George Clooney has cut Josh Brolin out of ‘Suburbicon’.
The 56-year-old star, who directs the forthcoming crime film, has revealed he had to chop the Hollywood actor’s part because it didn’t work, despite being the "two funniest scenes in the movie".
He said: "We shot a couple of scenes with Josh [playing] a baseball coach that are really, really funny.
"But after we did our first screening, the one thing that became really clear to me was that [the scenes] let the air out of the balloon, in terms of the tension in the film.
"I had to write him this awful note where I just said, ‘You’re not going to believe it. but these scenes really don’t work any more.’
"He felt bad, and he thought maybe something went wrong, and I said, ‘I’m sending you the scenes, so you can see, they’re actually the two funniest scenes in the movie.’
"I remember sitting there with the editor going, ‘F**k! I can’t believe this!’ "
Clooney knows the feeling of having scenes cuts as the actor admitted he was supposed to appear a lot more prominently in 1998 war movie ‘Thin Red Line’.
He said: "I’ve sort of been in the same situation. I did a bunch of scenes in ‘Thin Red Line’ and then got a call from Terry [Malick], saying, ‘We’re cutting out everything except the very last scene.’
"I was like, ‘Please cut me completely out of the movie! Don’t leave me in one scene!’ "
Clooney insists there was "no option" but to remove Brolin’s scenes from ‘Suburbicon’, despite his acting being "absolutely great" in the forthcoming film.
He added to Entertainment Weekly: "But, [on ‘Suburbicon’], it is one of those where we were just, like, ‘There was no option.’ He was so great in the film. I never like talking about those kind of things because it can be really unfair to an actor, except to say he was just absolutely great in the movie."
‘Suburbicon’ stars Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac, and is set for an October release.