Clooney presents Catch-22 in Rome

(ANSA) - Rome, May 13 - George Clooney on Monday presented his new series for Sky, Catch-22, based on the cult 1961 Joseph Heller satirical novel on the surreal and self-defeating attempt of a self-declared 'madman' to escape US WWII air patrols, who is paradoxically judged sane because he wants to save his life.
    "There's the absurdity of war and the awareness that you can fight the system but it's hard to beat it," said Clooney, who has part financed the project, has directed two of its six episodes, and is among the stars who also include Hugh Laurie.
    "It's a story that can be current at any moment in history".
    Clooney said the series, to be broadcast on Sky Atlantic from May 21, shows how "TV lets you really tell the characters' stories, before brutally killing some of them." Also present at the Rome press conference were Christopher Abbott, who plays lead character bomber captain John Yossarian; Kyle Chandler, who plays Yassarian's bugbear Colonel Cathcart; love interest Tessa Ferrer; co-directors Grant Heslov and Ellen Kuras; screenwriter Luke Davies; and Giancarlo Giannini, the only Italian in the cast.
    Catch-22 has passed into the English language as a term describing a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations, for example "How am I supposed to gain experience to find a good job if I'm constantly not hired because I don't have experience?".
    The term is introduced by the character Doc Daneeka, an army psychiatrist who invokes "Catch-22" to explain why any pilot requesting mental evaluation for insanity - hoping to be found not sane enough to fly and thereby escape dangerous missions - demonstrates his own sanity in creating the request and thus cannot be declared insane.
    Catch-22 has already appeared on the big screen.
    It was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1970, directed by Mike Nichols.
    But many fans of the novel found the adaptation disappointing.
    Oscar winner Clooney, who plays the prickly Lieutenant Scheisskopf in the new version, said he had read the novel 40 years ago and said: "Catch-22 in America is considered a milestone in literature and a full-fledged cult novel for entire generations, so we really wanted to make it with Grant (Heslov), there's so much material.
    "It's not just a story about the absurdity of war, but also one about the difficulties of fighting the system." On playing the iconic Yossarian, Abbott said "he's a rebel anti-hero, who tries to maintain his mental equilibrium, fighting the military system. An existential journey of a person that wants to be declared mad to leave the war and in the end has an authentic and dramatic existential crisis".