Hollywood idol George Clooney chats with Xtra-vision about the making of his offbeat new comedy, The Men Who Stare At Goats.

A story so incredibly bizarre it could only be true, The Men Who Stare At Goats details the adventures of a struggling reporter and a shadowy, ex-military oddball who claims to have been part of an experimental U.S. military unit called the New Earth Army. Seeking to change the way that wars are fought, they claim such useful psychic powers as mind-reading, the ability to pass through solid walls, and the power to kill a goat simply by staring at it.

Starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, it's a deeply wacky and absolutely fascinating film set against the backdrop of war in Iraq. Inspired by Jon Ronson's non-fiction bestseller of the same name, The Men Who Stare At Goats is available now, on Blu-ray and DVD, from Xtra-vision.

"You know it's funny," said star Clooney during the London Film Festival, "there are things that were made up in the screenplay, but the wackiest things were all true. Right there in the book, you read about them literally trying to run through walls. They really believed they could."

As for Clooney's personal take on the paranormal, "I'm not a big believer in much of that," he admits. "Everybody goes through déjà vu and things like that, but I don't really go for that stuff. I find it mostly to be coincidence."

When it came to the movie though, says the star, that was a project he firmly believed in. "The book had such a unique tone, and the script really nailed it. We were anxious to see if there was any way that we could do it," continued the star, who co-produced the film with director Grant Heslov, "and Grant had all the right ideas."

Despite the movie's Goat-slaying premise, Clooney insists that no animals were harmed during its production. "I tell you, this goat was a particularly nice goat. We spent a lot of time together. He wanted to go over the dying around me, so we worked on that for a while. The funny thing is, the goat was a great actor. He'd walk in and stare at the camera. If only we could have gotten Ewan to do that!"

But seriously folks... George and Ewan had a smashing time together. "It's sort of shocking how normal Ewan is, you know, absolutely fun and normal. We would talk about the motorcycle trips that he takes around the world and down through Africa. He sorta fit into this group of actors who were all really fun to work with. They're all professional, and did their work before they showed up, so by the time we got on set there wasn't a whole load of misery before the shoots, just a lot of rubber band fights, and food fights, and it was fun. So yeah, Ewan, like Kevin and the others, was just absolutely fun to work with and a great guy. I'm a really big fan of his."

Joking aside, it's not easy making a successful film about the Iraq war and the War on Terror. "It's hard to make films that directly deal with that subject matter since we're in the middle of it still," agrees Clooney. "Honestly though, I never really thought of Goats as an Iraq war movie. It's a different kind of story completely. I've done an Iraq war film with Three Kings, which holds up and continues to be relevant, but I think this one is just a glancing blow at Iraq. Rather than actually dealing with the war," says Clooney, wrapping up, "it just happens to take place there."