Tony Gilroy enjoys the Hollywood spotlight on him as the showrunner of “Andor,” its first season presently airing on Disney+. And that’s how some moviegoers may know him best, as the man behind the “Star Wars” series and the script/reshoots of 2016’s “Rogue One,” which first introduced Cassian Andor’s character. But Gilroy is so much more than a man involved in “Star Wars.” While others may know him as the screenwriter behind the “Jason Bourne” films, what Gilroy should be best known for is his 2007 film “Michael Clayton.”
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Those who know, know: “Michael Clayton” is an elite legal thriller and one of the best American movies of the 21st century. So, it’s a surprise to hear on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast that Gilroy had such difficulty getting the movie made. And what’s more, he almost made much more cheaply, and with two different actors in the leads than George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson. “I ran around for six years trying to get that movie made,” Gilroy told Maron in a recent podcast episode. “Nobody wanted to make it. I had an $11 million dollar version of it with Alec Baldwin and Ben Kingsley that I wanted to do, and I couldn’t get [the money] to do that.”
Maron sounded in disbelief that anyone other than Clooney could play the film’s titular attorney. “It would’ve been a terrible movie,” he told Gilroy. But the director disagreed. “Oh, dude, no. Alec, at the point, was nowhere, and I ran around for a year going, ‘this guy is a check just waiting to be cashed’ and ‘what a great thing.'” “Alec was really down on his luck at that point,” Gilroy continued. “Right after “The Cooler.” People forget that his renaissance was after, [and] I was right about him. But anyways, I ran around and all kinds of things. Denzel Washington, we tried. All kinds of people we ran around with [in the Clayton part]. I couldn’t get the movie made for six years, and then I finally changed agencies and had a meeting with George.”
But if Gilroy had such a tough time getting “Michael Clayton” made, why didn’t he abandon the project altogether? For Gilroy, the film was beyond a passion project in personal importance. “I wanted to do it, I needed to do it,” he stressed to Maron, and he had a vision for the film he knew he could pull off as a first-time director. “It was very, very clean. It was super doable, and it had enough elements of visual spectacularity that I could see myself. I knew there were things I could bring to it visually, but I knew it was manageable.” And for those who have seen the film, Gilroy knocks the direction of the park. It doesn’t come off as the work of a first-time director but as one of an industry vet.
Gilroy acknowledged the maturity he brought to the film and credited his work with other directors as his personal film school. “I was fifty years old by the time I directed [the film],” he said. “By that point, I had gone to school on 20 directors I worked with and all kinds of movies, and a lot of directors never work with other directors, they never see anyone else work, so they only know their thing. Writers and actors, and sometimes editors, I got to catalog shop from directors my whole love. You know, ‘don’t ever do that; that’s a great idea.'” As for the filmmakers who impacted him most, Gilroy mentioned “The Devil’s Advocate” director Taylor Hackford as a major influence.
But Gilroy also knew it was up to him to make “Michael Clayton” the movie it is. “The one thing I knew is that I could not make a “first movie” at fifty,” he told Maron, “You have to make your sixth movie at fifty. So, I was pretty serious about it.” And that seriousness paid off. Fifteen years after its release, “Michael Clayton” remains revered by critics and audiences, and a career touchstone for Clooney and Gilroy. And it’s one of this writer’s all-time favorite movies, so for those who haven’t seen it: do yourself a favor.