Watched George Clooney’s directorial debut last night which as an adaption of Chuck Barris’ autobiography. Chuck Barris was a television producer in the 60’s who was responsible for creating “The Dating Game” (Blind Date to those in the UK) amongst others. But in his autobiography he claims to have also been working as a hitman for the CIA until the late 70’s.

The screenplay is written by Charlie Kaufman, the lunatic responsible for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and as expected is quite odd (and quite quirky, to keep up the theme of the weekend). It is well written and well acted, with Sam Rockwell taking on the part of Barris, Drew Barrymore as his girlfriend and Clooney himself as Jim Bird, Barris’ CIA handler. I was also quite surprised for the most part at how well directed it was. Although he tends to play all characters the same, Clooney can’t be accused of sticking to a particular role as many of his contemporaries are and has definitely branched out to doing non-mainstream films. His direction refects that by not necessarily playing the game the way we would expect him too.

It’s not all good though. Despite being well written, I didn’t really feel involved and found myself not really caring about Barris or what he was up to. There didn’t seem to be any sense of conflict in the script. This could also be in part to having clips of interviews with Barris’ real life associates cut into the narrative which, although interesting, did tend to interrupt the story more than add to it. However, that being said, it’s still a cut above most films I’ve seen recently. All in all, I look forward to seeing more of Clooney in the director’s seat.