The Boys in the Boat filmmaker George Clooney 'forgot' the problems of shooting a movie on water

George Clooney endured a testing shoot as the star of 2000's sea-set The Perfect Storm. So, why did he decide to head back onto the water for the rowing film The Boys in the Boat (out Dec. 25.), his ninth movie as director?

"Here’s the problem: I’m 62, and I’m old, and I forget s--- now," Clooney tells EW. "I did The Perfect Storm. I should have known better!"

While making The Boys in the Boat, the director says all the complications of filming such an endeavor came flooding back "the first day on the water. I was like, what was I thinking? The wind is blowing all the boats in different directions, our boat can’t get near the other boats, or we capsize it. We trained [the actors], and they’re doing a great job, but even a professional rower can row maybe two hours, and we’re going to be out there for eight hours. There was nothing but challenges but it was mostly about my stupidity more than anything."

The Boys in the Boat is based on Daniel James Brown's 2013 nonfiction book of the same name. The film stars Callum Turner as rower Joe Rantz, who rose from humble beginnings to represent the U.S. as part of the University of Washington's men's eight team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Turner explains that Rantz came from "an incredibly poor background. He was abandoned at 13, and completely left to fight for himself, which he did, and somehow found himself, through sheer will, at college. He joins the rowing team in order to get his tuition paid and some digs and some money to buy some food."

Turner's costars include Joel Edgerton, who plays the team's coach, Al Ulbrickson, a man the Australian actor describes as "one of those angry guys who’s on the verge of a heart attack. I get to play one of these coaches that we all know can be very successful because they care so much that they look like they’re having zero enjoyment, zero fun."

The Christmas Day release of The Boys in the Boat is the end of a decade-long quest for Clooney and his longtime producing partner Grant Heslov. The director recalls that the pair "chased the book 10 years ago, we lost out, didn’t get it. Then we went over to MGM three years back, and they had this in their library. We brought on a writer (The Revenant co-screenwriter Mark L. Smith) and put a script together that we liked, and then it was just about trying to get it made. The budget on this is not a very high budget — this isn’t a Marvel film. In fact, the studio came to me 10 days before we started shooting and asked me to give my salary back to make the budget, which I had to do."

Don't worry, there's no need to send any cash Clooney's way. The filmmaker has been made financially whole by the studio.

"You know how I got it back?" says Clooney. "By coming in on the budget that we said we’d come in on, as opposed to what they thought we’d come in on, because they thought the water stuff was going to make us late. Yeah, I got paid back, like, two months ago."

Clooney's next movie will see him back onscreen and reteamed with his Ocean's Eleven costar Brad Pitt on an action-thriller directed by Spider-Man franchise filmmaker Jon Watts.

"It’s so good," says Clooney of the movie, which does not yet have a release date. "Jon Watts is just a master storyteller, and we had the time of our lives, and it’s fun to work with Brad. You know, I have to carry him, because he doesn’t have any skill," Clooney adds, tongue firmly inside cheek, "but he’s pretty, he’s good-looking, so there's that, I suppose. And then [I'm] going to do a movie with Noah Baumbach, starting in a couple of months, so I’m excited about that. I play an aging movie star. How does that go for you?" 

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