Doug Ross (George Clooney<\/a>), just as he\u2019s about to leave the hospital for a job in a private practice, ends up in the middle of a high-stakes rescue during a storm: saving a boy (Erik von Detten<\/a>) who\u2019s trapped in a storm drain. You know the iconic image of Doug rising up from the water, holding the boy. He makes the call to take a news helicopter to County, and everyone, including those waiting in the ER, watch the live broadcast, including when the feed cuts. Of course, the boy lives and Doug stays where he belongs (for the time being, at least).<\/p>\n The show was already a hit at the time, but this episode helped elevate it.\u00a0The hour hinges entirely on George Clooney\u2019s performance, and he more than rose to the occasion. This was before he was George Clooney. This was what made him George Clooney.<\/p>\n This episode, \u201cHell and High Water,\u201d earned Christopher Chulack the win for Outstanding Directing a Drama Series for the Directors Guild of America Awards. It received six Emmy nominations, including for Clooney, Chulack, and Neal Baer<\/a> for writing.<\/p>\n \u201cI learned a lot about a lot of things, and the people were great,\u201d Chulack, who was also an executive producer on the show, remembers of his time on ER. \u201cThe cast as a whole was fantastic because the show became such a hit immediately. It could have turned into kind of a s**t show in terms of the politics and the cast and whatever, but they just took care of each other, and like John Wells<\/a> said, they were kind of a self-cleaning oven, the original six, and it was pretty great.\u201d<\/p>\n In honor of the 30th anniversary, TV Insider invited director Christopher Chulack to take a look back at the episode.<\/p>\n What was your first impression of the script for this episode? What stood out to you about it?<\/p>\n Christopher Chulack: I was producing the show as well, I was line producer. \u201cHell and High Water\u201d was Season 2, Episode 7, and it was the first time out of the first year and six episodes into our second season that we attempted anything like this. The show took place in the ER, and that\u2019s where, mostly, we did our exterior shots in Chicago, four trips a year. But what stood out was, it was huge. I mean, water and kids and helicopters, and it just was kind of intimidating that way, but we were going to give it a shot. So as a producer, that struck me, and then as a director, that was like, \u201cWow.\u201d And I was not a really experienced director by my standards of, I did 100 hours, I started directing on a show called Homefront for ABC, and that\u2019s where I started, and then ER happened, and I started directing there. And so it was a little intimidating, I gotta say.<\/p>\n \u00a9 NBC \/ Courtesy: Everett Collection<\/p>\n What stood out about George Clooney\u2019s performance in it? This was early in his career, early in the show, early in getting to know Doug Ross as a character.<\/p>\n Correct. Well, it was physical, what he had to do. So he was comfortable with that, and although it was really hard for him crawling into that pipe and running around and being in a helicopter, I don\u2019t recall having to really work with him on his performance. He was pretty much there. And I think he liked being around kids, and he\u2019s a great guy with kids, and we would have Make-A-Wish children come to the set, and he would hang with them. And so that\u2019s just his basic personality.<\/p>\n What do you remember about directing the storm drain, rescue, and news helicopter scenes, and your approach to those? Because it was something different than being in the hospital.<\/p>\n It was confining. We shot it, a lot of that stuff \u2014 I don\u2019t recall if the interior of the helicopter, I\u2019m pretty sure it was shot in Chicago because the landing of the helicopter, the taking off of the helicopter, that was in Chicago right off Grant Park. And so what I\u2019m saying is it was shot with a more limited crew because we didn\u2019t take our whole crew. We used the local crews there, and so it was a little different. My approach is always just to get the best performance and picture and shot. So that\u2019s just what I do. So I didn\u2019t have to compromise it, is what I\u2019m trying to say.<\/p>\n This episode features that iconic image of Doug emerging from the water with the kid, the light from the helicopter on them. Had you had any idea how well-known that image would become when you were filming?<\/p>\n No, but I knew from the very beginning how I was going to shoot that sequence, that lake, that reservoir, and the pipe. We built the pipe. That was all on the back lot of Warner Bros., and we shot it in this pond, it\u2019s called Walton\u2019s Pond because the exterior of Walton\u2019s house was on the back lot, as was that pond that they used in the show. So I was able to really kind of scout it and figured it out, but it just came to me right from the start that he would come out, he would be underwater, disappear, then he\u2019d come up, be closer, then he\u2019d come up and boom. I just knew it.<\/p>\n There\u2019s chaos throughout the episode, whether you\u2019re in the emergency room, in the trauma rooms, or with the rescue. Parallel to that was the story you had with Benton (Eriq La Salle<\/a>), Carter (Noah Wyle<\/a>), and Harper (Christina Elise) dealing with the other patient, the kid who ends up dying. Doug\u2019s storyline is splashier, but the other one is just as important, the typical everyday stuff we saw on ER. \u00a0What was your approach to that storyline to make sure that it didn\u2019t kind of get lost?<\/p>\n To do just that. I mean, it\u2019s what we did regularly. I mean, we had been doing it for season plus seven, and again, that wasn\u2019t hard. Eriq is great. There was no different approach. I mean, when you\u2019re in the ER and the little boy is brought in and he\u2019s in Trauma 1 and the girl\u2019s in Trauma 2, that was quite a deal to set up, and thank God we had Guy Beem, who was our steadicam operator. So once the doctors, the technical advisors said, \u201cWell, this should be here and this doctor\u2019s going to be here,\u201d they just make it technically correct, my approach to those trauma scenes was you just shoot \u2019em like a documentary in a way. And Guy Bee\u2019s a great steadicam operator, so he can get in there. He is a good storyteller. He dances with the actors. And if I do say so myself, I\u2019m very proud of the sequences in that episode.<\/p>\n \u00a9 NBC \/ Courtesy: Everett Collection<\/p>\n That\u2019s something that ER did very well, going between the trauma rooms.<\/p>\n Right. And you as an actor better know your lines because when you\u2019re spinning around and you are in the middle of a take and you blub it, we got to cut because if you look, sometimes there\u2019s not a lot of edits. The editing is in the handheld or steadicam shot, so it\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n What changed, if anything, during the course of filming this episode?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t recall. I mean, Neal Baer wrote the script. We got the script and we prepped it. Nothing really changed. We had a big meeting. We knew we had a kid in the water as well as number two on the call sheet, George Clooney, and although he wasn\u2019t George Clooney, yet \u2014 he was George Clooney after that episode. We had to heat the water, and that was thousands of gallons of water that had to be heated because they were in it for such a long time. That was a big deal, and I think we made some changes in terms of technical changes, special effects had to do some extra, extra work on it as the nights went on. It was pretty standard that way. We were a well-oiled machine as a production company.<\/p>\n Every episode was just another event. You had to tune in live, and if you didn\u2019t, then you were missing out on something big.<\/p>\n Yeah. Everybody that has been affiliated with ER, ER changed their life.<\/p>\n I think ER changed the medical drama genre as a whole.<\/p>\n Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And we got word that specialty medicine in universities went over to \u2014 everybody wanted to be an ER doc. Everybody was affected by it. When you have collectively every Thursday night at 10 o\u2019clock, 35 to 40 million people having a common experience, I mean, that doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n No. It was compelling medical cases, great characters, great relationships, and you combine all of that into 40 minutes, and there was no streaming back then, there was no social media, so people were just watching.<\/p>\n Right, exactly right.<\/p>\n Something else that stood out to me about \u201cHell and High Water\u201d is the character and relationship moments. We get Carol (Juliana Margulies) checking in on Doug in the locker room about if he really wants to leave \u2014 that\u2019s back when they were broken up, before they got back together, but you can still feel that history between them.<\/p>\n Always looking for that. And Juliana was great at giving those looks, and if you notice that, there\u2019s a couple of cuts, I believe, in the trauma room where George is very intense, trying to save the boy. She\u2019s in there, and we cut to her closeup, and it\u2019s about him, and it just subtle things like that. She was really good, and we were able to capture that.<\/p>\n![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/er-207-doug-ross-rescue-392x570.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/er-207-doug-ross-852x570.jpg\")
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