George Clooney discusses the true story behind his new film 'The Boys in the Boat'

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Out of the depths of the Depression comes an improbable story of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the meaning of true grit at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

That true story was a number one New York Times bestseller and now a film of the same name, "The Boys in the Boat," out on Christmas Day.

Stephanie Sy met up with author Daniel James Brown and director George Clooney recently in Los Angeles.

It's part of our arts and culture series, Canada.

Stephanie Sy: The film aimed to get the rowing right and represent the scrappy freshmen who, against great odds, rose to beat the most elite collegiate crew teams.

Actor: It has to be now.

Stephanie Sy: Putting the University of Washington on the map. They then rode for Olympic gold under the gaze of Hitler and the world as it was slowly reckoning with the rise of fascism, no small feat for the nine Americans or for the storytellers.

Director George Clooney explained the daunting challenge of taking on the screen version of the massively popular book. 2013's "Boys in the Boat" has remained on The New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list for 144 weeks.

George Clooney, Director: What I have the advantage of is that he's done all the work, right? He's done all the research. He's done all the hard work. He's put the story together.

And so my only real danger is messing up his really good work. When we finished the film and showed it to Dan, my first -- I walked over and I said, now, you know we didn't put everything in the movie.

(Laughter)

George Clooney: But our job was to make sure that we tried to capture his vision and his -- the heart of his story.

Daniel James Brown, Author, "The Boys in the Boat": And that was also what I wanted. George had me come down last August and gave me a screening, and I was really nervous. I didn't know what to expect at all.

And about three-quarters of the way through the movie, I found myself sniffling. And by the end of the movie, I was all teared up. And it just -- it really touched me.

Stephanie Sy: What part made you emotional?

Daniel James Brown: You know, it was a combination of the camaraderie amongst the boys, which he captured really well, that sort of triumphal ending, and the love story. He did a really good job with a love story.

George Clooney: The two actors are really wonderful in the love story.

Hadley Robinson, Actress: They're announcing the team today. Are you going to make it?

Stephanie Sy: At the center of it all was Joe Rantz, played by Callum Turner. The strapping oarsman, chiseled through manual labor, comes from Depression era poverty and a broken family. Rowing offers him money to pay for college, and the boat becomes home.

He's supported in his quest by college sweetheart and future wife, Joyce, played by Hadley Robinson.

George Clooney: You have to get the right actors who can act in a period piece and to feel like they're of the right time.

Daniel James Brown: Yes.

George Clooney: And they are just spectacular.

Stephanie Sy: Clooney loved the story so much that he tried unsuccessfully to bid on the film rights years ago.

George Clooney: And so, when it came back around, we decided we'd try and take a shot at it. These are not easy films to get made anymore, because you can't make them cheap, right? They're not a super cheap film, because there's so much technology. The rowing, you have to build the boats. You have to train the young men.

But it's not -- they're not designed to be a big hit. These don't open like a Marvel film.

Stephanie Sy: Right.

George Clooney: So, studios don't really jump at these kind of things. So you have got to kind of con them into doing it a little.

Actor: Technique is more important than power. You have to be able to pull a perfect oar.

Stephanie Sy: What in you makes you want to tell a story like this today?

George Clooney: I like what this says about us. We remind ourselves when you see this that we're really good when we work together, and that we actually kind of root for one another even. And all those sound -- that loud noise we hear, it's kind of on the fringes more so. It gets amplified a lot, but it's on the fringes more.

Actor: Athletes should be rewarded for performance, no politics.

Stephanie Sy: You talk about camaraderie and how important and how you were moved during that time. You know, it occurs to me that men in general, they only find camaraderie in sports or in the military.

George Clooney: You see what she did? She just generalized men in general. Isn't that -- wow, that just -- that cuts right here.

Stephanie Sy: Is that not true?

George Clooney: Yes.

Stephanie Sy: You guys have like...

(Laughter)

Daniel James Brown: One of the first things I learned was how much these guys just loved each other through the rest of their lives.

I was writing this book 60, 70 years after the fact, and the last few of them, as they died one by one, they grieved deeply, because they had this enormous bond amongst themselves.

Stephanie Sy: The late Joe Rantz was Brown's neighbor. He knew the character of the man up close.

What allowed him to go from a novice who had never picked up an oar to being in an Olympic gold medal-winning crew team?

Daniel James Brown: Yes. Joe was abandoned by his parents. He brought himself up, so he learned that he had to do everything by himself and for himself and in his own way. He had to make this sort of transformation from sort of rugged individualism to cooperation.

And that's part of what the movie and the book are about, is this arc from being an alienated, angry, dissatisfied individual to becoming part of something bigger than himself.

Stephanie Sy: The fact that the film drops at a time when division and war are spreading worldwide and authoritarianism is on the march provides a relevant backdrop, the collaborators say.

Daniel James Brown: I was very aware, even 10 years ago, that there were dark forces on the rise in America, I would say. And that's gotten worse as the intervening 10 years have passed.

So I think the book was timely when I wrote it. I think it's more timely now.

Stephanie Sy: The dark forces in Nazi Germany at the 1936 Olympics had yet to reach their zenith, a fact Clooney had to contend with in his filmmaking.

George Clooney: When you're telling the story like this, you can't be smarter than we were at the time.

Daniel James Brown: Yes.

George Clooney: So, in 1936, some people had read "Mein Kampf." Some people knew, but you never really would have known how far that could have gone in 1936.

Daniel James Brown: Yes. Yes.

George Clooney: Wouldn't have known what it was like, who he was in 1944.

Daniel James Brown: Yes.

George Clooney: And we had to be careful not to be too aware.

Daniel James Brown: Yes.

George Clooney: They had to be like -- and they were. They didn't like him and they thought he was an autocrat and they thought he was dangerous. But they didn't know enough. And we had to be very careful not to make him -- to make everyone else that aware of who he was at that moment in history.

Stephanie Sy: With the team's triumph, "The Boys in the Boat" hearkens back to a different time and tone in America.

Actor: Anything you would like to say about those boys out there?

Actor: They're the finest I ever saw seated in a shell.

Stephanie Sy: You know, I have seen some of your earlier work, like with the Coen brothers and some of your other films. There's such a lack of cynicism in this story.

George Clooney: Yes.

Stephanie Sy: And I wonder if that's a conscious choice and whether that's a choice that you make as a father. Is this the type of film we expect to see from George Clooney from now on?

George Clooney: No, I mean, I have done horrible films too, evil, rotten things.

(Laughter)

George Clooney: I'm enjoying the journey, and I'm figuring things out. And I like working in different worlds, and I like succeeding at it.

I'm optimistic because I do believe in the human spirit. And my parents always raised me with the idea that the better angels are going to win out.

Stephanie Sy: After opening in the U.S. on Christmas, the film will hit theaters in early January in the United Kingdom, where it was filmed.

Actor: Not bad, huh, fellows?

Stephanie Sy: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Los Angeles.