No joke, I met George Clooney once at Rolling Stone. He spoke to a roomful of us at length. I asked him, with all due respect, why would *you* ever make a bad movie? You have access to all the best scripts, directors, co-stars...? His answer was really interesting. Thread.

Clooney said there are far fewer great scripts than you'd think. And he can't sit around waiting for a great one because there's a universe of people in "The Town" who depend on him to say yes so they can work... (2/9)

That means there's pressure on him to pick a script to make once every few months even if none of the scripts in front of him are great. Others have told me if too much time passes between his films, he starts to risk losing his place at the top of the Hollywood mountain (3/9)

Someone like Clooney can basically greenlight a film but if he doesn't work then many others below him on the pecking order don't work and if he's not out Being A Star then he's not helping the whole movie ecosystem and he may lose his Big Star status. (4/9)

Clooney did not say, that it's really hard to make a great film. Some great scripts get messed up on set, some get screwed up in the edit. That said, it's not necessary for a movie to be great for it to make money. (5/9)

"Bad" movies turn a profit all the time and "great" films lose money all the time. The presence of Clooney (or DiCaprio or Pitt or Denzel or one of the other Big Stars...) isn't about making the movie good, it's about getting people to see it. (6/9)

The likelihood of you and one million others seeing a given film rises exponentially if one of the Big Stars are in it. So the Big Stars have done their job as soon as they step foot on set—whether or not the movie is "good" is sort of beside the point. (7/9)

Clooney was really nice in the way he answered me but he could've said, with all due respect, your question is irrelevant. He wants to make good films, sure, but there isn't a direct and consistent relationship between how "good" a film is and how much money it makes. (8/9)

Clooney stays at the top of Hollywood Mountain because his films consistently make money—ie, lots of people see them—not because they're "good" according to film snobs. His job is not to wow movie critics, it's to make money for the studio and "bad" movies can do that, too. (9/9)