Clooney Taking Cast and Crew Back in Time With ‘Fail Safe’

Tick. Tick. Tick.

In just two days, some of the biggest names in Hollywood--including actor George Clooney and director Stephen Frears--will be working without a safety net as they appear Sunday in “Fail Safe,” the first live CBS teleplay in 40 years, though it will be tape-delayed for at 9 p.m. start on the West Coast.

A seat-of-your-pants thriller set in the Cold War ‘60s, “Fail Safe” traces an unfolding crisis triggered by a mistake of international proportions: A U.S. bomber is ordered to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow.

Trying to save the world from nuclear disaster in roughly two hours--just in time for the late local news at 11 p.m.--has been a massive undertaking. For the last month, cast members have been put through their paces by director Frears (“High Fidelity”), because there is little room for error.

The teleplay will be broadcast in black and white from two big sound stages on the Warner Bros. lot. A golf cart will take actors between the stages, and there will be about 18 cameras to capture the action.

The live production of “Fail Safe” is the brainchild of former “ER” star Clooney, who is both the star and producer of the CBS movie.

The original screenwriter, Walter Bernstein, was convinced by Clooney to adapt his screenplay for this new version. Clooney also worked to layer the cast with such seasoned actors as Richard Dreyfuss, Harvey Keitel, Brian Dennehy, Don Cheadle, Hank Azaria and former “ER” cohort Noah Wyle, many of whom have extensive stage credits and are used to performing live. For Frears, who has not yet directed live TV, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I have learned that when George Clooney calls, you should say, ‘Yes,’ ” Frears says. “But it was easy. It is like a huge adventure.”

Clooney concedes that “Fail Safe” is a risk.

“CBS is putting up a lot of money here,” says the popular actor. Estimates put the cost of the “Fail Safe” production at about $5 million. “As opposed to putting up a lot of money for a movie of the week where they know what they are going to get at the end of the day, we could all screw up and the product will be worthless.”

CBS President Les Moonves, a longtime friend of Clooney’s, signed a deal with the actor’s production company last year, just before Clooney left his role as Dr. Doug Ross on “ER.”

“The first meeting we had,” Moonves recalls, “George came in and said, ‘Live. “Fail Safe.” Black and white.’ I said, ‘Oh, my God. You are not making it easy on me.’ But when he said he’d be in it, I said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”

‘Fail Safe’ Was a Novel, Then Movie

“Fail Safe” is based on the 1962 best-selling novel by Harvey Wheeler and Eugene Burdick and the 1964 film version directed by Sidney Lumet.

Clooney plays Col. Jack Grady, a U.S. Air Force bomber pilot assigned to what he believes is another routine flight. But soon after his plane takes off, radar picks up an unidentified blip. Bombers are ordered into attack position. But just before the fail-safe point--the moment the planes would be ordered into action--the blip is identified as a lost plane and the bombers are called back. But a computer malfunction sends Grady and his squadron on a special assignment with a special code: Bomb Moscow.

Bernstein, who wrote the story first for the big screen, believes it is actually a good one to adapt to television.

“Apart from whatever its merits as a story are, it can be done on TV. The scenes are mostly in a confined space and would work as a TV show, [and] it has a kind of immediacy if you think about it,” Bernstein says.

Bernstein didn’t radically alter his original script, but he excised some early scenes dealing with the players’ personal lives.

“We open now on the war room,” Bernstein says. “It’s a very good cut. You don’t really need those early scenes. Sidney Lumet and I, when we did it originally, we came from a dramatic tradition. You had to explain these people. Looking back on it, I think it’s the weakest part of the movie. I was very happy to have cut it.”

The movie, which starred Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau, has been Clooney’s favorite film since he was a youngster.

“I just always thought it was the perfect film,” Clooney explains. “There are some things that are dated in the film, there are a couple of things that don’t necessarily work anymore. But cinematically, it was beautiful and Lumet was just so great.”

Clooney started tossing around the idea of doing a version of “Fail Safe” three years ago when he began conversations with novelist Wheeler, who is now 85.

“I always thought it was the perfect project for TV,” Clooney says. “I don’t like the idea of remaking good films. But if we do it live, it’s not remaking the movie.”

The action in “Fail Safe” is limited to primarily four sets: the war room in Omaha, the Pentagon, a bunker underneath the White House and the cockpit of Grady’s plane. There are four additional sets for smaller scenes.

Award-winning Marty Pasetta is the movie’s technical director, and producer Ethel Winant, who worked on “Playhouse 90,” is also involved.

Walter Cronkite will open the night with a brief statement about “Fail Safe” that he’ll read from Stage 6 at Warner Bros.

Clooney insisted “Fail Safe” be telecast in black and white.

“When we did ‘ER’ [live] in color, that was our mistake,” Clooney says. “It looked wrong. It looked like a soap opera.”

Unlike the rapid pace and constant motion of “ER,” in “Fail Safe” Clooney wants the movie to feel like it’s cut from a different era. “We are trying to make this old,” he says. “We want to do the exact opposite of MTV. We want stillness and silence. There is no musical score. We want the [dramatic moments], which are really powerful, to come back.”

And there is the “live” aspect, of course. Clooney concedes he loves the adrenaline rush live TV gives him. It was the actor who convinced the producers of “ER” three years ago to do the live episode of the top-rated NBC series. It drew some 43 million viewers, but was largely pummeled by critics.

Though Frears had directed TV in England, he liked the idea of doing a live production. “This is all a new discovery for me,” he says. About two weeks ago, Frears starting working with the actors on the sets--rehearsing, blocking out scenes.

Helping Frears is Oscar-winning film editor Anne V. Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia”). “All of the stuff you normally do in post-production you have to do before time,” he says. “You have to have an editor around to talk to even before you shoot it. Not only for pacing, but to tell you where to put the emphasis [on a scene]. All the things an editor would normally do [in post-production], you are now having to make those decisions upfront.”

Oscar-winning Dreyfuss plays the president, the role Fonda essayed in the original. Most of his scenes take place in the bunker trying to make peace on the phone with the Soviet premier. Wyle plays Buck, the young Russian translator working with the president.

“It’s been very daunting because everyone’s schedule has been full up, we’re rarely ever able to get everyone in the same room at the same time,” Dreyfuss says. “It’s all going to come together in a rush at the end.

“If people just decided to do ‘Fail Safe’ as a movie for television, it wouldn’t have excited anyone’s interest,” Dreyfuss says. “Going live with it terrifies the actors, which is in a sense a good thing . . . a kind of point of interest for the actors.”

Though “Fail Safe” could be a disaster, clearly CBS executives are betting that viewers will show up. As Moonves puts it: “It’s an event.

“Look, we are in the new age of TV. You got to try things,” Moonves added. “People who think it’s a gimmick are the same people who complain we are not trying anything new.”

“I am always joking that it’s like going to see the Indy 500 and you want to see the wreck,” Clooney says. But his father, he says, offered a different perspective. “My dad says we don’t go to the Indy 500 to see the wreck, we go to the Indy 500 to watch them risk the wreck, and to win and to succeed. That is sort of what this is.”

Whether or not “Fail Safe” is a wreck, Frears says he’ll probably land in a hospital the Monday after the telecast regardless. “I’ll take George with me,” he says. “George will be in the lunatic asylum, and I’ll be in intensive care.”

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* “Fail Safe” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children). Turner Classic Movies will air the original “Fail Safe” Sunday at 11:30 p.m. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).