I went to the screening of George Clooney's new movie today. Now, this is not your typical Cloon-man flick, with casinos and romance and adventure and all the rest. This is a documentary - and, what's more, a black and white one - on Edward Murrows, a CBS broadcast journalist, who contributed to the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy, known for his aggressive actions against those, particularly in the US army, that he suspected of being allied with Communists.
Clooney, who directed the film, played the character of Fred Friendly, a producer at CBS, who later became president of the company, and was also a broadcast professor at Columbia University. Although I was a wee bit wary when I heard it was black and white, I was very impressed with the movie. It was worth the half hour wait for tickets, and then to get in (of course, this had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fact that George Clooney was part of the panel that was discussing the film afterwards!)
Anyway, the movie portrayed the dilemnas of the staff at CBS in running the episodes about McCarthy on Murrow's show, See it Now; the nervous tension with which they awaited the reviews and responses to the shows (they had both positive and negative ones); and the justification of their efforts when McCarthy was questioned and then officially censured for his aggressive efforts to label people communists, often without evidence.
The panel after the movie consisted of Clooney, and three others, including a historian, a broadcast journalist, and one of the other writers of the film (too lazy to look up their names). I was very impressed with George Clooney, who had a very good grasp of both politics and journalism, and very informed opinions, and was able to answer questions eloquently and clearly. In fact, he was probably as interesting as the historian, who was the only other worthwhile speaker on the panel, unfortunately. He was also funny and cheerful, and kept the conversation going easily.
What was also cool was that two characters in the movie, Joe and Shirley something, who both worked at CBS, and were secretly married (because CBS had a policy against hiring married couples) were both in the audience, and Clooney was as surprised as the rest of the audience when they spoke up.
Despite the title of this post, I'm not really that big a fan of George Clooney's. But I was sufficiently impressed with his performance tonight, and was star-struck enough that I just might turn into one!
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2 comments:
nobody has commented on Clooney. I heard he was ill recently, I suspect he did not speak of that?
Is he clever or just a good atcir able to familiarise himself with any old line?
I wonder will he ever recover from his ER role and actually be considered as an actor in his own right. we shall see.
No, he didn't seem ill, and he looked healthy enough. I don't think his performance (during the panel) was just good acting, because people asked some pretty tough questions, and he was quite knowledgable. His father was also a journalist, so he does have a newsroom background, so maybe that was why he was able to answer the questions. Or maybe he is plain smart! There are a few lucky people who are both good looking and smart! Darn them!
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