George Clooney had to miss the press conference for his new Netflix movie Jay Kelly, which launches this week at the Venice Film Festival, due to what the festival moderator described as a “bad sinus infection.”
The press conference moderator said Clooney “should” be at this evening’s world premiere screening but the conditional tense left the door open to him not to being able to make it.
The moderator added that Clooney was sorry not to make the press conference and his co-star Adam Sandler quipped that “even movie stars get sick.” Co-star Laura Dern disclosed that Clooney was “devastated” not to be at the event.
It emerged last night that Clooney — who was photographed arriving at the festival earlier this week — had to cut back on press duties due to the illness and also missed a cast and crew dinner.
Noah Baumbach‘s new film follows a famous movie actor named Jay Kelly (Clooney) and his devoted manager Ron (Adam Sandler) as they embark on a whirlwind and unexpectedly profound journey through Europe. Along the way, both men are forced to confront the choices they’ve made, the relationships with their loved ones, and the legacies they’ll leave behind.
Written by Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, the film’s ensemble also includes Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, and Riley Keough.
Baumbach, Sandler, Crudup, Dern and Mortimer were all at the press conference.
Baumbach, who wrote the film specifically for Clooney, said of the motivation behind the story: “We discovered soon that if you make a movie about an actor, you’re making a movie about identity and performance and and a search for self. Actors are always sort of trying to find themselves in a character, and where do I fit in this character, but it’s a character outside themselves. And I think that was something that we thought, well, this is what we’re all doing. Essentially, as we go through life, it’s trying to figure out the person I present, and is that the person I am, or am I somebody else?”
Sandler, who plays Clooney’s manager, said he had always had an appreciation for his entourage, even before taking on this role: “I’ve always appreciated my manager, my agent, and my publicist. I just know how hard they work and how difficult it is to hear my ups and downs in life and back me up no matter what, even when I could get loud at times. I was very excited to play a man who is devoted to somebody like George’s character, Jay Kelly, and I admire everybody who does that, and how much it means to him.”
Later in the conference Sandler was asked by a journalist in the audience what he’d like his legacy to be, in one line. Sandler quipped that the last line of a movie about him would be: “What the hell just happened?”
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