He’s an actor. So? He’s also a Oscar-nominated writer and director, as well as a producer. He collaborates with some of the most fascinating characters in Hollywood, including Steven Soderburgh. While I loved their HBO series, “K Street” (and Howard Dean’s memorable guest role), it was a bit off-the-wall for most audiences and it bombed. But I admire his daring to take creative risks.
Taking risks in this day and age is no small feat. It’s frightening to express one’s self on issues about which one feels deeply or is dubious about, or to even dare to question the presumptions of others without being pilloried by most anyone, often being blind-sided. It’s even verboten to express uncertainty or confusion. Yet he persists. He’s a good role model while those in Hollywood who are too PC, and who wish to shut down other voices, are not. He even dares to criticize Michael Moore, and I happen to agree with Clooney’s take on Moore (god help me), although I’ve enjoyed Moore’s films very much:
Not everybody thought so. When Good Night, and Good Luck came out in the States, Clooney braced himself for the rightwing backlash. He is fairly accustomed to it by now. His first high-profile departure from the official version of history was in the film Three Kings in 1999, in which he played a cynical (but ultimately good) renegade US soldier in the first Gulf war. But it was his visible attendance at early peace demonstrations against the current war in Iraq that really made him a target.
“Oh yeah,” he says, “they put me on the cover of a magazine with a banner across my chest that said ‘traitor’. And they organised a picket for the movie I was in. Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were on the list, the usual guys, and Woody Harrelson, who calls me up and goes, ‘What do we do?’ And Michael Moore’s going, ‘What you have to do is . . .’ and I said, ‘Let me handle this one.’ Because some of them tend to be heavy-handed. And I find that humour is a much better way to do it.”
Clooney is quite sniffy about Moore, whose modus operandi he finds obnoxious and counter-productive. He uses his name as a verb – “I don’t Michael Moore this shit,” he says. “I don’t come out and go, ‘Look what these fuckers do.'” He thinks subtlety – class – gets better results. He is no doubt right, but it seems a little unfair given that dissent is a lot more palatable when it comes in the shape of George Clooney. His response to the traitor incident was to put together a montage of prominent people on the anti-war side, including the pope, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and Pat Buchanan (a hard-right commentator in the US) and drape the word “traitors” across them, too. “Then I made 800 fliers anonymously and sent them to everyone in the media. And I waited. And Dan Rather [CBS news anchor] called me and said, have you seen this flier that’s going around? And I said, ‘My quote would be, the Pope and I can take it, but don’t pick on Pat Buchanan.'” He grins. “You know, the truth is . . . it is not merely your right but your duty to question your government. You can’t demand freedom of speech and then say, but don’t say bad things about me. You gotta be a grown-up and take your hits.”
Still, when the pro-war lobby fought back he was initially unnerved. “I remember when they were picketing the movie theatre for me and I called my dad and said, ‘Er, so, am I in trouble?’ I mean, you know. And he’s like, ‘Shut up. Mohammed Ali went to prison for protesting against Vietnam, and you’re worried about making a little bit less money? Grow up. Be a man.’ And he was right.” Inevitably, he says, his dad has become a little “more Catholic” as he’s grown older and they fight now about different things. “Like gay marriage to him is not OK. We’ve had some knock-down drag-outs about those kind of things.”
Clooney is sufficiently battle-hardened these days to shrug it off when people have a go at him. “I was at a party the other night and it was all these hardcore Republicans and these guys are like, ‘Why do you hate your country?’ I said, ‘I love my country.’ They said, ‘Why, at a time of war, would you criticise it then?’ And I said, ‘My country right or wrong means women don’t vote, black people sit in the back of buses and we’re still in Vietnam. My country right or wrong means we don’t have the New Deal.’ I mean, what, are you crazy? My country, right or wrong? It’s not your right, it’s your duty. And then I said, ‘Where was I wrong, schmuck?’ In 2003 I was saying, where are the ties [between Iraq] and al-Qaida? Where are the ties to 9/11? I knew it; where the fuck were these Democrats who said, ‘We were misled’? That’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy: ‘We were misled.’ Fuck you, you weren’t misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.” .
The article in The Guardian is called “”I’ve learned how to fight’,” and the box quote says … continued below …
… “George Clooney can’t seem to leave the US government alone: his two new films both tackle high-level corruption. He tells Emma Brockes why his father’s legacy of protest haunts him to this day.”
He resisted the temptation to play Murrow himself. Instead he plays Murrow’s producer, Fred Friendly, because, “the secret to Murrow is that there is a sadness to him. You always felt that he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that’s not something that you can act, it’s something that you just sort of are. …
Isn’t that how YOU feel often? Sad, like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders? Because you see so much and read so much and care so much? With so much to address in this world — from war, to censorship, to WTO protestors still filing suit — over eight years after the November 1997 protests — over their loss of their rights to free speech, with great artists attacked for their creative works, it is a small miracle that Clooney is still able to make movies that take on all comers. I look forward to more from him.