Latest news with #MichaelClayton
ABC News
21-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Huge vet bills forcing cash-strapped pet owners to make an impossible choice
Michael Clayton shudders when he recalls the night he came within a whisker of losing his best friend. It was two days before Christmas and his eight-year-old cat Frankie was in a bad way. He had been attacked by another cat and needed his eye urgently removed or he would have to be euthanised. The vet fee was almost $2,000 and Mr Clayton had no way to pay. "I begged them and begged them to do a payment plan and they said 'no'," he recalled. "My heart dropped. I did actually cry." The vet offered him VetPay – a quick-access loan scheme many cash-strapped pet owners turn to when they cannot pay a sudden emergency vet bill. But, with no income other than his disability pension, the 47-year-old was not eligible. The thought of losing the companion, who had been one of the few constants in his life since he became disabled by a neurological condition four years earlier, was incomprehensible. "That would've destroyed me," he said. With time running out, Mr Clayton's support worker contacted crisis charity Safe Pets, Safe Families (SPSF), who had only recently become a provider of No Interest Loans (NILs) through Good Shepherd Finance. While the scheme was not normally suitable for emergencies like Frankie's, volunteers worked with Mr Clayton's support worker to get his paperwork rushed through the day before Christmas. After organising for one of their partner vets to perform the surgery at a discounted rate, a volunteer even travelled to the vet to get the final signatures. "They were absolutely Godsent," Mr Clayton said. Mr Clayton and Frankie would have had very few options without the NILs loan. With no way to pay for the surgery, SPSF founder Jennifer Howard said Mr Clayton would likely have been reported to the RSPCA and Frankie would "have been seized and euthanased anyway". In the past, the charity would have used its community vet fund to take care of cases like Frankie's, but allocations have been exhausted. The fund operated on a "circular" model, where eligible clients borrowed money for vet fees and paid it back once they had the financial means to do so. Since becoming a provider of NILs, SPSF has been able to help not just those on Centrelink, but also low-income earners. Pet owners can borrow up to $2,000 for vet care through the scheme, with eligibility determined by income. A single person can earn up to $70,000, while a couple can earn up to $100,000. Ms Howard said the quick-access loan scheme VetPay which was offered to Mr Clayton could be a good "one off" option for cash-strapped pet owners, but its high fees could plunge others into significant debt. "For our vulnerable community members who are on low incomes, [a high-interest loan] can put them in some really bad positions where they might not be paying their bills or they might not be eating properly," she said. Despite being used by more than 1,500 vet clinics in Australia, consumer advocacy groups have voiced concern about VetPay's high fees, transparency and understanding of hardship practices. According to its website, in addition to its 18.4 per cent interest, it charges an annual fee of $69 and a fortnightly transaction fee of $2.50. CHOICE had previously labelled VetPay "extortionate" and said it was "profiting from people at a time when they're desperate and need to care for a beloved pet". According to the Consumer Action Law Centre (CALC), which operates the National Debt Helpline, VetPay customers have been presenting to its frontline services after accruing significant debt and being unable to access hardship support. CALC chief executive Stephanie Tonkin said VetPay was an "example of a company that is making money out of people's misery". "VetPay [has] created a product targeted at a market where people are vulnerable — where they're stressed about the welfare of their beloved pet. It's a financial product that describes itself as a payment plan, but in reality, it's … a high-interest credit card with loads of fees," she said. "It's targeting people through its connection with vets [and] its legitimacy through those connections … but there are better products out there for people to afford their vet bills." The consumer advocacy group said VetPay marketed itself as an "affordable payment plan" but it was a credit product with "eye-watering fees and charges". "If you go onto VetPay's website, you can see it uses words like 'empowerment' and 'responsible', it really preys on people's emotions," Ms Tonkin said. "It looks like a trusted site that will help you in a time of need, but in fact, it's a credit card with high interest and high fees, and it's pretty unclear about what to do when you can't afford to repay." Ms Tonkin said the regulator needed to take "a close look" at whether VetPay was being "completely open and transparent" with the information provided to customers and potential customers. VetPay told the ABC it was committed to continuing compliance with its obligation as a licensed credit provider. "Vetpay's payment plan enables consumers to pay for veterinary services over time," it said in a statement. "VetPay encourages its customers experiencing financial hardship or distress to contact VetPay and seek assistance. VetPay's staff work directly with its customers to help them navigate hardship and to get back on track." During the cost-of-living crisis, veterinarian Dr Tegan Hadley said her Adelaide clinic was seeing more and more pet owners being forced to euthanise their animals when they could not pay a vet bill. But, loan schemes like NILs were "really valuable" in changing the outcome for people and their pets. "No-one really likes to talk about that, but sometimes when a family is really struggling and then a big bill comes out of nowhere, we don't have any other options for our patients," she said. "It's an awful feeling. Euthanasia is very necessary in the right circumstances … but when it's because of financial circumstances it's really hard … not just for me but for all of our staff. Pet insurance has been criticised in the past by consumer advocacy groups for not being good value for money, but in more recent years, as the industry has become more regulated, CHOICE said insurers were making "positive changes" to policies. However, the Consumer Action Law Centre told the ABC it still did not recognise pet insurance as a "good value product". Safe Pets, Safe Families' Jennifer Howard said she was in "two minds" about pet insurance but noted it was still evolving. "I'm definitely not against insurance, that's for sure. But, I guess, it's just out of reach for some people," she said. Her charity is among those calling for vet care to be subsidised by the government, arguing it would help pet owners as well as the veterinarian industry, which experiences higher rates of poor mental health than many other professions. The loan for Frankie the cat's surgery will likely take Mr Clayton about two years to pay back on his disability pension, but he will pay no fees or interest of any kind. When Ms Howard delivered the good news that his NILs application had been accepted, he broke down in tears. "Just the thought of losing his pet, he was so stressed out," Ms Howard recalled. Months on from Frankie's brush with death, Mr Clayton said he has mostly adapted to life as a "pirate cat". "I couldn't tell you what I'd do without him. He just means everything," he said. "He's still here. He's still part of my life and I just love to have him next to me every night and every day."
Daily Maverick
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Andor Season 2 swaps space wizards for wartime complexity and suspense
All-round sophisticated, prequel series Andor is not only one of the greatest pieces of Star Wars media ever created, but ranks among the best wartime thrillers to reach the small screen. If you're someone who doesn't like politics in your entertainment, you should stay far away from Andor. That said, with the release of the series' second and final season, you should also be aware that you'll be missing out on not only one of the greatest pieces of Star Wars media ever created but also one of the best wartime thrillers to reach the small screen in recent years. For a short while in the mid-2010s, custodians of the Star Wars brand decided to give filmmakers more creative freedom when playing in A Galaxy Far, Far Away. By 2018, that experiment seemed over, as evidenced by the complete overhaul of Solo, but before that, audiences were treated to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which stripped out the space wizards with laser swords and delved into the sacrifices of the grassroots Rebel Alliance in their efforts to take down the Galactic Empire. Set before the original Star Wars film, A New Hope, this was a universe where the Jedi were thought extinct, and any acts of insurrection were by ordinary people facing disheartening odds; individuals who could be killed by a single blaster shot. Darker, more mature, Rogue One was massively acclaimed and proceeded to spawn a prequel series in the form of Andor in 2022. With Rogue One's co-writer and reshoot director Tony Gilroy — the same man responsible for writing the Bourne movies, and making Michael Clayton — at the helm, Andor explores how Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) transitions from a survival-minded thief to a key Rebel leader. Following Rogue One's tonal lead, Season 1 of Andor doubled down on showing the horrors of life under the Empire, which previous Star Wars popcorn blockbusters only alluded to. It's one thing watching a planet exploded from a distance, and another to witness prisoner deportations and forced labour due to warped judicial process; the rape of planetary resources as locals and their culture are steamrolled into oblivion; and torture techniques using the screams of genocided children. And that was just Season 1. During the space of three years in our off-screen reality, Andor has transformed from a cautionary tale to something perhaps too on the nose. And yet, the Star Wars fans who were so vocal about The Acolyte's 'wokeness' have been very quiet about a series that is so unveiled in its antifascist attitudes and representational inclusion. Then again, Andor benefits from a kind of credibility that runs through to its core. In addition to embracing the use of real-world, tactile sets and costuming, the series doesn't hide behind the distraction of franchise cameos and whizz bang special effects; the kind of visual dazzle seen in fellow Star Wars series The Mandalorian, for example. At times, it's easy to forget that you're even watching Star Wars, until a squad of Stormtroopers marches by, or characters jump in a spacecraft. Even alien creatures seem a minority on Andor's homogenous planets under Empire control. Andor continually leans into the recognisable for audiences. Until the show, did anyone know that Core World citizens in Star Wars get their news from propaganda-twisted broadcasts, and have their tradition-drenched weddings culminate with shots on the dancefloor under a disco ball? Suddenly, Star Wars feels a lot more relatable. Sophistication Paired with its practical visual approach and a general sophistication in cinematography and cross-cut editing, Andor is slow-burning, performance-driven and keen — in between the series' signature, rousing speeches — to show, not tell, the complexities of its world. Andor even gives space to emotionally stunted people who might find (or think they find) their place within the Empire's governing bodies. These include ambitious Imperial Security Bureau supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and browbeaten administrator Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), both of whom crave approval and glory, but find themselves shaken over where their goals lead them — especially once Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) appears on the scene with his top secret Death Star project. We're all the heroes of our own story, after all. On the good guys' side, meanwhile, it's not just about Cassian. Andor is an ensemble, and makes sure to spotlight the immense risk taken by Rebel organisers operating in plain sight on the city planet of Coruscant, along with the morally grey decisions they must make. Standing out here are Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen Rael, an apparently flamboyant antiques dealer funding the Rebellion alongside idealist Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), who is forever walking a tightrope under intense surveillance. Luthen and Mon's secret identities must hold, or else. Arguably, only one character in Andor is done dirty, and that's Adria Arjona as Bix Caleen, a black market dealer and mechanic, whose 'development' over two seasons runs disappointingly backwards, positioning her solely as motivation for Cassian. Speaking of seasons, Andor S2 is quite different to Season 1 structurally, despite both consisting of 12 episodes. Whereas the debut season focused on a relatively compact time period, the latest batch of episodes spans four years, jumping forward 12 months every three instalments. Viewed another way, Andor Season 2 comprises four movies (it's releasing in three-episode portions) devoted to a plot arc, before moving on. This approach is handy for covering a lot of ground narratively, but the downside is that it can be frustrating for audience emotional investment. Some storylines are more engaging than others. While the opening chapter draws parallels with Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon, it's the episodes devoted to the Empire's chilling and all-too-familiar actions on the Old Europe-esque planet of Ghorman that hit hardest, and they're in the middle of the season. After that, you might find your interest flagging. In addition, with Andor S2 covering nearly half a decade, characters simply disappear from the story, or are denied on-screen catharsis regarding tragic events. Then again, this is the realism of Andor. No matter the feelings of those left behind, people do blip out of existence while life carries on, especially during wartime. While the Star Wars movies might deliver a heroic death set to a soaring John Williams score, in Andor, characters fall silently as a result of an accident. Sometimes they're even killed offscreen. It's a bold creative choice that demands reconciliation on the viewer's part. At the same time, though, it means that the stakes are very high. Anyone can die, which means suspense is ramped up to nearly unbearable levels when characters are on high-risk missions or generally in peril. There's no escaping that, as a prequel to Rogue One, Andor needs to wrap up with its pieces perfectly placed, leading to some convolution and jarring late-stage cast additions. How the series sets up its board, though, is brave (like its isolated resistance fighters), thought-provoking and relevant today more than ever. It's Star Wars, fully grown up, holding open the eyes of viewers whether they want to see or not, and is more likely than any other entry in the franchise to win over people who declare they don't like Star Wars. DM Andor Season 2 is screening on Disney+ from 23 April in South Africa. It will release with three-episode drops every week for four weeks. PFangirl.
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
On ‘Andor,' All Is Fair in Love and ‘Star Wars'
What attracts two people to each other? Are they drawn together by a mutual need for companionship, affection and emotional support? Or are they united by their individual yearnings to advance their own positions and consolidate power in a tyrannical empire that is building a moon-size superweapon? In the Disney+ series 'Andor,' the answer turns out to be a little from Column A and a little from Column B, at least in the case of one of the stranger — yet undeniably compelling — relationships to emerge in the 'Star Wars' fantasy franchise: the frustrated pencil pusher Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and the ruthless security officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough). Their pursuits are often nefarious — against their perceived enemies and also against each other. And although their give-and-take may have lacked the smoldering looks and snappy banter of, say, Princess Leia and Han Solo, Meero and Karn became a subject of fascination for viewers of Season 1, who watched the power dynamics ebb and flow in the characters' often awkward relationship. As their story continues to unfold in Season 2, the first three episodes of which debuted on Tuesday, the actors portraying them and the show's creator, Tony Gilroy, are taking stock of the characters' journeys — what it says about the underlying themes of the series, the nature of couplehood and the possibility that there might be someone out there in the universe for everyone. 'Somehow, Tony saw in he and I these two little weirdos who find each other,' Gough said of her and Soller's characters. When viewers first met Karn, he was a fastidious but hapless deputy inspector obsessed with capturing the show's title character, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a thief and spy who will rise to become a key member of the rebellion in the film 'Rogue One.' Karn's failures cost him his security job, and he crash-landed into a gig as a government flunky at the Imperial Bureau of Standards, a division of the sinister Galactic Empire whose tentacles have spread across the cosmos. At his new post, Karn crossed paths with Meero, an ambitious supervisor in the Imperial Security Bureau whose assignments included torturing suspected rebels. The fumbling Karn was drawn to her as both a potential romantic partner and an embodiment of the Empire he worshiped. The calculating Meero saw Karn as both a means for her own advancement and a bumbler undeserving of her attention. Gilroy, who was a writer of 'Rogue One' and reportedly oversaw reshoots and editing, said that Karn and Meero had emerged from his brainstorming process when he was first planning 'Andor.' Knowing that he wanted to start with Andor committing a murder, Gilroy (whose other films include 'Michael Clayton') said he felt it would have been 'a crime against dramatic nature not to have a pursuer — the concept of a Javert, the concept of an Ahab.' That pursuer eventually became Karn. Gilroy's son, Sam, meanwhile, had turned him onto the rancorous scenes of infighting among the Imperial officers in the earliest 'Star Wars' movies. 'Some of them are really cool,' Gilroy recalled thinking, though the sequences focused only on male characters. 'I thought, We should really have the distaff side of the story,' he said. That led him to Meero. Gilroy found his actors for both roles on the stages of London and New York: Soller, who is American, in the Matthew López play 'The Inheritance,' which ran in both cities, and Gough, who is Irish, in the Duncan Macmillan play 'People, Places & Things,' which did likewise. Soller said that he appreciated how Gilroy's earliest 'Andor' scripts depicted the 'soul-crushing nature of this massive corporate evil structure' that Karn was part of while giving the character 'an interior life that I'd never seen before.' In the scenes that he was shown, 'you get to see him having breakfast with his mom,' Soller said. 'It was like a Pinter play being written out in the 'Star Wars' universe.' He did historical research, likening Karn to any number of people from the World War II era, whom Soller described as 'normal people — normal is in quotes — who got caught up in fascism, who got swayed by fear and their own insecurities, their lack of understanding and lack of empathy.' Gough said she saw Meero as focused, implacable and ambitious, and that she found her way to the character through written dialogue, physicality and instinct. 'It's kind of weird, because I don't really think a lot,' Gough said of past roles she has played. 'These women arrive and they do whatever they do. With Dedra, she just showed up.' Then during production, Gough said, she got a fateful note from Benjamin Caron, an 'Andor' director. As she recalled, 'He said, 'Put your hands behind your back,' and I did that. And I was like: Oh, great. Suddenly my face is doing things that I didn't think about.' Gilroy said that as the writing of 'Andor' progressed, some sort of collision between Karn and Meero became inevitable, an illustration of two different kinds of people who would be drawn into an authoritarian system like the Empire. 'I think what I'm getting at with them, ultimately, is the conflict between the romantic vision of authoritarianism and a zealot's version of it,' he said. Karn is the naïve fantasist who sees Meero as his path to a better life — 'he's grown up in a box, why wouldn't he fixate on her?' Gilroy said — while Meero is the hardened true believer who can't decide if Karn is worth a womp rat. In a scene from Season 1, a blindly devoted Karn waits for Meero outside her office, intending to pledge himself to her cause. She warns Karn that she could have him arrested, but rather than run off, he answers: 'I want what you want. I sense it. I know it. As Gilroy explained the scene, 'There's a little bit of daylight where she's thinking, 'Oh my God, no one ever talks to me like this — maybe I like this?' He does ring her bell a little bit, and then he goes too far.' Then, in the Season 1 finale, Karn saves Meero from the wrath of an angry street mob. Trembling, she says to him, 'I should say thank you,' and he calmly answers, 'You don't have to.' The characters were left at a critical juncture, and it was clear where at least some 'Andor' fans wanted them to go next. As Gough recalled: 'I went to a Comic-Con, and people had made patches of Kyle on one side and me on the other, inside of a broken heart. What is it the young people say? Shipping? I'm getting shipped.' But behind the scenes, Gough said, she was wary of any story line in which Karn's rescue of Meero led them to a conventional romance, and she expressed this to Gilroy: 'I was like: 'So, what, she just gets saved by a bloke? Is that what we're going to do?'' she recalled. 'He was like, 'Seriously, you think that's the story I'm going to tell?'' The earliest episodes from Season 2 of 'Andor' reveal what became of Meero and Karn after his act of heroism. (Details from these episodes are about to follow — stop reading if you want to avoid Imperial entanglements or spoilers.) In Episode 2, we learn that the two have settled into a domestic relationship, one in which their contrasting desires and personal pathologies are still in conflict. As Soller explained: 'They're so hungry for power and for control, but then the demand of relationships is one of the most intimate and terrifying places to exercise control and power. So, of course, they would do that.' Despite the reservations she had expressed, Gough said she could understand why Meero would now want to couple up with Karn — if only to keep tabs on him. 'He saw me at my most vulnerable,' she said. 'So I need to keep an eye on that, because I don't want that out in the world.' And in Episode 3, the couple's dynamics of dominance and subjugation are further explored through another relationship rite of passage: a meal at home, where Karn introduces Meero to his mother (Kathryn Hunter). It becomes the backdrop for a battle of wills between the two women. Without going into further detail, Soller said he could relate to Karn's dilemma here. 'I've been in that scenario,' he said. 'You completely regress, and you go collapse on the bed for five minutes, or you need to use the bathroom for a quick 10 and look at yourself in the mirror.' Gilroy offered some words of warning about how much the story of Meero and Karn had to say about real-life, earthbound relationships, even as a cautionary tale. When he is plotting the course for a series like 'Andor,' Gilroy said, he has no specific agenda other than to explore 'what would be dramatic and what might be truthful behavior and what would be fun.' It is only when he discusses these creative choices in retrospect, he added — a 'purely forensic' exercise, as he had put it — that he is 'forced to go a little bit more analytical about what might be happening.' Scrutinizing his characters at this level can reveal only so much about romance: 'It's a bit like an autopsy,' he said.
San Francisco Chronicle
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Andor' creator crafted the most ambitious ‘Star Wars' series yet with final season
'Andor,' which premiered on Disney+ in 2022, is widely considered the smartest, most mature and best 'Star Wars' spinoff series. Now Season 2 completes the journey of Cassian Andor, portrayed by Diego Luna, from interstellar criminal to the passionate rebel martyr who meets his fate in 'Rogue One' (2016), a close prequel to George Lucas' original film trilogy. If anything, the 12 new chapters have even more character development, complex political intrigue and new worlds to understand. Credit that to showrunner Tony Gilroy, the acclaimed screenwriter of the 'Bourne' movies (2002-12) and writer-director of 'Michael Clayton' (2007), a multi-Oscar-nominated look at ruthless corporate chicanery that foreshadows some of the Galactic Empire's predations in the series he created. History buff Gilroy, who worked ideas into the show referencing everything from the Holocaust-planning Wannsee Conference to the Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident that got America mired in the Vietnam War, spoke with the Chronicle via video from Los Angeles a week before the final 'Andor' season's debut on Disney+ on Tuesday, April 22. Q: Your work has always been sophisticated and complex. How do you mesh that with a franchise known for lightsaber duels and Baby Yodas? A: I'm doing the same thing I've always done, trying to bring my game wherever I go. I'm trying to be real, trying to be truthful; starting small, not thinking about agendas. You don't embark on something this huge without a lot of foreplay beforehand. OK, you're buying into a show that's going to track five years of someone who starts off about as disinterested and apolitical as he could be, and turning him into 'Rogue One's' revolutionary war hero. So you're testing each other and showing things. Once we laid down the grammar and the tone of it and the places we could go, Disney kind of let me go free range. They really sat back and watched, and gambled on us all the way through. It's quite extraordinary. Q: So how do you balance intricate trade wars, clashing rebel agendas and the like with spaceship chases and other action staples? A: Job one is not to bore you. Job one is to make you wonder what happens next. It's an adventure story. I am positively pathological about not losing your interest. So I start there, and I try to temper that with everything else that I do. I like a lot of characters. Look, they gave me the opportunity to go from being a short-story writer, which is essentially what screenwriting feels like to me now, to being a novelist. So I wrote an epic novel about revolution and insurrection over a five-year period, and authoritarianism and oppression and the destruction of community. These are things that I've been studying my whole life as an amateur, never anticipating I'd ever have an opportunity to use any of that. Q: Some of it seems unnervingly familiar. Anything in the show that inadvertently or intentionally speaks to the politics of 2025 America? A: Certainly not intentionally. I mean, without the strike, the show would have come out a year ago, and we built it up five, six years ago. I make historical comps all the way through the series. So I'm not writing with a newspaper, and I'm not psychic. I do not know how the show will be received. I will be as interested as anybody else — probably more interested than anybody else — in how it lands. But it's not something that was engineered, that's for sure. Q: Describe your concept of Cassian and what he represents. A: He's just the perfect warrior, spy, revolutionary. My pitch was, put him in the biggest hole you possibly can and let's watch an almost messianic character come into focus over a five-year period through the most difficult gauntlet we can construct for him, surrounded by the biggest chorus of peripheral and essential characters that will fill in the rest of the story. Q: What does Diego Luna bring to the role? A: I worked on 'Rogue' and I knew Diego from that. You can make movies with people you don't like and get through it, but you could never make a show like this. We've been together for a long time. It takes an extraordinary person, an extraordinary actor and really an extraordinary collaborator to do that. Diego Luna is all those things. Q: 'Andor' not only plays more realistically but looks more — I guess the word is persuasive — than other franchise entries. A: One of the first hires that we made was Luke Hull, the production designer who had done (HBO's 2019 miniseries) 'Chernobyl.' From day one, he was my primary collaborator. When you think about it, every single thing we do in the show has to be designed. I hadn't realized that when blithely, ignorantly getting involved in the show. Luke is my constant conversation. We built worlds, we built these societies, these economies, these aesthetics, these languages. He has fired up abilities and ambitions in my work that I never thought were possible, and then delivered on them. Q: I had to Google 'Valencia City of Arts and Sciences' to confirm that your Coruscant Senate building is an actual, futuristic structure in Spain. A: We went down to Valencia and looked at that (architect Santiago) Calatrava building and it was like, 'Oh, my God, we can do everything here. All kinds of things for the Senate, we can put 25 other things in here.' We like shooting in the world and extending our set. That's our approach: We find a place that works for us and put the actors there, then extend it later on. It's definitely old-school, it's a fading practice. But there's wind, there's air, there's sun, there's weather, there's the traditional tempos of filmmaking. Q: You often work with your brothers; Dan ('Nightcrawler') wrote three episodes for the new season and John edits all your projects. What's the appeal? A: I trust them. I mean, we've been working together forever. My brother John is listed as an editor, but he's a producer on the show. He's made so many directors look good for so long. He's cut everything Danny and I have ever made as writer-directors. We're very lucky. We really get along and respect each other, and we know how to resolve our problems.
Wall Street Journal
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Star Wars Is in a Slump. Is ‘Andor' Its Only Hope?
Tony Gilroy is a jedi of screenwriting. He was a longtime Hollywood script fixer, wrote most of the Jason Bourne movies and was Oscar-nominated for 'Michael Clayton,' a George Clooney legal thriller that film buffs and fellow writers speak of in reverential tones. If only Gilroy, 68, could sell everyone on the show he spent the last six years crafting.
