Check out George Clooney in costume on the set of Hail Caesar in LA yesterday. It’s a Coen Brothers movie. It’s about old Hollywood and a guy who did a lot of the dirty work back then to protect the stars when they f-cked up. I wonder if it’s based on a book I read last year called The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine by E J Fleming because Josh Brolin, who’s apparently the lead in the film, is playing Eddie Mannix. These “fixers” had to clean up murder, drug overdoses, illegitimate child scandals, and provide romantic covers for big name actors and actresses who were gay. There was wiretapping, they paid off cops and judges, it was a time of gossip glory. The book is delicious but I’m not sure about the accuracy. The author’s research is often incomplete, sometimes rather insubstantial. Still, the overall impression is entirely believable – Hollywood was corrupt as f-ck. Still is.
As for Clooney, I was hoping he was playing Richard Burton playing Mark Anthony in Cleopatra but apparently his character’s name is Baird Whitlock. Or, when you see this hair, maybe you just think of Doug Ross.
