My Sensei is upset again. He’s been pacing around his suite at the Hanoi Hilton (not a prison, not a torture chamber, but a really nice place in Palm Springs) all day and all of the night. He’s pissed at his “former friend” and collaborator George Clooney. Can you blame him? Apparently Clooney won a Golden Globe for Jay Kelly (is it even out yet?) and, during his acceptance speech, he referenced My Sensei’s recent comments on Paul Dano, Owen Wilson, and Matthew Lillard. Remember: these things were said on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast among friends and thousands of listeners. People in the entertainment industry love listening to Bret Easton Ellis’ show and not copping to it. Admit it, you like the show. You like Ellis’ candor. But you were on his side when My Sensei called Dano “weak sauce,” and “the worst actor in SAG.” He called his performance in There Will Be Blood “a non-entity performance.” Ellis asked him if he enjoyed any Dano performance. My Sensei said no. Ellis said okay.
This exchange made headlines around the world for a couple of weeks before Rob Reiner was murdered by his son.
But that’s so last month, and since celebrities finally got the message that people don’t like it when they get political, they really didn’t have much to talk about at the Golden Globes on Sunday, just how “things are so divided” right now. And “crazy.” Well, I just had an orange soda and a bahn mi. I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Clooney isn’t smart, but he isn’t dumb either, and he spent last year getting heckled on Broadway and harassed by Democrats who blamed him (among many others) for pressuring Joe Biden to drop out and allow Kamala Harris to run. (I still call her Copmala. It’s fun.) He knows more than most people in that room that people are sick of the moralizing. So he went for some easy sympathy.
“By the way, Paul Dano and Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, I would be honored to work with those actors. Honored… Jay Kelly was made by people who love actors—that’s an important part. People I’ve known most of my life… actually, most of them are actors. I have a great affinity [for them], and I don’t enjoy watching people be cruel.” [https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2026/1/12/clooney]
Okay, I lied: Clooney didn’t win a Golden Globe. He won Best Actor at the AARP’s Movies For Grownups Awards. I’m not kidding. And as Jordan Ruimy points out in that article, Clooney has only had three hits in his entire career: The Perfect Storm (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), and Gravity (2013). Did anyone even remember that he was in Gravity? That’s Sandy Bullock’s movie. My Sensei is right: George Clooney isn’t a movie star.
So how will he respond? “To what?” To being called “cruel” by an old friend. “We were never friends. George got weird when we were promoting From Dusk Till Dawn. He was getting offended that I was telling everyone how much we looked alike, and he was actually pretty rude to me in interviews, and has been ever since we made that movie in ninety-six. I have pretty thick skin, but this is a guy I worked with closely, and it just bummed me out. I have no idea what started it or what pre-ti-ci-pated it—”
This was one of My Sensei’s many “eccentric” pronunciations. He meant “precipitated.” No one ever corrected him so neither did I. He’d eat me. “I just know that one day he started talking shit about me in public. He’s got thin skin, man. He does all that political shit to compensate for, whatever, being called a dumb actor. Who cares. Enjoy being famous. I know how awesome it is. People send you so much free shit. Look, new shoes.” He threw a pair of Air Jordans at me. I put them aside for tomorrow’s flea market.
I don’t like George Clooney. I don’t know if he’s vegetarian, but I’m assuming he’s not and he eats meat. I’m sure he’d be very nice and politically correct towards me in public, but once we got alone in a trailer like me and My Sensei are in every day, he’d start plucking my feathers and tenderizing the meat. Really not into that. He gives off “desperate actor” energy, and it’s off-putting. Throw in all the political shit, and you have a guy that’s been sort of grandfathered into the A-list, but who doesn’t deserve to be there. He just looks like a classically handsome Hollywood leading man, the closest physical resemblance we have to Cary Grant. But that’s all that’s keeping him afloat, and he knows it, because he wouldn’t be doing all of this petty bullshit in public if he was happy inside. My Sensei and I both know that George Clooney isn’t happy inside.
I ask My Sensei what he’s going to do. “I’m gonna ask George to play Rick Dalton.”
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