It took a while to get made, but “Suburbicon” is certainly bringing some major heat to the awards season. George Clooney steps behind the camera for this dark crime comedy, using a script penned by the Coen Brothers, and lining up a cast which includes Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac. However, you might be noticing another star missing from that list.
EW reveals that Josh Brolin has been cut from the film. It’s a bummer, but as these things usually go, it turns out his scenes, as well as they worked, took away from the overall tone of the picture.
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“We shot a couple of scenes with Josh [playing] a baseball coach that are really really funny,” Clooney told the magazine. “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.’ I remember sitting there with the editor going, ‘F—k! I can’t believe this!’ But I’ve sort of been in the same situation. I did a bunch of scenes in ‘Thin Red Line‘ and then got a call from Terry [Malick], saying, ‘We’re cutting out everything except the very last scene.’ I was like, ‘Please cut me completely out of the movie! Don’t leave me in one scene!’ ”
Clooney goes on to praise Brolin once again for his work, but it sounds like it was a tonal clash with the rest of “Suburbicon.” Guess we’ll have to wait for the extra features on the home video release to see Brolin’s work.
“Suburbicon” opens on October 27th.