George Clooney knew there hadn’t been very many movies about rowing when he took the job of directing The Boys in the Boat. And that there would be challenges in making the film. During the press conference to promote the film, Clooney spoke about how he approached telling this story.
“It’s a little like Formula 1 [racing] in a way, which is: you can’t see speed from far back. You have to be up close. It doesn’t look as exciting when you’re watching it from far away. So, we had to come up with a way to make the rowing energetic and exciting, which we had to figure out,” Clooney said. And they did.
About The Boys in the Boat Movie
The Boys in the Boat is a sports drama based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction book written by Daniel James Brown. The film, directed by George Clooney, is about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This inspirational true story follows a group of underdogs at the height of the Great Depression as they are thrust into the spotlight and take on elite rivals from around the world.
- Directed By: George Clooney
- Screenplay By: Mark L. Smith
- Based on the Book by: Daniel James Brown
- Produced By: Grant Heslov, p.g.a., George Clooney, p.g.a.
- Executive Producers: Kevin Ulrich, Barbara A. Hall, Gary Barber, Peter Oillataguerre
- Music By: Alexandre Desplat
- Cast: Joel Edgerton, Callum Turner
- Rating: Rated PG-13 for language and smoking
- Opening in theaters December 25, 2023
Filmmakers Were Interested from the Start
Turns out Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov had tried to buy the rights to the book when it came out in 2013, but were not successful. Then, when they were working with MGM, they realized the book was there.
“We thought, ‘Well, now’s our chance,’” said Heslov. And they started putting the film together.
Clooney said of his partnership with Heslov, “We’re just always looking for good stories.”
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Training the Cast to Row
“They trained all together for almost every, single day for five months to do this,” said Clooney.
He went on to say, “The fun part was that these young men [in the story], out of necessity, out of hunger, out of having nothing else, they got together and, it ended up sort of like The Beatles, you know? You put together a group of men who actually could be good enough to win the Olympics. It’s like a group where your third-best songwriter is George Harrison. It’s sort of magical.”
“None of us had any experience, actually,” said Callum Turner. “And we turned up in February, and we get on the river. And it’s snowing. And we’re all in the tight shorts and freezing cold and have no skill at being in the boat. And after about three weeks, George and Grant came down to have a look and check in on us. And we weren’t in a good place. I could see the pain behind the smile on George’s face,” said Callum.
At which point Heslov interjected: “That wasn’t pain. That was fear.” And the crowd laughed.
Callum spoke to the importance of teamwork when rowing: “I think that’s the hardest part about rowing is that you all have to be in complete unison. There’s no hiding. If one person is out by a millimeter, the boat suffers.”
Heslov said, “It was two months of training. Then as we were shooting, we would wrap at about 3:30, and then the guys would go back out and row and train more. We scheduled it so that we shot the training first, so that they could still be kind of figuring it out. And then we shot the races all in order. So, by the time we got to Berlin, they were really at the top of their game.”
Challenges of Filming a Rowing Movie
Clooney spoke about the specific challenges they faced as he said, “What we learned from other rowing movies in general, and it’s no knock on them… is the things not to do. Because it’s hard: the oars are 15 feet long, the boats are 40-some feet long. So, you can’t get close to the boats with the camera. You can’t get side by side or ahead of the boats with your camera boat, because you’ll capsize the boat.”
Clooney went on to say, “So, we had to come up with a design to get in tight enough to make it exciting. You have to have some foreground action in the front. You have to be on a super long lens. Meaning, we’re on an 80-foot arm on the boat with a three-hundred-millimeter lens, two-hundred-millimeter lens, down low, getting wet, trying to hold focus while you’re doing that. So, there was a ton of math to try and find a way to make those things exciting.”
Joel Edgerton as the Coach
Edgerton spoke about his role as the coach, “It reminds me of the relationship between fathers and sons. Coaches are like dads to me. I had so many coaches in my illustrious, failed sports attempt, who were just like tough dads. And I really wanted to please them. So, you know, I was really excited to play the coach and excited to not have to go through what Callum went through,” which elicited some laughs from the crowd.
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The Message of the Story
Heslov spoke about the teamwork demonstrated in the film and the idea that working together is the only way to succeed. “What you have to do with rowing, it’s almost unlike any other sport, because you are in unison and working as one,” Heslov said. “At the end of the movie, you see that. And I think that’s a great message for right now in a very divided world we’re in, that we can all work together and we can all be one. I think that’s one of the underlying things that this movie brings out,” said Heslov.
Clooney chimed in to say, “This is a very polarized time in our country. Probably not since the Civil War has there been this kind of anger… but most people in our country and around the world, most people want to get along. Most people want to live a normal life and raise their kids and for life to go well. And they want that for their neighbors, as well. And so, what we felt like with this film and coming up on Christmas was that it’s also a film that talks about the idea that we’re all in this together,” Clooney said.
Choosing the Cast
Clooney said, “The truth is, we got everybody we wanted to work with us. Grant and Joel (Edgerton) and I have been trying to work together for a long time. And then Hadley (Robinson, who plays Joyce in the film) came in and read and the minute she read we sent it off to the studios and said ‘this is the right person.’ And Callum (Turner) was the one actor that we thought would be a perfect Joe Rantz.”
Regarding Callum, Heslov chimed in to say, “… we just looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah, that’s the guy.’”
MomsLA was invited to the virtual Press Conference for The Boys in the Boat, and excerpts are used with permission. Photos from the film are used with permission.
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