If trailer drops were any indication of blockbuster-season fatigue, then it would be safe to assume that the major Hollywood studios who routinely show-up at the Oscars couldn’t be more eager to dart headfirst into September (the “unofficial” start of the 2025 Oscar season) and debut what they believe is the best film of the year.
Of course, those of us (obsessives) who are watching closely know the Oscar race kicks off again every year in the frigid cold of the Utah mountains (although the sun is quickly setting on this venue thanks in large part to the misguidedness of the few) – and that’s only if you aren’t one of those who believes there is no start or end to the Oscar race at all, just perpetual motion. I count myself among that horde. Simply put, the Oscar season cannot start or stop because a great movie can come from anywhere, at any time. Sure, the pageantry may lay dormant for a period of time (certainly as the exhaustion from the previous ceremony finally takes hold and statues have been handed out), but the arrival of any good, great, surprising, worthy film will quickly create an army of advocates among its admirers. And if its studio or distributor is willing, able, committed, not otherwise engaged or simply up for a throw-of-the-dice, then a strategy is born…
Aside from that “reality-check,” maybe we’re even being too kind in crowning the early fall as the “unofficial” start of the Oscar season. Unfortunately, and no disrespect to the Hollywood heavyweights circling their calendars for this fall, it’s almost unanimously agreed that the Croisette wears that crown for the time being as the Cannes Film Festival has completely usurped the Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival as the place to discover the inimitable best film of the year (and this year its entries could be especially prescient).
Nonetheless, let the other films have a go! And so in a week full of Hollywood movers and shakers putting their pieces on the board, no reveal was more eye-catching than Netflix’s pony “Jay Kelly.”
The first footage provided from a teaser that Netflix scheduled on the cusp of the announcement of the film’s inclusion at the prestigious Venice Film Festival gives us a peek at the new George Clooney vehicle.
Clooney (again) stars as the man looking in the mirror – and that’s quite literally where the first preview opts to begin. Sure it’s on the nose, but that sentiment could just as easily be playing into the hand of a film that brilliantly subverts audience expectations. Hopefully. Perhaps I’m being overly cynical (sign of the times, maybe) but hopefully the film won’t be reduced to the logline – “So you think you know ‘George Clooney,’ eh?”
To be fair, it’s the kind of role where George Clooney has delivered some of his most fully-realized, memorable turns – nuanced, layered, self-reflexive work in films like “Up in the Air” and “The Descendants.” These performances of course exist within that golden, extended love-affair Clooney had with the Academy Awards, which began in 2005 on the eve of dual nominations for writing & directing “Good Night and Good Luck” and his first win that very same year for his supporting turn in “Syriana.” He’d be a mainstay at the Oscars for several years after finally breaking through with Academy members, racking up Lead Actor nominations every other year starting with 2007’s “Michael Clayton” and no doubt steering each of those nominations into a correspondent Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay nomination for each project. The only downside was that despite all the early fervor and declarations of being the front-runner in each of those Best Actor races, his momentum would finally fizzle on Oscar night. There’s probably no greater illustration of this resistance to hand him either that second statue or leading man recognition than when he finally lost in 2011 to “The Artist’s” Jean Dujardin (an unknown actor in Hollywood circles, in a silent performance). Thus ended the Clooney era of dominating the Oscars and the Lead Actor race.
The question for this year is essentially has anything changed to his advantage?
Fast forward 14 years after “The Descendants” and George Clooney is revisiting the old playbook (collaborating with a prominent Oscar nominated writer/director on a role he’s mastered) and plotting a return to Oscar night. Quite shrewdly, this move follows the tremendous success Clooney has found in literally revisiting (you see a theme here yet?) the project that helped him breakthrough, “Good Night and Good Luck.” Replicating the original film’s same timely release strategy, this theatrical adaptation is also capitalizing on the precarious political moment the United States has found itself in. George Clooney rang that bell again with his anticipated Broadway debut and was toasted among audiences, critics, theater professionals and industry figures, breaking box-office records and earning his first Tony nomination.
But, will that sentiment crossover with his “small-screen” return to Lead Actor contention when his film bows at Venice? Here are a few things to keep in mind…
This will be Clooney’s first go-around with Netflix, which has successfully embodied the paradox of Oscar powerhouse and pariah. This will likely factor in, the only debate (regardless of advantage or disadvantage) is to what degree? Another tricky component to the bid is the collaboration with the esteemed Noah Baumbach, who despite his many critical successes is probably still an unknown quantity when it comes to the Oscar race. Sure, “Marriage Story” saw a Baumbach film finally garner multiple major nominations and even its first win (Laura Dern, Best Supporting Actress), but how many of his worthy efforts between that film and his first nominated title (“The Squid and the Whale”) failed to get any traction? And it’s certainly important to remember that Baumbach’s last collaboration with Netflix (the troubled “White Noise”) landed with a thud. Unlike Alexander Payne and Jason Reitman before him, Noah Baumbach hasn’t graduated to a Best Director nomination at the Oscars yet. When Clooney lands Best Actor nods for each of those projects (“Up in the Air” and “The Descendants”), each film had a considerably easier time getting into Best Director since the branch was already familiar and fond of those artists – Payne was a previous directing nominee for “Sideways,” and Reitman surprised many by landing in the shortlist for “Juno.”
To that end, with nods in writing, acting and directing, it’s safe to assume that Clooney’s bids for Best Actor were always with films that comfortably landed within the Best Picture 5, rather than the “filler” spots on the bottom half of the 10 nominees. Although “Marriage Story” was shortlisted for Best Picture, without that Best Director nomination you can make a strong argument that, in the stacked race of 2019, a year of only 5 nominees would have left the film off the shortlist. So, Baumbach’s ability to muscle his way into the Best Director spot will prove paramount to Clooney’s own hopes of securing that nomination (let alone win).
If Clooney is still insider enough to boost Baumbach into the Best Director category, then it’s fascinating to think who else he may bring along for the ride. Sure, there’s Dern who is reuniting with the writer who brought her Oscar glory in 2019, but the Oscar-sphere is abuzz with the possibility of seeing the perennially overlooked Adam Sandler recognized in the Supporting Actor category.
Truth be told, if there was any one industry figure with enough muscle to get any dismissed actor to be re-considered by the Academy (Meryl Streep aside), it is surely George Clooney – at least Golden Age George Clooney. During his nomination streak, Clooney saw his co-stars Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick all net nominations alongside him (and it was the first nod for the vast majority of those artists). In fact, it was only late in that streak when Clooney couldn’t help seal a Supporting Actress nomination for the young Shailene Woodley in “The Descendants” that his “co-star” magic came up just short.
Sandler of course will be remembered for his omission in 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” a polarizing film for the conservative Academy. And funnily enough he’ll be running the awards circuit alongside his collaborators on that picture (the Safdie’s will both premiere films this year and look to break through with the Academy themselves for the first time in their career). But, we should remember that Sandler gave a hugely lauded performance in his last collaboration with Baumbach – the Cannes premiering “The Meyerowitz Stories.” While absent from voters’ kind regards, Sandler has nonetheless solidified his own favored standing with Netflix, and one could imagine that nothing would make the streaming behemoth happier than to finally push Sandler through that glass ceiling – expect the bulk of their footwork to go toward Sandler, who doesn’t hold the same reputation as Dern and Clooney among voters.
But despite all this pedigree, this can be a potentially tricky plane to land for Netflix, and that trailer sort of hints at the kind of hurdles the film will have to cross. Baumbach’s personal “Marriage Story” had him exploring the Hollywood landscape through the lens of artists and professionals in that field. Typically, this sort of context is a major turn-on for voters (one doesn’t have to look further than “La La Land” to see the tremendous benefit that sort of landscape can provide a film, at least when it comes to nominations). But, this teaser appears to have Baumbach mining the area of “Hollywood persona” rather than creative professionals, and that may be a tougher sell to the Academy. Even phonetically speaking, naming your project “Jay Kelly” after its star “George Clooney” could possibly be perceived as conceited, or at least self-aggrandizing in the same breath as self-deprecating. The film runs the danger of going beyond self-reflexivity into the realm of egoistic, a big “no-no.”
Voters like films about industry artists, not personalities – to say nothing of critics and viewers. Bill Murray’s uncharacteristic turn in “Lost in Translation,” which netted him his only Oscar nomination, is possibly the only exception that comes to mind – and it’s easy to think that nod only ever comes to fruition after the Academy was forced to reconsider Murray’s body of work and acting style following lauded performances in “Groundhog Day” and “Rushmore.” Sandler’s own “Funny People” (2009) comes to mind as a film that failed to take off in this regard. In fact, this is a problem that Netflix should be all to familiar with, as the similarly conceived “Bardo” exploded in their lap in 2022’s Venice Film Festival. Ironically, that’s the same year they also got pie in the face from the bow of Baumbach’s “White Noise,” and the studio instead scrambled to launch an Oscar campaign for the technically profuse, historically approved and timely adaption of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Suffice it to say, there are landmines a-plenty in the Oscar path for “Jay Kelly.”
Strategically, it’s a no-brainer for Netflix to unveil “Jay Kelly” at Venice. After all, George Clooney is a staple of Italy now, and at the very least the home crowd should eat up his presence at the festival and swoon at his face on the big screen. Interestingly, the last time Clooney both premiered at Venice and was subsequently nominated for Best Actor was also his first, “Michael Clayton” in 2007 (“Up in the Air” premiered at Telluride, while “The Descendants” opted for TIFF). But not every promising Venice premiere launches domestically with the same enthusiasm (you need only to reference Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing” in 2017 to see how quickly and brutally the tide can turn after an auspicious start). So while eyes will be scrutinizing its world premiere, do not take for granted that North American premieres matter, big time.
Although it’s their first collaboration, it’s interesting to note that Clooney and Baumbach shouldn’t be strangers. In fact, they were both Oscar freshman in the same year, 2005 when they garnered their first nominations. Ironically enough, they were competitors in the Best Original Screenplay category that year. It is now 20 years later. Will they bring each other luck once again? You tell me.