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.
Nobody dies in car bombs anymore: after the precise, tactile, chilling way the hitmen kill Arthur, picking him up and lifting him and saying 'we're moving', the car bomb is the opposite, planted on the Lower East Side and requiring the killers to be a certain distance away to activate it at the exact moment Michael is out looking at the horses; since the opening already shows he survives, too much time is spent on the car-chase stretch.
Clooney driving at night looks like a Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercial, but the GPS won't work because there is a bomb in it; they killed the other guy so well.
A somewhat controversial opinion: by the third, fourth or fifth viewing the U North material in the middle plays like Erin Brockovich or A Civil Action pop legal thriller, including the fake commercial and the scene where Wilkinson makes a remix of the U North song, and since there is no ambiguity that Tilda and Don Jeffries are the villains once you see them, the memorandums proving U North's crimes hold no surprise; still, this would be the best thing in ninety percent of other movies.
Candidates offered: Clooney's stubble, the unadulterated footage of Clooney chilling in cabs or in his Mercedes, flip phones, or the Trump-era vibe of complicity within a corrupted system; the three of them nostalgically look back at the days of being reachable only by flip phone.
This capsule of movies is associated with Bush-era cynicism and total Chris Cooper vibes, the first time one participant started really watching dad movies about talkers and players; the janitor sequence is Michael Clayton shrugging off the magic of lawyerdom.
A timeless post-9/11 cynicism about how soul-crushing systems are not magic and are moved through by money rather than hyper-competence; the film makes sure you understand Clooney is not the best to have ever done anything, just a man who put himself in the service of the right people, who only sounds ineffectual once he stops representing those interests, left with his $80,000 and his dead friend Arthur.
All of the above: a shout-out to the script supervisor for the continuity of the levels of stubble, from five o'clock shadow to several days unshaven, across the four-days-ago flash structure; an all-time great flip phone movie that made the speaker want to go back to a Motorola, because if Clooney can take down U North without an iPhone there is no need to tweet; and the grainy flip phone photo of Karen at the end ('I gotcha'). — Lindsay Zoladz
One of the last great American thrillers pre-iPhone: scenes would be plotted differently with a smartphone, since so much of the film is having to go see people, and Arthur could have been found more easily by text, although a man really hiding should not walk around with a conspicuous bouquet of a dozen baguettes; the mood is post-Enron but pre-financial-crisis Bush era, with a whole whistleblower vibe, and since those themes are unfortunately current again the film has aged impressively against other Bush-era movies.
Wondering whether they would feel the same doing the podcast again in 2028, the dialogue and jargon are singled out first despite being rooted in a changing industry, along with the law-firm environment: a wake for Arthur would still be in the bar where Barry and Marty hug at the end, and Marty Bach would still be in his Long Island home with his dress shirt untucked going through files; the award then goes to the use of that specific post-Enron, pre-financial-crisis time with a lot of money and a lot of paranoia.
The final Michael-Karen confrontation and the $50 cab ride; the baguette scene with Arthur in Times Square; the Westchester hit-and-run consultation with Greer ('I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor')
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.
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.' — Lindsay Zoladz
You cannot tell an Uber to give you $50 worth, and $50 no longer buys a mind-clearing cab ride in New York; starting in the financial district you would need at least a hundred.
The ending is a showdown between Swinton and Clooney, though not a classic one: pathetic in a weirdly captivating way, with Michael avenging Arthur, whom Karen has had killed; any good confrontation begins with someone you thought was dead reappearing, and the clip is played ('I'm not the guy that you kill. I'm the guy that you buy').
Asked for the most rewatchable scene, the answer is the baguette scene, just on its face: it has a weird whiplash, beginning with Clooney running up on Wilkinson after leaving his kid in the car, Wilkinson wandering the earth through a Times Square montage with a bag of baguettes, Clooney seeming to have the upper hand and asserting dominance as the persuasive talker while Wilkinson stammers and holds the baguettes the whole time. — Justin Charity
At the end Wilkinson digs deep and finds the fastball; the clip is played of Arthur's calm rebuttal ('you're a bag man, not an attorney'), explaining that Michael should have kept him in Wisconsin and that the single criterion for involuntary incarceration is danger, and it plays as Arthur very calmly listing all the ways Michael fucked up and then saying goodbye.
Lawyers out-lawyering each other is the film's great recurring interaction and this one is maybe the favorite; another participant has the baguette scene as a close second; the bag is counted at a dozen baguettes, not fifteen, which Arthur never eats, since they sit untouched on the counter in the apartment shot, prompting the 'baguette watch' joke.
A uniquely New York thing: bumping into someone coming home after being out all night while you are getting coffee, the 'did you get some bread?' guy; everybody has been the bread guy, everybody has been Michael Clayton, and the film nails the embodiment of two people who did not want the encounter running at each other as if they see each other on the street all the time.
The third pick, in the top ten of one participant's overall YouTube searches, is the 'I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor' scene; the clip is played ('There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room'), and it is called an effective piece of screenwriting from a film that feels loose and organic yet is built like a little model boat in a glass bottle.
Not a single piece of the film fails to build toward something else, and this entertaining, hilarious scene tells you everything about Michael, who barely speaks until the end while Greer rants about the guy running in the middle of the street at midnight and tries angles like saying the car was stolen, and Greer's wife dramatically throws a cocktail glass at the wall in their rich kitchen; instead of the expected fix, Michael defeatedly offers to get a criminal lawyer there in fifteen minutes, making himself the middleman; the scene has been watched maybe a thousand times and is called by far the most rewatchable.
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.
Landlines lead into what aged worst: after twenty-one years one host is not convinced any 1996 cell phone was good enough to be a murder prop in wine country around Sonoma, with trees and driveways and nobody near anybody.
A secret favorite part: Drew Barrymore's character says she will call the cops, the killer says they are too far away, and she accepts it even though her boyfriend is bleeding.
A counterpoint cites Michael Douglas's gigantic cell phone on the beach in Wall Street: phones then were for doctors and rich people and may have worked better for that elite group; the hosts wonder whether Wall Street had the first cell phone in a major movie, followed by Zach Morris.
Asked how the movie would be received in the outrage culture era, the hosts expect outrage at two guys killing the mother and calling her a whore before people swung around to its tongue-in-cheek intent; one does not find the movie problematic at all and calls everything problematic about it hilarious.
The sexualized staging of Rose McGowan's death is read as a deliberate joke on the bimbo-who-dies trope; per IMDb trivia she could have fit through the opening and escaped, and she flips the killer like a pro wrestler, part of a slapstick way of fighting the villain that exposes the killers as high school kids getting beaten by teenage girls and makes Ghostface very vulnerable.
The seeds of David Arquette and Courtney Cox falling in love, knowing it ended badly and she went on to date Will Arnett, make their marriage what aged worst, though it is pure in the movie.
Part two is that David Arquette is really terrible, playing Dewey as if brain damaged, and it is unclear why he became a phenomenon afterwards; a defender says Dewey is supposed to be extra dumb and is charming, though his 'I was 24 for a whole year' line is too good for such a character.
The Henry Winkler scenes had more impact at the time because of his fame; the principal putting two fingers on Sidney's chin would be a real problem today, and together with his scissors threat to the two kids in masks suggests a background worth checking.
A Ross tangent: People vs. OJ helped one host like David Schwimmer, but Ross is blamed for turning Friends from a great first season into a rom-com, and another protests that Ross was just a character, a human being sometimes.
