By Margaret A. McGurk
The Cincinnati Enquirer

George Clooney borrowed from the best for his first job as director.

From the Coen brothers, who directed Mr. Clooney in O Brother Where Art Thou?, he adopted the tactic of using "camera as a character." He said he took cues on "non-linear storytelling" from Steven Soderbergh, his director in Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven and Solaris, and his partner in a production company called Section Eight.

But more important influences - "the guys I was ripping off, to be quite honest" - were Mike Nichols and Alan Pakula. Mr. Clooney's movie, Confessions of A Dangerous Mind, opens Friday in Cincinnati.

"I screened movies for the cast and crew quite a lot," Mr. Clooney said recently by phone. "I screened Carnal Knowledge, Catch 22, The Graduate," all directed by Mr. Nichols.

"Then I screened some Pakula films, The Parallax View and Klute, some films that dealt with danger and suspense, because Alan was really good with that. I was stealing shots from those. I was stealing sounds from All That Jazz. ... Every time we'd do a shot, it would be some old film. I'd look over at (cinematographer) Tom (Sigel) and say, `You know, Carnal Knowledge.' "

The movie is based on the bizarre autobiography of game-show creator Chuck Barris, in which he claimed to be a CIA assassin while simultaneously running The Dating Game and The Gong Show. Mr. Barris, portrayed in the movie by Sam Rockwell, never has recanted that story.

Mr. Clooney has backed away from his declaration after finishing Confessions that he would not direct again.

"It will come down to if I find another story I have a unique view of. I had sort of a great way of understanding this," he said, attributing it to his father, longtime television personality Nick Clooney.

"I grew up on sets, on TV shows. The Nick Clooney Show, the set would fly up in the air at like 1:30 after he'd finished the show. He'd put it on ropes and the risers would all go up in the air, and there'd be a bowling alley underneath it. And they'd shoot Bowling for Dollars right there.

"I knew what those sets looked like from the back and I knew how they felt, what they looked like when cameras weren't on. I certainly understand the trappings of celebrity. ... So I thought I had a unique take on this. And if I have another film like that, I'd do it. But only if there's a reason to."

Influenced partly by his father's new book, The Movies That Changed Us, he said, "I'm in the middle of watching Hail The Conquering Hero right now. I've been thinking about a Preston Sturges kind of comedy."

If it does come to pass, he is likely to use favored collaborators. "I believe in rep companies," he said. "I've worked with Don Cheadle three or four times, Mark Wahlberg three times. I'm a firm believer in working with people you like and trust." Asked for new additions to his dream team, he said, "You gotta get Renee in there, Renee Zellweger, 'cause she's just as good an actress as they come."

Meanwhile, he and Mr. Soderbergh intend to produce movies that appeal to their own tastes.

"We're just looking for good screenplays," Mr. Clooney said. "... You want to get people who've written something on spec, because they've written it out of passion, not because they've written it for a job. . . .

"It's just a gut feeling. It's the first 10 pages in. It's that simple. You know by the way they write dialogue, because it's something unique, a voice you haven't heard before, or a voice you've heard before you'd like to hear again."

While Confessions is tallying encouraging reviews and box office figures in early release, the year has held disappointments. Welcome To Collinwood, the Cleveland-based film that Mr. Clooney produced (and appeared in briefly), came and went with little notice. And while critics raved about Solaris, audiences rejected the psychological science-fiction movie.

"My feeling is seven, eight years from now, there will be people who rediscover that film, and that's OK," Mr. Clooney said. "People didn't get Out of Sight at all, in fact it lost money, and now people talk about it as a really good film. O Brother they didn't get and Three Kings they didn't get. And I find those films hold up. My feeling is, it's sort of better to just do them and let them sit there and pick up the pieces all at the end."

E-mail mmcgurk@enquirer.com