ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S raddest bromances doesn’t go quite as far back as you might think. Audiences take the storied friendship between George Clooney and Brad Pitt for granted, seemingly as if it’s existed since the two started in the business together. And yet, that’s only partially true; there’s a natural inclination to build a false narrative around the idea that the two have worked together forever. Memory betrays us, and what comes down to the better part of two decades feels like double that as we continue through time.
The truth of the matter is this: 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven marked the first collaboration between Pitt and Clooney. But, baked into the text of that film is the understanding that the two have known one another for a long, long time. In a reality where audiences often conflate on-screen personas for real-life personalities, it’s easy to pretend that the pair have a history that dates back even longer than 23 years ago.
Ocean’s is a lot of things—endlessly entertaining, impeccably written, brilliantly captured, breathtakingly paced, and expertly directed—but it also arrived on the scene at a perfect moment for both actors. Pitt, hot off of the cult success of Fight Club, was dating Jennifer Aniston and at the center of tabloid culture. Meanwhile, Clooney had just teamed up with Ocean’s director Steven Soderbergh for Out of Sight, capitulating him from television star to film star overnight. Seeing a film capture moments like this, where two generational talents collided on-screen, is exceedingly rare. It’d be like having Michael Jordan and Shaq on the same team together.
As such, Ocean’s is just as much about the partnership between Clooney’s Danny and Pitt’s Rusty as it is about Danny’s relationship with Tess (Julia Roberts). The first thing Danny does after getting out of jail is to hunt down Frank (the late, great Bernie Mac) to drudge up Rusty’s whereabouts. While checking in with his parole officer on the phone, the frame divides into a split-screen, with the back of Rusty and Danny’s heads facing one another, like bookends. Here, Soderbergh is already drawing a subtle distinction to the years of backstory the two have together, long before they even end up in the same room together.
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Once they do, at Topher Grace’s poker game, the Ted Griffin-penned script loads the scene with all sorts of history, with Rusty double-speaking the idea of drawing out a bluff as a shorthand to the understanding that these men are the only two capable of truly reading one another. After the game, they smile, nod, and leave out into the night together to hatch another scheme. Throughout the tried and true “putting the gang together” sequence, there’s already an implicit trust as the two, together, go about recruiting. That’s bolstered by little details like Rueben (Elliott Gould) directly saying they’re the best or even how they’re positioned side-by-side throughout the movie in group shots.
The ability to read one another comes into play after Tess is introduced, with Rusty questioning Danny’s real motivations. In fact, the whole conversation is coated in that shared history, with Rusty reminiscing about how things were when the two got together. It works in service of their arc and establishes a real level of shared trust. Rusty’s concerned about the gig going off the rails, sure. But he’s also concerned about his friend and how this newfound development may shift his mentality. They’re the only two capable of reading one another’s tells, calling each other out, and pushing things together to the next step.
It speaks to the camaraderie of the shoot, where Soderbergh mentioned that he actively cast the film in a way where the film didn’t have “male characters that were insulting each other,” as he told the BBC.”We cast it very carefully in every role, choosing people who would add to that good feeling and avoiding people who we felt wouldn’t.” That’s something Clooney confirmed to GQ recently, saying that “everyone was actively trying to hand the scene to the other person. And that was kind of a generosity of spirit, but also confidence that you don’t have to grab and hold onto everything.” Having that ease makes it easier for an audience to buy in accordingly, believing this idea of a beautiful relationship, which is what makes Ocean’s such a totemic and potent part of the story between these two.
Clooney and Pitt knew each other prior to Ocean’s. How could they not? The relationship they forged on Ocean’s is still the foundational text upon which their entire bond can be viewed. That movie changed the fundamental trajectory of their careers, sending them into the stratosphere and putting them in a position to return to it, in some form or fashion, in Wolfs. The Jon Watts-helmed movie is about two fixers—played by the two men—hired for the same job. Naturally, that evokes a position of when Clooney and Pitt auditioned and fought for the same roles, in addition to being a mediation on what happens when you start to get too old for a job. But it allows them the chance to once again translate and reinterpret that friendship, deeply cultivated on Ocean’s, to the big screen (for a limited window before hitting Apple TV+, that is) for audiences to see.
In the world of stars, it can be challenging to separate fact from fiction. Stars pretend. They act. All in service of bringing viewers into a space where something is believable. That’s the illusion—the magic trick—of watching them perform. Memory betrays us, remember? But thanks to Ocean’s, what otherwise might be a fictional friendship is a fact that’s spanned decades.
Stream Wolfs on Apple TV+ (on September 27) Here
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