George Clooney on the set of Leatherheads Courtesy of Universal Studios

"The thing I came up with was horrible, really. The whole John Kerry/swift boat thing is where I came up with the idea. That he's holding a secret. Not that I thought that John Kerry wasn't [a war hero], it's just that I thought, 'Well what if he really wasn't a war hero?' And if there was an innocent way to do it [in Leatherheads] where we didn't make him a bad guy."

Clooney insists that his motivations were apolitical, in spite of a storyline that pits a reporter against a somewhat suspect "war hero." He explains, "I've already done a film about that [Good Night, and Good Luck]. I was trying to go for something different. I wanted to give John Krasinski's character a secret. In the original draft of the film, John's character and Lexie were boyfriend and girlfriend in college and they came out together. So she wasn't active. She had nothing to do and there was nothing to get, and I was now too old to be stealing the college girl. Unfortunately, that's happened. Really, it was more about going, 'Ok, let's give her something to do.' There weren't women sportswriters in 1925. They're fighting to do it now. So we felt like that was a great ballsy thing to be — but it wasn't a comment on the press."

It turns out that Clooney — who is known for working to increase the visibility of the crisis in Darfur and who was recently appointed a U. N. envoy — had an explicit desire to turn a new corner with this film. "Right after Good Night, and Good Luck was Syriana. After that year, everything that was coming to me was 'issues' films. They were happy to let me direct, but it was going to be the Richard Clarke book or the Valerie Plame story or whatever. It was going to be something political and I had a great fear of being the 'issues' director because the issues change. I have a much bigger interest in being a director. So I thought, well I want to do something that is completely away from this, and I liked screwing with genres. This was a world I knew a little bit about, and a kind of style of film."

George Clooney on the set of Leatherheads Courtesy of Universal Studios

Leatherheads is Clooney's third film as a director, following Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck. What sets this one apart is Clooney's decision to take the starring role. He jokes, "I plan on increasing my presence and the next one is going to be a one-man show. The three films I've directed — the other two, I had parts in them, but I wasn't the lead. It's tricky because there is an enormous amount of narcissism that comes into play. You're breaking the trust between two actors, particularly when you're in the lead role. If you and I were doing a scene together, and we're talking, I'm not supposed to be judging you as an actor. Now, a lot of actors do, and they'll tell you what to do, but, in general, you're not supposed to break that trust — the director is. So if we're doing a scene and we finish and I go, 'OK, cut... Try it like this,' it's really sort of awkward. You have to go to each of the actors before you start and say, 'listen, this is going to be awkward," and just get it out in the open. It's embarrassing when you're doing it. You're sitting across from Renée and she's doing a tremendous job in the scene and you can feel the camera is in too close, too soon and you go, 'Ok, cut. You're in too soon and... Okay, let's try it again.'"

The arduous process of getting the script into production obscured some of the other challenges the role of Dodge Connelly would present. Clooney explains, "I was stuck in this world. I was going to direct it and I was going to play the lead. What I hadn't really paid attention to was that it was also playing football and it hurt. The first day I got hit by some 21-year-old who knocked me on my ass, and I thought, Okay, I'm in trouble, because I have 4 more months of this. But I would never by design [direct] a film that I would take the lead in ever again. It was really sort of one of those things where all of it came together very quickly. It was a dumb move in some ways because it was a little bit too much."