anderswolleck

Back in 2002 film superstar George Clooney surprised a good chunk of the world with his directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Now hes generating major Oscar buzz for his latest effort, Good Night, and Good Luck. The film chronicles the real-life conflict between television newsman Edward R. Murrow, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee starring David Strathairn as Murrow and Clooney himself as Fred Friendly, Murrows producer.

This film has major resonance with Clooney since his father Nick Clooney was a TV newscaster for many years and often invited George into the studios at the age of five.

Check out the official site for Good Night, and Good Luck

Daniel Robert Epstein: Your film made me realize that there is no Edward Murrow today and the closest we might come to one is a satirist like Jon Stewart who speaks his mind nearly every day. What do you think?

George Clooney: I think Brian Williams is really articulate and really smart. I think hes the best of the guys Ive seen so far, especially when he was on [The Daily Show with] Jon Stewart. He answered some funny questions and then he avoided answering the ones that would have got him in Dodge. I think the difference is theres still great reporting going on by a bunch of people. But I dont think there is going to be anyone ever again that will have 40 million people watching them like Murrow did. It may be good that there wont ever be the most trusted man in America again, depending on who that man is but I just dont think you could have that kind of access. The two great moments in news history is Murrow taking out McCarthy and Walter Cronkite coming back from Vietnam and saying its a stalemate. Ultimately [President Lyndon] Johnson didnt run again because he said Hey, Ive lost Cronkite, Ive lost the country.

I dont find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story. With Les Moonves [CBS television president] I understand his problems of saying listen, I got to go back to shareholders and the market is getting smaller. I understand all those problems but it has always been and it will always be the battle between corporate and information. Its a tricky one and its complicated so I dont know if there are great answers to it.

DRE: Did you first get interested in this film because of your father?

GC: Definitely. It started because I grew up on the newsroom floor watching my dad work with these really wonderful reporters in Cincinnati Ohio and seeing them piece a news show together. Murrow was always the high water mark that everyone aims for. It was certainly a tip of my hat to my dad and the sacrifices hes made over the years.

DRE: Did you ask your dad for advice?

GC: The one thing he said to me constantly is that we should treat the material as if we were journalists and double check every scene because there will be people that will want to marginalize it. This is important because theres a revisionist history going on right now with people saying that McCarthy was right and Murrow was a traitor. Page Six actually wrote a nice story about that and Ann Coulter has a book about Murrow getting the story wrong so it was important to recalibrate fact. So my dad said get the facts right and that was what was most important to us.

DRE: One of the great things about the film is that it doesnt really end on some kind of rousing note. Was there a point where you thought you had to go big at the end or have something large happen?

GC: Originally we had made a montage of some of the greatest hits of television moments and then they sort of rapidly decline to the OJ chase. It ended with that famous piece car chase where they follow the guy and he sets his truck on fire and takes off all his clothes and blows his head off on live television. You hear the people in the background laughing in the newsroom and the guys says theres your lead news story. It was really a compelling ending but it was editorializing on my part and in order to get your facts straight and do it fair we decided we had to keep it in historical context and not do that. Its very tempting to do it because its pretty explosive stuff but were not trying to tell people how to think, were just bringing up a factual piece and raising a debate.

DRE: Did you ever have any interest in going into journalism?

GC: I tried it when I was young but I dont have the talent for it. My dads one of the best Ive ever seen. There are people who ask the right questions and are fearless. After a few drinks at a party last night my dad cornered Les Moonves and I was like take it easy, will ya?

DRE: While doing your research, did you come across anything enlightening or new?

GC: In doing the research we learned it was important for us to go back to the original material. For instance, Point of Order is a documentary that was made about the McCarthy hearings. Im an old liberal but this documentary was really unbelievably manipulative and bad. It has that scene where McCarthy is screaming and they cut to this wide shot of him and it looks like Frederick March at the end of Inherit the Wind. When we looked at the archival footage we found those shots were taken over two different days. So our job was to make sure that we went back to all of the source materials from the very beginning so that we werent going to compound any sort of myth that had been made in an editing room. It made it more complicated because we thought we could just use the source material that we had but we found ourselves having to check everything.

DRE: Is Good Night, and Good Luck political?

GC: It isnt overtly political. It is a film by someone who happens to political but its a historical piece. We were very careful with our facts to make sure of that. If that opens up a debate then good but if it doesnt, then thats okay, we did our job. If some kid in Cincinnati sees it in a journalism class and decides he wants to be a writer because of it and he wants to hold certain standards, then we win.

DRE: Could you talk about the parallels of McCarthy being censured in the Senate and Murrow being censured by the television executives?

GC: I think there is very little doubt of the idea that it was the clash of those two at the pinnacle of their career and for the both of them again it basically ended their career in many ways. It put Murrow is the tenuous position with [CBS founder William S.] Paley that certainly got worse after Murrows 1958 speech because they didnt speak again after that.

DRE: Is the film an indictment of the Patriot Act?

GC: Not an indictment but a debate. People will have honest discussions about whether or not you want to give away certain civil liberties in the pursuit of saving the state. I dont have the answers for it but I think its an important debate to be talking about.

DRE: What made you take the role of Fred Friendly?

GC: I didnt really want to act in the film. It isnt fun directing yourself but it was a black and white movie starring David Strathaim for seven and a half million dollars so they were going to make sure I was in it in one way or another. I took it just because I thought it was a big enough part that I can help get the money and I had a sense as the director of how little of Fred I wanted there to be.

DRE: What made you decide to use real footage of McCarthy instead of having an actor play him?

GC: There were a couple things, one is that we wanted to use McCarthys own words much the way that Murrow did in his show and it was much cheaper.

DRE: What was the process of choosing the cast?

GC: David Strathairn was the only guy we ever talked about for Murrow. Id worked with Frank Langella several times on Unscripted. I knew that David was going to hold his own and was going to have the screen for so long that you needed someone that can walk into three scenes and hold his own with someone whos going to be as powerful as David. Frank can do that. We helped too by making the sets bigger to make Murrow look smaller in all the Paley office scenes.

DRE: The current state of journalism seems to be all celebrity culture, what are your thoughts on that?

GC: Thats not new. That has always been part of that is a driving element. I saw some real teeth in journalism during Hurricane Katrina. There was a tremendous amount of celebrity journalism before 9/11 and then it seemed to stop and suddenly there were some real conversations going on. I think its cyclical. Im not one to attack it since my fathers been one for a long time and I do movies that are fluff at times to help get real news out. If sending Brad Pitt to Africa gets 18 million people to understand more about how dangerous that region is then thats part of the tradeoff.

DRE: In the past youve shown how frustrating it can be.

GC: That would be my own personal issues. You have to think on a much grander scale. For instance, its a real pain in the ass to have a bunch of photographers hanging outside your house. Im not complaining. Im just saying its a rotten thing. If you did it for a day youd go this isnt very fun. Theyre sneaky and they pop out of places to take pictures. They dont necessarily try to catch you doing something stupid, they try to create you doing something stupid by picking fights. But I must forever defend their right to be there because the idea of stopping them is so much more dangerous. Its like burning a book even if that book is Mein Kampf.

DRE: Are you going to be campaigning in Ohio with the democrats?

GC: I dont campaign because its Hollywood versus the Heartland. I think actors in general marginalize the people that they are supporting and I dont think its helpful. I will do fundraisers and do whatever I can behind the scenes. Im not out to hurt a candidate. [John] Kerry called me and was like Hop on the train. But I thought I would do more harm than good.

DRE: What else are you working on?

GC: We have another HBO show like Unscripted down the pipe.

DRE: Is it logical to think George Clooney will one day be running for elected office?

GC: Thats a ridiculous idea. I think I should run on the yes I did it ticket. I drank the bongwater

DRE: Do you do frothy movies like Oceans Twelve to get movies like this made?

GC: I like frothy things. Those are the things that bought me a nice house in Italy. If my sellout is Oceans Eleven then Im doing okay. If its Batman and Robin Im in a little trouble.

DRE: With actors in your rarified position, if they direct, they dont do it very often. Is that because of fear or even monetary reasons?

GC: I direct one when I can. We did this TV show Unscripted and I directed five of those. Theyre really fun to do too and we couldnt have done this film had we not done that show. We learned a lot about overlapping dialogue and some of the tricks we used like improvisation and where we wanted to put the camera. Realistically its about finding the script I have some interest in or writing the script I had some interest in. But this is a subject matter I know pretty well, I mean its a big part of my life and I researched the hell out of it too. So far Ive done two films that have basically been about television because I know that world. Working backward I started with the low point in television [with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind] and now Ive done the high point so I think radio is next.

DRE: I remember when Edward Murrow said in the butt on the air.

GC: [laughs] Yeah right.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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