Hollywood Elite Counts George Clooney Among Ranks

By: R. Burke

Wednesday March 15, 2006

Oscar nominations for Original Screenplay for Good Night And Good Luck and Actor in a Supporting Role for Syriana, this is certainly a standout year for George Clooney.
George Clooney is on top of the world these days. On March 5th, he won his very first Oscar, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his role in the hard-hitting film Syriana. And though his other film up for nominations, Good Night and Good Luck, came up empty-handed, Clooney's success in front of, as well as behind, the camera has established him as one of Hollywood's pre-eminent stars. He has only one regret. Clooney is still a little hurt about not being renamed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine this past year. "I was a little hurt that pretty-boy McConaughey takes over, but I'm sure that - well, you know it's a big responsibility. It's a heavy crown for him. I think Mr. Abs can handle it. I think he can take it," Clooney said jokingly.

What was the most impressive thing you did to prepare for Syriana?

Well, the most impressive thing in the world is that I found out that I could put 30 pounds on in 30 days. I finished Ocean's 12 in August, I think, and I had about 30 days before I started the other film, so I had to eat as fast and as hard as I could. It's not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Getting it off took a lot longer. You know, when people put on weight to do movies, usually they are in their 30s. It's not so easy when you're 44. Everything comes off a little slower. I got injured along the way, so it was a little more complex. We shot Good Night, and Good Luck after that, and people were saying, "George sort of beefed up for Good Night, and Good Luck", and it was like, "no, I just hadn't lost the weight yet from the other one."

Technical questions aside, the choice of doing this - it's not an easy film to watch - it demands an awful lot of the audience. Why is now the right time for this film?

Well, it was an interesting time. Obviously, when we decided to do it, it was a couple of years ago, or three years ago really, so it was even a tougher time. If you remember, sort of politically, anybody who raised any questions at all were sort of framed as unpatriotic at that point. I thought it was fairly brave of the studio to be willing to jump on board and take on some of the subject matter. Obviously, when you see the film, it's not at all - it's not even an attack on the Administration at all. It is certainly questioning the 30 or 40 or 50 years of flawed policies in the Middle East, which I think everyone agrees with. Most of the Conservatives who've seen the film agree with it, and most of the Liberals agree with it. I felt we were fairly safe in taking on the subject matter. My job was to know as much as I could, so I wouldn't marginalize the piece.

I spent a lot of time with Bob Baer - a really interesting guy. For him, it was much more about the disenchantment of how little he was needed anymore. After the Berlin Wall came down, the decisions were made by several Administrations, including the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, which was surveillance equipment will take care of it, and you don't need people who speak Arabic or Farsi or Urdu. And what you realize, of course, is it would have been very helpful to have those people. You realize it as we look at the problems with some of the evidence that led us into other places. It would have helped to have people in there speaking those languages and he's very disenchanted with all of that I think.

I hear you shot this during the High Holy Holidays? What was that like?

Yes. It's an interesting thing to be shooting in Morocco and Dubai during Ramadan. And the Amir had just died in July, who was basically the man who started and made Dubai what it is today. He was about 100 years old, so there was a huge funeral and everybody showed up at our hotel. We looked like a Mickey Mouse Club with these guys showing up. So it was an interesting time to be there because you can't eat during the day, and you have to sort of play by their rules, which is a good thing - it's a nice thing to do.

I was concerned with the idea that they wouldn't understand what we were doing - you'll see a terrorist, you know, in there - that they would think that we're making a movie where it's just black and white, bad guys, terrorists, because we're not the most popular country overseas. So we have to be - we were concerned with the idea that they didn't think we were just flat out trying to characterize them as the evil-doers. But I don't know how you can translate that very well, because you get 400 extras who are all Muslims, and a lot of them are Islamic Fundamentalists, that are there with you, working side-by-side with you. I'm not quite sure if they ever understood that or not. They may when they see the film.

Yeah, it made it interesting every day. You did sort of pay attention to what you were doing because you knew that nothing would be more fun than to have someone sort of famous sitting on a chair with some guy with a hood on over him. So, we were always aware of that. And it was right in the middle of when all those guys were getting their heads cut off in Riyadh, and so, it was a little harrier time than it is now.

What was it like learning fluent Arabic for this movie?

Brutal. I had a roommate in college who was Iranian. I could understand and could speak just a little bit of Farsi, which helped, because there are some similarities in the accent. But there are no Latin derivatives, you know.

A lot of the things you were saying sound like you approached this as a journalist would and I'm wondering if you think that the film is doing things that journalism ought to be doing. Is that the place of the film, to expose these -

(interjecting) Well, no. I don't think films are designed to provide answers. I think films are designed to ask questions, and I think journalism is designed to ask questions to get answers. We're actually just asking questions, and sparking debate. That's what we tried to do with Good Night, and Good Luck, and it's the same thing with this. My job was to understand what Bob was doing, as a producer of the film, to be well enough informed to understand the plot lines and what we were trying to tell.

For Good Night, and Good Luck, I double-sourced every scene because I thought it was important. I owed it to the people whose story I was telling, which was a true story, not to get anything wrong. Because if you got anything wrong it would all be marginalized, which is sort of the popular thing to do right now. And there's some people out there that are anxiously trying to talk about what a great guy McCarthy is. It still blows my mind. I think the good news about both these films is that they're not civics lessons. They're actually entertainment films. They are not easy films, but entertaining films.

Did your political views change at all after making these movies?

No, it doesn't change things. It doesn't necessarily reinforce things either. What it really does is it opens your eyes to other issues and other thoughts. I remember standing on a roof of a building about four stories up as a siren went off. It would go off every three hours during Ramadan and you'd hear a prayer over loudspeakers. Everyone stopped their car and got out in the middle of the street and faced Mecca. There was a sea of people that got out of their car, got out on the streets, and kneeled down and faced Mecca and prayed. Seeing this and thinking, if we think that we have religious clarity or some sort of - any kind of belief system that overrides anyone else's - when you see something like that, it would scare you.

You said Bob Baer changed you. I would imagine his world view would be a real education.

I can't tell what his political bend is and he spent a long time with me in my house. My sense is he's probably a bit of a Conservative who's ticked off at the Clinton Administration mostly, for his part during the - sort of being taken out of the CIA, slowly leaving the CIA, but equally as ticked off at the way that the information was used leading up to the war. He's pretty mad about that as well.

You made a couple of films that are definitely very provocative, both provocative as well as entertaining, more so in the case of Murrow. What do you think would have to happen to better realize the potential of the medium of television broadcast medium to inspire thought and enlightenment as well as entertain?

I was sort of hoping that putting a film like that out there, it would open the discussion for people who are in those positions - and some of them are friends of mine, the Les Moonves's of the world, to say, "okay, we understand that this is a dilemma." I understand that. Having watched what happened with my father as an anchorman, I understand that the idea is that news has a problem losing viewers, and how do you keep news out there, and how do you preserve it? But do you preserve it by sort of destroying it along the way, and what do you do to not let that happen?

So it's one of those sort of difficult fights. I understand that it's not black and white and easy, but I think that it's something that should be constantly waged and talked about and argued about until somebody can come up with some solutions because I am concerned about the same things that you all are concerned with. It's the same thing that my father's been concerned with his whole life and fought, which was finding ways to have room for both, but not loosing content along the way.