Analysis of the Adaptation of Catch 22 in Film Industry

Pioneering talent in Hollywood is not hard to spot and with veterans in the acting and filmmaking industry, it’s not hard to find space and capital to make your own movies. Producers and filmmakers take storytelling from various sources in art, entertainment, and even social media. There’s an abundance of moving and compelling stories out there and when some have been translated onto screen straight from a book, the expectations are set to the maximum.

Acting veteran and award-winner George Clooney did just that with his wide platform as a celebrity and as a cinephile in general. The 57-year-old actor has always had quite the eye for quality entertainment, and has come a long way from portraying a rather questionable Batman to his Academy Award-winning role in Syriana back in 2006; indeed, the veteran actor has since found his rhythm in the vast world of film acting and filmmaking. Clooney is no noob to directing as well, with The Monuments Men, Suburbicon, and The Ides of March gaining quite the attention in the last few years. Thus, his directorial debut in television, with a limited series adaptation of Catch 22 on Hulu, is being highly anticipated by fans.

Not Exactly Love at First Sight

Catch 22 is a novel by Joseph Heller published back in 1962, one of those novels studied in literature class that George Clooney himself was forced to read in High School. In fact, according to Deadline, when first asked if he wanted to make the limited series for Hulu, his initial response was “No” and he said, “It seemed ridiculous. I didn’t want to get into the middle of all that.” However, fast forward to April 2019 and Hollywood’s most celebrated actor debuted his directorial skills with Hulu’s Catch-22 feature series and is rather excited to join the small screen business.

He tells Deadline, “I don’t care about the medium, I care about the quality of work, and television is doing some amazing things.” The limited series is eight episodes long and has Clooney producing it himself, along with his producing partner, Grant Heslov. Executive producer and co-writer of the series Luke Davis compares the premise of the novel and the series adaptation as poignantly relevant in a time where global anxiety is triggered by elements of “war, insanity, capitalism, and bureaucracy.”

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Along with Clooney, the series is graced by Girls actor Christopher Abbott, who snagged the role of Yossarian, an anti-hero character that stands in the gray area of right and wrong. Abbott’s character is known to be a bombardier with a frantic obsession every time he is sent on a mission, with a goal to just “come down alive,” according to Rolling Stone. The show will launch on May 17 exclusively on the Hulu streaming service and is a project that wasn’t exactly “love at first sight” when Clooney and producing partner, Heslov first heard about the pitch. However, the two fell in love with Luke Davies and David Michod’s script which did a great job nailing the book’s notorious nonlinear narrative, according to Variety.

Clooney’s Catch 22 with Christopher Abbott

33-year-old actor Christopher Abbott is Clooney’s new muse for his directorial pursuit of Catch 22 and although The Sinner actor isn’t widely recognized, Clooney handpicked him after watching a couple of episodes from his acting creds on Girls. According to Variety, Abbott has been acting for almost 10 years already and has talent captured by the camera that highly resonates with Clooney’s take on his career trajectory. Clooney is in awe of the actor and even compares him to a young Sam Rockwell who Clooney directed in “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” years ago.

Clooney wasn’t shy of sharing with Variety his admiration for the young actor, “I’ve recognized a lot of things in Chris that I think is more mature than I had when I was his age, but the one thing where I see real similarity is in the way he can take this in stride and sort of be the captain of the ship. It was a big ship, and he had to be the captain of it. And he did it easily.” Clooney says about Abbott.

Aside from directing and producing, as the multi-hyphenate that he is known to be, Clooney will also be starring in the series as Scheisskopf, “an aggressively crazy” character as described by a renowned TV critic. The Money Monster actor tells Deadline about the sense of responsibility he feels he has to take on every time he plays a character in a military costume. Clooney says that the costume doesn’t only help get him into character, but also adds a sense of animation in his attempt to bring a fictional wayward to life.

Although several filmmakers and TV networks have tried their luck in adapting Heller’s 1962 novel, with Mike Nichols’s successful film adaptation in 1970, many still believe Catch-22 is a story that is rather “unfilmable.' It certainly poses a challenge for Clooney, despite initially rejecting the impending pressure of recreating a classical piece; but maybe, just maybe, the real catch lies in the brevity of the series, something film fans will have to consider when the pilot airs come May 17th.