‹ All movies

The Rewatchables ·

Michael Clayton

year 2007decade 00sdirector Tony Gilroygenre Drama
host Chris Ryanhost Justin Charityhost Lindsay Zoladz
All 13 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 29:42

The final Michael-Karen confrontation and the $50 cab ride

The category is framed as what you type into YouTube after 'Michael Clayton': the final Michael-Karen confrontation, the Westchester hit-and-run consultation, Arthur Edens' baguettes, meeting Arthur in the Milwaukee jail, Karen Crowder contracting the hitman, or Michael's speech to his son in the car.

Lindsay Zoladz: The pick is the Michael-Karen confrontation: the last ten minutes are perfect, especially the long shot of Michael walking away from the scene, Michael's cop brother who has been recording it coming into frame, Karen collapsed in the background, and the seamless shift to Michael in the cab with a favorite line, 'Give me $50 worth.'

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:08:19

"Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you're a bag man, not an attorney"

Nominees read aloud: Michael's 'I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy' speech about having sold out Arthur for 80 grand; Arthur's 'you're a bag man, not an attorney'; Michael's 'There is no play here. There is no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor'; the $50 cab line mentioned before; and Arthur's 'I am Shiva the god of death'.

The film

Michael Clayton (2007)

Directed by Tony Gilroy · Drama

120 minutes

IMDbLetterboxdJustWatch
Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

George Clooney Michael Clayton, attorney at Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen
Tom Wilkinson Arthur Edens, attorney at Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen
Tilda Swinton Karen Crowder, counsel at U-North
Sydney Pollack Marty Bach, managing partner at Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen
Michael O'Keefe Barry Grissom, attorney at Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen
Ken Howard Don Jeffries, U-North's CEO
Denis O'Hare Mr. Greer, a wealthy client of the firm who is involved in a hit-and-run
Sean Cullen Gene Clayton, Michael's brother, a police detective
Merritt Wever Anna Kaiserson, one of the plaintiffs against U-North
David Lansbury Timmy Clayton, Michael's brother
David Zayas Detective Dalberto
Robert Prescott Verne, the principal hit man
Terry Serpico Iker, the second hit man
Bill Raymond Gabe Zabel

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

25:04

Casting What-Ifs

Denzel Washington was offered Michael Clayton and turned it down; Mark Wahlberg as Michael Clayton (floated as a joke...

Denzel Washington was offered Michael Clayton and turned it down; Mark Wahlberg as Michael Clayton (floated as a joke, rejected); Chris Cooper as Marty Bach (rejected, allowed as Barry)

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:25:04Read transcript
  • The one really interesting casting what-if: the role was originally offered to Denzel Washington, who in a GQ interview named Seven and Michael Clayton as the two roles he most regretted turning down, and who was scared off by Tony Gilroy being a first-time director.
  • Denzel later played a lawyer for the other Gilroy brother, Dan Gilroy, in last year's Roman J. Israel, thought underrated or misunderstood and remembered mostly for his Best Actor nomination.
  • Denzel is really good at playing exasperated, so his version would have been a different take: Clooney is not exasperated but conflicted in a repressed way, whereas Denzel would have been much more 'what do you want me to do?' — Justin Charity
  • Asked for a Michael Clayton line in a Denzel voice, the request gets a flat no, but the 'I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy' line is delivered anyway and called incredible.
  • Denzel is thought better in films like Crimson Tide or Malcolm X where he leans into his charisma, though his choices show he likes playing downtrodden, beaten-down, morally compromised people, as in Inside Man from around the same time, the film one participant watched right before seeing Michael Clayton for the first time.
  • Asked who else could be imagined as Michael Clayton, the answer is that this is a very hard one to recast because everybody seems really well cast. — Lindsay Zoladz
  • Mark Wahlberg as Michael Clayton is floated and knocked down: he would try to play the hero too much, whereas Clooney's performance is never triumphant, dejected and tired in the cab at the end rather than smiling, and Wahlberg would look for the noble firefighter element; the proposer confesses the suggestion was meant partly as comedy, since Wahlberg's weird, confused tone could have made a funny alternative take.
  • Chris Cooper as Marty Bach: there is a running list of aughts films that either have Chris Cooper in them or are defined by the fact that they should have, and this people-in-suits, corruption-everywhere, racing-to-do-the-thing film is a classic Chris Cooper movie. — Justin Charity
  • Chris Cooper would be allowed as Barry but not as Marty, because Pollack in that role is a classic look.
Share this discussion More Casting What-Ifs answers
47:55

Half-Assed Internet Research

George Clooney and Michael O'Keefe both played boyfriends of Laurie Metcalf on Roseanne; Michael Clayton was Catherin...

George Clooney and Michael O'Keefe both played boyfriends of Laurie Metcalf on Roseanne; Michael Clayton was Catherine Waterston's first feature; Brian Koppelman is the poker player who roasts Michael about hair plugs; the horses appear in Realm and Conquer; Tony Gilroy spent a couple of years getting it made and Clooney passed once or twice

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:55Read transcript
  • Both George Clooney and Michael O'Keefe, who plays Barry, played boyfriends of Laurie Metcalf on Roseanne.
  • Catherine Waterston (as transcribed) makes her first feature appearance as the lawyer in the Milwaukee hotel room who answers Michael's questions about who is taking the deposition and where his briefcase is.
  • The player roasting Michael at the Chinatown poker table is Rounders and Billions writer and friend of the Ringer Brian Koppelman, who subjects himself to a hair-plugs joke ('you bought yourself some new hair' / 'yeah, with your money'); the film has spawned little controversy or behind-the-scenes drama.
  • Tony Gilroy tried to make the film for a couple of years and George Clooney passed on it once or twice, but it was ultimately a smooth ship; it did not do well at the box office yet became a touchstone people wish Hollywood still made.
  • Teased earlier as half-assed internet research: the horses appear in Realm and Conquer.
Share this discussion More Half-Assed Internet Research answers
1:03:28

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Why was this movie allowed to be made, when it is so loopy and whimsical compared with its straightforward corporate-...

Why was this movie allowed to be made, when it is so loopy and whimsical compared with its straightforward corporate-greed marketing?

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:28Read transcript
  • Having hit many unanswerable questions already, the one that keeps a participant up at night is why this movie was allowed to be made.
  • At the poster and trailer level it looks like solid ground, a movie about greed with a shady corporation and a shady law firm and a capable man making tough decisions, but the first conversation between Michael and Arthur is loopy, heightened, deranged and colorful, the tone then becomes ambitiously all over the place, and it is far more whimsical than any promotion or even the casting suggested; 'George Clooney is doing a serious role' does no justice to how loopy and insane it is, and you cannot get to 'I am Shiva, the God of Death' from a tagline about bringing them all down one by one. — Justin Charity
Share this discussion More Probably Unanswerable Questions answers
1:03:50

Picking Nits

Arthur's creepy obsession with Anna; the car bomb logic of driving upstate and waiting instead of blowing it up in We...

Arthur's creepy obsession with Anna; the car bomb logic of driving upstate and waiting instead of blowing it up in Westchester; why the hitmen needed all the memos when Michael already had one and the boxes sat at Kinko's

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:50Read transcript
  • At first no personal nitpicks are offered because the film is so tightly constructed; the nit then raised is Arthur's generally creepy obsession with Anna, Merit Weaver's character (as transcribed), with sexual undertones that feel a little gross and are thankfully not explored further, unlike the old-New-York anecdote Arthur tells about a Chelsea brothel; the relationship gets used as a plot device at the end ('Are you telling me she's in the city?'), though the scene between Michael and Anna ('he really was crazy, wasn't he?') is a nice capstone on what Arthur meant to them both.
  • The car bomb needs walking through: how do the hitmen think a car bomb works, driving all the way upstate and waiting for Michael to have his cathartic meeting with the hit-and-run driver, when they could have blown up the car on the Lower East Side or at least in Westchester once he was leaving the state.
  • From the shared prep doc: Michael already has the memo when he goes out to the country, after the business of the Kinko's guy being asked to keep the memos for fifty bucks, copies that are very quickly obtained; so why did the killers need to steal or procure all the other memos, in a world that has email alongside the flip phones ('somewhere in this PDF, baby'); they probably never got all 25 boxes, which are presumably still at the Kinko's, prompting the joke of a car bomb at the Kinko's instead of a regular bomb.
Share this discussion More Picking Nits answers