In an interview with Dark Horizons about the newly released Dan Brown/Ron Howard film Angels and Demons, Scottish actor Ewan McGregor has dropped a few hints about another movie of interest: The Men Who Stare at Goats. Adapted from Jon Ronson’s book of the same title (available from Amazon US and UK) – about the U.S. military’s (actual, real-world) interest in ‘psychic’ technologies – the movie will star McGregor, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges, and is scheduled for release in December 2009:
On his character in the film based on Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book, McGregor revealed: “Well, I play a journalist (Ronson), at the beginning of the film whose wife, who’s also a journalist in this small newspaper in Ann Arbor – The Ann Arbor Daily Telegram – cheats on him with her one-armed editor, Dave. And I see her flirting with him. But then she comes clean, and she’s going to leave me for this one-armed man, Dave. And I, in my misery, take myself to Iraq.”
Further, on the setting and story of ‘Goats,’ McGregor added: “It’s the beginning of the Iraq War. And I go to become embedded, but all I do is end up in a swanky hotel in Kuwait, and can’t get into Iraq. I’m not embedded with any troops, so I’m stuck in this four-star hotel, having wanted to prove my manhood by going to war, you know? Where I meet George Clooney’s character, and we embark on a kind of road trip through Iraq, looking for his buddies in this strange and secret section of the American Army. It’s a very funny film, and I had such a lovely time working with George, and with Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey. And it was the four of us, and it was just hilarious. It was great fun.”
Jon Ronson has become somewhat of a public interface to the weird world of Grailistic topics: in the last couple of years he’s been pop-star Robbie Williams’ chaperone at a UFO conference, eviscerated Sylvia Browne, and now has some of the biggest male stars in Hollywood making a film about his book. Even the skeptics love him – he’s one of the speakers at this year’s sold out Amazing Meeting in London.
