Clooney Plays It 'Fail Safe'

George Clooney worked as a tobacco cutter before he made the cut in Hollywood. Now, nearly 18 years since his arrival in Tinseltown, he's reached the point in his career where he has enough clout to make the films he wants to do.

The Early Show, Co-Anchor Jane Clayson who visited Clooney last week on the set of his CBS movie Fail Safe. He talked about life, love and his live broadcast.

Fail Safe is a suspense thriller based on the 1962 best-selling novel in which cold war tensions escalate to a fever pitch after a U.S. bomber is accidentally ordered to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow.

In 1964, director Sidney Lumet brought it to the big screen. Now, Walter Bernstein, who wrote the original screenplay, was convinced by Clooney to write a new version for the CBS live broadcast which aired April 9. Clooney not only stared in it but also served as executive producer.

He portrayed Colonel Jack Grady, a U.S. Air Force pilot on his way to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow, due to a computer error.

The action follows American military experts and heads of state as they team with their Russian counterparts and plunge into a crisis of split-second decision-making until time runs out.

Noah Wyle played Buck, a young translator responsible for communicating the president's messages to the Russian chairman. (To see an interview with Wyle, click here.)

Richard Dreyfuss portrayed the U.S. president. Others in the cast included Harvey Keitel, Hank Azaria, Brian Dennehy, James Cromwell, Sam Elliot, Don Cheadle and Miguel Ferrer.

Fail Safe was the first live broadcast of a dramatic movie since Playhouse 90, which aired on CBS from October 1956 to May 1960.

"The hardest part is timing it out right, because timing changes," Clooney says. "Actors will take longer or shorter, depending on their nerves when they do it."

Other goofs were certainly possible. Clooney says that, during one rehearsal, he grabbed a phone and it fell off the wall. "If that happens," he says, "we're dead."
It didn't.

The 1964 film (starring Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, and a young Larry Hagman) captured Clooney's imagination while he was still in high school.

"The first time I saw it, I couldn't take my eyes off it," he recalls. "When you watch it, you go, 'This is epic and burning things down to their basics and is exactly what Shakespeare would do.'"

On the day Clayson spoke to him, Clooney had a wedding ring (a prop) stuck on his finger. She asked if he'll ever put one of those on for real.

"I don't think so. It doesn't go well with my hand," he says. "My feeling is that I'm 38 years old right now, and I'm working, and I'm sort of overworking right now. I'm juggling a lot of things, so I'm focusing on that.

At Clayson's suggestion that he is overworking so he does not have to focus on relationships and marriage, Clooney chides, "No, Jane. It's not that sneaky. I don't think things…through (that thoroughly)."

Well, then, does he have a philosophy about love, about relationships?

"I have none. Who would ever listen?"

Maybe a lot of people would listen.

"No, they wouldn't. Not from me. I haven't had great success, so you can't have much of a philosophy."

Why has George Clooney not had success in that?

"I don't know what success is! I don't know what it is!"

Does he believe in happy endings?

"No. I don't believe in happy endings. But I believe in happy travels," he says. "Because I think that ultimately, the ending is that…you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life. Life can be very mean."

He says he doesn't really want children.

"I always think it's a responsibility and not a responsibility you can take lightly," he says. "And so unless you're really dying to do it, I don't think you should do it… And so I don't think so. Probably not. I got a great pig (named Max)."

And he has great friends.

"Yes, I do. That's who I was referring to."