didn\u2019t make it (Crudup), and, of course, the one who did (Clooney).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so lush in its appreciation for the sort of carnival life of actors and the proximity to some kind of gilded, glorious life that\u2019s always tantalizingly close,\u201d Crudup said. \u201cWe use movie stars as some kind of analogy about what it means to be successful and have a happy life, when in fact, that\u2019s smoke and mirrors. And if you\u2019re too busy looking out for that, you\u2019re gonna miss the life that you have.\u201d<\/p>\n Fame, failure and figuring out what matters<\/p>\n Clooney saw the trappings of fame, especially when achieved too young, through the lens of his very famous aunt Rosemary Clooney, at a safe distance from his home in Kentucky.<\/p>\n \u201cShe got her fame at 16, and it was big. She was on a cover of Time magazine,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd she believed all the stuff when they tell you how great you are \u2026 Then the business changed and she wasn\u2019t prepared for that. If you believe the first part, you gotta believe the second part.\u201d<\/p>\n Failure, which he came to appreciate through many, many rejections, was an important part of the game. Clooney was in his 30s when he launched into the stratosphere with \u201cER.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t be an actor and not fail,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the risk, right? That\u2019s why when it\u2019s successful it pays off. It\u2019s because you\u2019re willing to risk humiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n Jay Kelly, after the death of the filmmaker who gave him his first break and a run-in with his old acting school buddy, starts to take stock of his life and relationships. He has one estranged daughter and one headed that way: She’s backpacking through Europe before college. And he decides to follow her across the Atlantic under the pretense of having to get to Italy for a life achievement award, leaving his team baffled and trying to pick up the pieces.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something inherently confusing about spending your life pretending to be other people,\u201d Mortimer said. \u201cThere\u2019s this push and pull constantly because you\u2019re interested in reality and so you want to help tell stories about it. But it\u2019s much easier to bear life in this kind of contained way.\u201d<\/p>\n Clooney doesn\u2019t have Jay Kelly’s regrets. He likes to say if he got hit by a bus tomorrow, he\u2019d be OK with what he left behind \u2014 good relationships with friends, family and a few great films. But like Jay Kelly, Clooney is someone who can’t exactly walk onto a train and go unnoticed.<\/p>\n The people behind the star<\/p>\n There\u2019s a recurring joke where Jay Kelly says he’s always alone and his daughter counters that he\u2019s never alone. Movie stars, especially, are constantly, if not surrounded by, in touch with, their \u201cteams.\u201d<\/p>\n Sandler and Dern, both Baumbach veterans, didn\u2019t have to look too far to prepare to play manager and publicist. They\u2019ve had their own for many years.<\/p>\n \u201cI did sit in the room and watch my agent make a lot of calls. And, by the way, he made so many while texting at the same time, I\u2019m like, is he concentrating at all on any of these?\u201d Sandler laughed. \u201cI did see the passion and the warmth. And when he would stop texting and go straight to the phone, I knew it was business.\u201d<\/p>\n Dern said she\u2019s been watching her publicist raise her since she was 19 years old.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been growing with us,\u201d Dern said. \u201cIt\u2019s hopefully an homage to everything they\u2019ve taught us by the way they\u2019ve cared for us all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n Lessons from a life in the movies<\/p>\n The film also had everyone thinking about people who believed in them early in their careers and the advice they offered. Both Dern and Baumbach got boosts from Peter Bogdanovich<\/a>. Sandler\u2019s came from Dustin Hoffman who, right after \u201cBilly Madison\u201d came out, called Sandler and invited him over to his house for dinner to talk about his future.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018all the advice I can give you is meet three great filmmakers who wanna work with you,\u2019\u201d Sandler said. \u201cHe kept saying that: Worry about the filmmakers. You don\u2019t just want to be a star.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn’t advice Sandler took right away, but he still thinks about it. Two decades later they’d find themselves working together, and with Baumbach, on \u201cThe Meyerowitz Stories.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n