Fall Movie Preview - Entertainment Weekly - 2011 (August 10)

The high-res magazine scans are from Gosling Fan.

Drive

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn Rated R

      In the high-octane noir Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver and gets entangled in a crime plot that goes ary. So it's only fitting that the journey to make the film begins in a car. Gosling and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn had met in L.A. to discuss the project, but Refn was spaced out on flu medicine and the meeting had not gone well.

      The actor was taking Ren home in awkward silence - ironically enough, the director doesn't have a driver's license - when REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" came on the radio. Suddenly, Refn began tearing up and singing along. "When the song ended, Nic said, "This is the film. It's about a guy who drives around at night listening to pop music because it's the only way he can feel anything," Gosling remembers. "I'd secretly been thinking that as well."

      With Gosling and Refn behind the wheel, the nature of the film changed. "Drive was originally a $60 million action movie Hugh Jackman was going to make," says Refn. (The stripped-down thriller earned him the Best Director prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival.) "It became a completely different movie out of this strange, mystical relationship between Ryan and me in that moment in the car." We never thought we'd say this, but thank you, REO Speedwagon.

      - Josh Rottenberg Sept 16

The Ides of March

Starring
Ryan Gosling
George Clooney
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Paul Giamatti

Directed By
George Clooney

Not Yet Rated

      Last spring, during a fund-raising event in Los Angeles, President Barack Obama was catching up with George Clooney (whom he's known as a Democratic supporter and Darfur activist), and the leader of the free world asked the actor what he was working on. As it happened, Clooney was wrapping up production on a movie that he was directing and starring in called The Ides of March, set in a world Obama knows well: a presidential campaign. Not only that, Clooney was playing an inspiring Democratic candidate trying to win a hard-fought, high-stakes Ohio primary."He said, 'Should we screen it?'" Clooney remembers, laughing. "I said, 'Absolutely not!'"

      The Ides of March is not the sort of movie likely to lift the spirits of a president who's already got plenty of problems on his plate. Part morality tale, part thriller, Ides offers an unflattering warts-and-all look inside the machinery of a presidential campaign, exploring the lengths people will go to in order to attain power, even at the cost of everything they say they hold dear. Ryan Gosling stars as Stephen Meyers, and idealistic young media strategist working for Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney), a rising Democratic star battling for his party's nomination. When Myers learns that Morris has a secret that could destroy his campaign (don't worry, we won't spoil it), he's forced to choose between his highest values and his desire to win, whatever it takes. "I don't really find it to be a movie about politics," says Clooney, who co-wrote the script - based on Beau Willimon's play Farragut North - with producing partner Grant Heslov. "It's about a guy going anything to win at the cost of his soul. Those are universal themes you could play with in any genre or in any workplace. It's just that the political arena is so much fun to work in."

      Of course, Clooney has spent years rubbing elbows with people in that arena, and that inside knowledge helped attract top-notch actors - like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, who play rival campaign managers, and Marisa Tomei, who portrays a New York Times reporter - despite the film's modest $12 million budget.

      "This film is in George's wheelhouse," says Gosling. "Watching him direct was like watching someone try to explain a song that's in his head, like Michael Jackson in This Is It trying to tell that keyboard player how to play that part. He knew exactly how he wanted it."

      While Clooney is well-known for his passionate support of liberal causes, with Ides he was careful to avoid taking sides. In fact, he says, he steered clear of making the less-than-squeaky-clean Morris a Republican to ensure the audience wouldn't see the film as overly politicized. "This movie is pretty insulting to everyone," he says. "It's not kind to anybody at all." Though this outlook seems in tune with the country's generally sour political mood, the timing is pure coincidence. Clooney had actually intended to make Ides back in 2008, but following Obama's election he decided to put the project, already in preproduction, on hold. "Everyone felt so good and was so hopeful that we were like, 'Oh my God, we can't do the movie,'" he says. "But times obviously change quickly, and the world got very cynical again. Movie find their time and their place."

      As much as he enjoyed playing a make-believe presidential candidate, Clooney insists he has no desire whatsoever to pursue elected office. "Look how much fun it must be for President Obama right now," he says. And though Ides is already accumulating buzz as a potential Oscar magnet, Clooney says he won't be out on the awards-season stump, either. "I know the popular thing is you have to go out and kiss babies to get nominations and stuff," he says. "I did that when I had Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck [in 2005], but I don't need to do it again." Win or lose, he understands that campaigning is a perilous business.

      - Josh Rottenberg

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