Interview Magazine - September 2005

WITH A NEW MOVIE ABOUT ANOTHER TIME WHEN ANXIETY, FEAR, AND SUSPICION
CAST A SHADOW OVER AMERICAN LIFE, GEORGE CLOONEY ASKS HARD QUESTIONS
ABOUT TWO SUBJECTS CLOSE TO HIS HEART: THE COUNTRY'S FREEDOM AND THE
POWER OF TELEVISION


We may now live in an era when the television news media seems fraught
with credibility issues, but George Clooney's latest directorial
effort, Good Night, and Good Luck, captures a moment in the early days
of broadcast journalism when its true power was just starting to be
realized. The film, which hits theaters this month, tracks the exploits
of famed CBS newsman and See It Now host Edward R. Murrow (played In
the film by David Strathalm), who, along with his producers Fred
Friendly and Joe Wershba, fought through the political pressures,
corporate concerns, and atmosphere of fear that predominated over early
'50s America to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose civil
liberties-trampling campaign to root out Communist sympathizers in
America Murrow--and, as it turned out, most of Amerlca--would come to
view as little more than a witch hunt. For Clooney, the film is a
personal one, having grown up around newsrooms with his father, Nick
Clooney, who was himself a television newsman. Here, the actor and
director, who also appears next month In the CIA thriller Syriana,
talks to pioneering producer Norman Lear, the man who gave him his
first break in television more than two decades ago on a short-lived
sitcom ironically titled E/R.


NORMAN LEAR: Hey, George.


GEORGE CLOONEY: Hello, Norman. How are you, my friend?


NL: If I had a complaint I'd be an ingrate.


GC: [laughs] I enjoy complaining though. Hey, how about Peter Jennings
today?


NL: Yeah that was sad. Terribly sad.


GC: I really admired him. He was the last of the guys to really ask the
tough questions at the tough times.


NL: As you know, we've been on this tour over the last couple of years,
taking an original copy of the Declaration of Independence around the
country, and we had it up at the Time Warner building In New York about
eight months ago. It was just before Peter announced he was iII, and,
my God, I'll never forget him that night. He had only recently become
an American citizen.


GC: He was very proud of his new citizenship.


NL: He was so proud of it. He spoke for about 10 minutes, and he was so
off-the-cuff and eloquent.


GC: It was such a funny thing, because he kept his Canadian citizenship
for so long as a tribute to his parents. Then, when he finally decided
to become American, he went out and bragged about getting a perfect
score on his citizenship test and was able to vote in only one election
before he got sick and died. In a way that seems sort of tragic.


NL: He had another connection with your film: He was another guy in the
news media who smoked.


GC: Yeah, he sure did. It was actually one of the reasons that we put a
cigarette ad in the film. I'm a big non-smoker, and since we weren't
doing a biopic where you would see that all these news guys who smoke
in the movie eventually would up dying of lung cancer later, we didn't
want to just glamorize it. When you put people smoking in a movie, you
can make it look really attractive. So I wanted to put in that Kent
commercial just to say that we're not condoning smoking, but we can't
avoid it. So many people now try to rewrite history by taking it out
when they make movies.


NL: I was a four-pack-a-day smoker.


GC: Were you really?


NL: I was. When I was writing, I smoked incessantly. Then I made a film
called Cold Turkey [1971], about a town that's impelled by a big $25
million offer from a cigarette company to give up smoking. So I said to
myself, "I will quit smoking the day I start filming." So I got off the
plane and didn't smoke for a few days. Then on the first day of
shooting, I found out that Barnard Hughes, who played a surgeon who was
a four-pack-a-day smoker in the film, had never smoked a cigarette in
his life, so I had to show him how to achieve orgasm. [Clooney laughs]
Finally, I just said, "Well, God, you want me to smoke. I'll smoke till
the bitch is over."


GC: And how long ago was it that you quit?


NL: When we made the film in '68 or something like that.


GC: Do you have any itches for it now?


NL: I will smoke a few cigars in the course of a year. I love the
smoke. If there is a reason to believe in God, it would be the Havana
Leaf. [both laugh]


GC: My grandparents back in Kentucky owned a tobacco farm. So to make
money in the summer we would cut and chop and top and house and strip
the tobacco. It sure made you not want to smoke.


NL: You never smoked?


GC: No, never. You know I had ten great aunts and uncles on my father's
side, and six of them died of lung cancer. Rosemary [Clooney's aunt]
died of lung cancer, too, and she had emphysema. Both my grandparents
died of lung cancer. So I got quite a lesson in the payback later in
life of smoking and if you keep it up how bad it can be. It was very
sad about Jennings though, because I remember right after 9/11 when it
was difficult to ask the really tough questions, he was the only guy
who did. And during the lead up to the war when no one was really
asking those questions, he seemed to be the one to say, "Okay,
unfortunately I have to ask you, Mr. President, about these things." I
always found that to be so courageous at a network where it's a very
hard thing to do. You ask one tough question, and you get sent to the
back of the press room and never get called on again.


NL: Right. There's no one out there in the busIness now who I can
really see doing that.


GC: I think they're all so afraid. I don't think there's any news
director out there that says "Don't ask those questions," but it's
certainly implied that if the reporter doesn't get called on in the
press briefings, then the network loses coverage.


NL: It's interesting that we're having this conversation about Peter
Jennings in the context of your film, Good Night, and Good Luck. I'm
sure the model Peter was following was Edward R. Murrow.


GC: Well, the name of the award you get for excellence in broadcast
journalism is the Edward R. Murrow Award. He's certainly one of the
highest models you could point to. The other was Walter Cronkite going
to Vietnam and coming back and saying that the war was at best a
stalemate. Those seem to be the two moments of broadcast journalism
that actually effected immediate change in the country. They were also
really sort of amazing moments because both Murrow and Cronkite were
editorializing, which in many ways is not a good thing. But it was done
with such great responsibility.


NL: But not everybody grows up with that sort of understanding of
journalism. Do you attribute your understanding of it to your dad, who
was a broadcaster?


GC: Well, that was my whole life growing up. I got in an argument with
a newsman the other day: We were pitching an idea for Good Night, and
Good Luck to be on a specific, well known news show which will remain
nameless, and the guy said, "Well, what's the pitch?" I said, "Well,
you know, there's a bunch of different angles that you could take if
you wanted to talk about it, but I thought that perhaps this might be
of interest to you." Then things got sort of belligerent, and I said,
"Listen, I was feeding news teleprompters in 1973 when you were trying
to get through the Columbia Broadcasting school, so don't talk to me
about being an actor and not understanding about broadcast journalism
because it was what I grew up around." I sat in meetings with my
father, who not only wrote his own news but was a news director as
well, when he would go around with each reporter and say, "Go back and
make sure that these sources are good sources, and if you don't have
two then we can't use it." I also witnessed what many broadcasters feel
was the downfall of broadcast journalism, when they sent my father to
these consultants who would say stuff like, "Part your hair on the left
and not the right, and wear a cool blue suit because that means
confidence."


NL: ". . . and find a young blonde to sit next to you."


GC: Oh, yeah. And I watched my dad try to play along for a while. But
then finally he just said, "Look, I'm a newsman. I write my news. I'm
not a newsreader." Murrow had to fight that fight, too. He basically at
one point said that we have a built-in allergy to things that are
important to us, and we don't want to see them. And that was 1958.
[laughs]


NL: Murrow has a couple of lines in the film that just leap out at you.
I'm thinking of the "box of lights and wires" speech.


GC: When he says, "Just once in a while let us exalt in the importance
of ideas and let us dream to the extent of saying that on any given
Sunday night, the time normally occupied by Ed Sullivan is given over
to a clinical survey on the state of American education, and a week or
two later, the time normally used by Steve Allen is devoted to a
thorough going study of American policy in the Middle East. Would the
corporate image of their respective sponsors be damaged? Would the
stockholders rise up in their wrath and complain? Would anything happen
other than a few million people would have received a little
illumination on subjects that may well determine the future of this
country?"


NL: "Because If they are right, and this instrument is good for
nothlng"--and this is the phrase, these three words together--"but to
entertain, amuse, and insulate us . . . It is merely wires and lights
in a box."


GC: It was as true then as it is now. The difference seems sort of
grand because television has exploded into such a part of our lives,
and at the time when Murrow was working people still read newspapers.
Now most people get their news from television, from 10-second news
bites.


NL: The movie also takes place at a time when the heads of the three
big networks--ABC, CBS, and NBC--were not insisting that the news
departments be big moneymakers.


GC: When the FCC first started handing out public airwaves, they
basically had an agreement with the networks that they were going to
lease them the airwaves, which belong to the public, but in exchange
the networks were going to owe us information. The FCC said, "If you
want these airwaves, then you're going to have to keep us informed, and
in doing so, you're going to lose money because it's not very
entertaining to have a guy sit up there and tell you all the news. So
you can still sell some commercials on this news programming, but
prepare yourself, it's not going to make money like Howdy Doody or
Bonanza." And, so, for quite some time--a good 25 or 30 years--the news
departments of all the networks were looked at as loss leaders. Then
finally somewhere along the way someone said, "Well, what would happen
if we dressed it up?" When I was growing up, the news departments were
always in the red, and the trick was how little in the red you could
keep them. I remember so many times my dad coming home and saying,
"Well, they're cutting our reporters." He was always fighting to get a
live news van and things like that.


NL: And NBC had Leopold Stokowskl and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. All
loss leaders.


GC: Sure. All loss leaders. That's why I find it so interesting when
people at the networks say, "We're not going to cover the political
conventions anymore," and you think that's sort of a new development,
and then you remember that Fred Friendly had finally quit CBS because
they opted to show a rerun of an I Love Lucy episode instead of the
Senate Vietnam hearings. So, it's not something new.


NL: For me, the systemic disease of our time--and it has increased over
the last 40 years or so--is the need for public media companies to have
financial statements for this quarter that are larger than the last at
the expense of, it would seem, virtually every other value.


GC: And ultimately that backfires because you're trying to go back to
these shareholders and show them what you've done for them, and in the
meantime you're slowly destroying those little companies that
ultimately run the country.


NL: Around 25 years ago, I read something in the Harvard Business
Review by two guys, Abernathy and Hays, who wrote a paper called
"Managing Our Way to Economic Decline." I'll never forget it for this
reason: I was in the east and I called Robert Abernathy, and I flew to
Cambridge, Massachusetts and sat with him over a long lunch. He and
Hays were recanting pretty much what they had been teaching in the
business school. I asked Abernathy what motivated that recanting, and
he looked straight ahead at me and said, "Norman, very shortly, young
men and women--largely men, most of them young--all over the globe will
be looking into screens. They won't be looking to the side. They won't
be looking above.
They won't be looking below. They'll have no forward vision and no
peripheral vision, and they'll be moving billions of dollars from
Frankfurt to Tokyo to New York, and so forth." He said, ''This myopic
vision will rule."


GC: And he was dead right.


NL: I'll never forget that image.


GC: At the time it seemed impossible.


NL: And impossible to think that the three networks would succumb to
that myopia as well.


GC: Well, it is all about the 24-hour news cycle now. I was watching
[CBS anchor] Bob Schieffer talk about it once, and he helped it make
sense to us. When I was growing up--and certainly when you were growing
up--there were three networks, and basically the three network news
shows. But whether it was David Brinkley on NBC or Cronkite on CBS or
Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner on ABC, they essentially were giving
you the same basic news. The information you were starting with was
pretty much the same, and then you'd take that information in, and
you'd have your own social and political views to filter it through and
to come up with your own opinions. But over the years that whole
arrangement has fractured into these tiny little segments, where you're
able to turn on a news show that will appeal to your specific
demographic. The result is that the information you're starting with is
completely different. For example, if you're a conservative and you
follow only Fox News, the headlining information is that Saddam Hussein
was tied to 9/11 and AI Qaeda and that he had weapons of mass
destruction that he's going to use on us. Those are presented as facts.
''The Iraqis will welcome us with open arms" --they weren't
possibilities; they were facts. Now, if you listen to ABC at the same
time, they had a lot of questions, like, "Well, we don't quite know if
this is true." So what happens is you start going to the place that
appeals best to your sensibilities--so no one's really growing or
learning anything.


NL: But I think that happens even in the opposite way. I'm addicted to
listening to Rush Limbaugh as I come to work. I will want to know what
Bill O'Reilly is talking about. Maybe it's because they're so over the
top. But they also reinforce your beliefs in that way.


GC: In doing the screenplay for Good Night, and Good Luck, the most
important thing for me was to constantly go back to wherever the
opposition would argue. So I had to keep reading all the books and
articles about why McCarthy is such a good guy. Page Six was running
stories saying that I'm going to do a big piece vilifying McCarthy when
we now know that McCarthy was right about the people he labeled
Communist. Well, of course he wasn't right about that--he was right
about a very small fraction of the thousands and thousands of people
who were labeled. But that, of course, wasn't the point ever. The point
was never whether or not anyone was right about the people they were
calling Communists. The problem was that we were attacking civil
liberties to do it. We were literally saying that we have a sealed
envelope that finds you guilty, and you're not allowed to look at it.
You're guilty. Period. And that goes against the idea of the writ of
habeas corpus and why we left King George in the first place. It's the
whole reason this country exists, and if we're not going to uphold that
principle, then what are we protecting?


NL: There's a remarkable moment in your film when Karl Mundt finally
gets that idea.


GC: Well, the great one is Senator John L. McClellan, because he was
from Arkansas. It's not like he was this big liberal, but it's
McClellan who really just says, "Hold on a minute--that's the evil of
it." And it's funny what comes out of his mouth, because he was on the
House Un-American Activities Committee, and he was a very tough
customer. He was tough on Reed Harris. He was tough on a lot of guys.
But the lawyer in him ultimately said, "You cannot do this. You cannot
convict by hearsay and innuendo. That is the evil of it." The fact that
here was a guy who was clearly an anti-Communist and out there on the
attack for some time and just snapped in that way gave you great hope.
It's sort of like when they did the polls about the Terri Schiavo case.
I was starting to think that our country's gone completely insane, and
then they did those polls about Terri Schiavo, and I think around 80%
of the country said that we should tell the government to stay the hell
out of our hospital rooms.
And then I thought, Well, maybe there is still hope. Maybe there's
still some sense of decency here. We were just talking about this a
little while ago, but when did you start taking the Declaration of
Independence around?


NL: Oh, a little over four years ago--its first big debut was at the
Winter Olympics. George W. Bush spoke within about 30 feet of it. I've
got this wonderful moment of the President saying that we're just a few
feet away from a copy of the Declaration of Independence. I don't agree
with the fellow about probably anything. [laughs] But we certainly
agree on the importance of this.


GC: I've been working with Pat Robertson on Africa debt-relief and we
disagree on virtually everything except certain very specific
inalienable rights, and the truth is that morality and patriotism come
in all shapes and sizes. For me the definition of a patriot is someone
who is willing to constantly question the government; that's what
separates us from all the other countries.


NL: Robertson would agree with that.


GC: Oh, he would agree with that.


NL: But he'd agree with that mostly when they're able to criticize.


GC: But I actually don't mind that. I don't mind the idea of saying
we're going to disagree on all of these things. I only know him a
little bit, but I can't imagine him to be as evil as I might have
thought. [laughs] I like to think that people in general at least
believe quite honestly in what it is they're doing, or they wouldn't do
it.


NL: Well, no matter how much they disagree, when many people come face
to face with the other person's humanity, if they are not haters, they
are prone to love.


GC: But don't you find that it usually is that they're just ill
informed? It's like with the issue of gay marriage--there are people
who are saying that everybody can't have it and it's horrible, it
destroys the sanctity of marriage. And I kind of look at it like, I'm
not quite sure what the sanctity of marriage is. But more importantly a
lot of these people who are saying this stuff aren't actually around
gay people and don't understand that they just want to be happy and be
afforded the same rights as everyone else.


NL: They simply wish to be embraced.


GC: That's right. My father just lost an election in Kentucky last
year, and all the ads said "Hollywood vs. the Heartland." Of course, my
father grew up and lived his whole life in Kentucky and has very little
to do with Hollywood. But that doesn't matter because that's the way
they could label it. The greatest thing you can pull out if you want to
win is just scream, "That guy's a liberal!" And I just keep going back
to the idea that, yeah, I'm a liberal. I believe in all the qualities
of being a liberal. I keep going back to all the great social events in
our country's history, starting with the Salem witch trials, where the
conservative view was that they're witches and should be burned at the
stake, and the liberal view was there's no such thing as witches. Women
wanted to vote, and liberals thought that would be okay. Blacks wanted
to sit in the front of the bus--we didn't see anything wrong with that.
We thought Vietnam was wrong. We thought Nixon trying to steal an
election was a mistake. Over the years, over the history of our
country, liberals have stood on many of the right sides of the issues.
Bush did a very smart thing after 9/11, which is that he didn't just
say, "You're either with us or against us." He came out and said,
"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Which is a
remarkable statement.


NL: That's what McCarthy was saying, too.


GC: Yeah, it is. There are differences, but certain issues of the
Patriot Act are starting to creep into real McCarthy-era territory. I
remember just in the lead up to the war I was saying that we still have
quite a few questions to ask, and some tabloid called myself and Sean
Penn traitors, and Bill O'Reilly did a piece on his show on why my
career was over because of my political views. But all I was saying was
that we should have a lot of questions before we put 150,000 kids in
harm's way, not to mention the Iraqi people. And Saddam Hussein is a
bad guy, sure. But so is Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and we're not doing
anything about him. And there are other things we can do besides
invade. It was an interesting time because I really thought I was in
trouble for a minute. I remember calling my dad and saying, 'Am I in
trouble here?" And he just said, "Shut up. Grow up. You can take it.
Have you lost your house? Are you hungry? Has anybody taken anything
away?" He was just like, if you're going to make those statements,
you're going to take those hits.


NL: But there isn't a lot of moral outrage, especially from people in
your position.


GC: I think there's more than we want to give being whispered. People
come over and say, "I really agree with you," kind of quietly. But
Howard Dean helped a bit by yelling it from the rooftops. It was sort
of like what Murrow did in a way when he said, "Everyone who thinks
that McCarthy's policies are ridiculous, stand up." And the letters
came in, like, 15 to 1. Everyone--Murrow included--was very surprised
by that because they didn't think it would be that big of a number.
There are worries that if this new Patriot Act passes, it will mean
that any FBI guy without a subpoena, without going to a judge, can go
to your doctor or your librarian and say, "Let me see the books this
person has checked out. Let me see this person's medical records. Let
me see what the drugs they take." And you're never allowed to tell that
person that you've done it. That's getting into a very dangerous area.
That's why I thought this film was important to make--because those
issues seem cyclical. We revisit them every 30 or 40 years.


NL: It's a great time to talk about them.


GC: That's Guantanamo Bay: Either the people there are prisoners of war
and they get Geneva Convention rights, or they're criminals and they
get their Miranda rights--they get their right to a speedy trial and
they get their right to an attorney. But holding them as detainees and
"persons of interest" and giving them none of these things is not what
our country's based on--even a conservative Supreme Court agreed with
that. I find that there is great hope still. I'm always sort of
optimistic about how good we are, as a country, at fixing ourselves.


NL: There's one moment in the film, George, where Murrow and Friendly
and the other CBS news guys are sitting around, talking about whether
they're going to go with the McCarthy story. In the course of the
discussion, the naysayers are expressing their fears about running with
it, and Murrow turns around and says something to the effect of "We're
going to go with the story because the terror is right here in this
room."


GC: That's actually a direct quote, and it's in everyone's book, from
Friendly's to Wershba's to Murrow's and Bill Paley's. [Paley was the
chairman of CBS at the time.] They all seem to agree that that scene
was sort of the defining moment, where Palmer Williams [played in the
film by Tom McCarthy] stands up and says, "Before we were married my
wife--and I didn't find out until after we were divorced--attended some
parties, and it's going to hurt us if I stick around." And Murrow said,
"We're going to go with the story because the terror's here in this
room." And that room where they met to discuss stories was considered
sacred to them. That was where these young men, who all just worshiped
Murrow, plotted to take on a lot of big things in the world, and they
did, from apartheid to American policies in the Middle East to the
misuse of migrant workers. It's really sort of amazing. The interesting
thing is that the fight between McCarthy and Murrow ended up destroying
both of their careers. Murrow basically ruined his relationship with
Paley. And Paley, to his credit, did everything he could to try and
make it work. We were very careful to be fair to Bill Paley through all
of this because we felt like he did some admirable things. He did stick
with Murrow and didn't stop him from taking on McCarthy. You knew Paley
a little bit, didn't you?


NL: You know, I was on the air with All in the Family, Maude, Good
TImes, The Jeffersons, all on CBS, and I never heard from Bill Paley.


GC: Really?


NL: Never. And then when we were going off the air, and we all had had
it with All in the Family--I mean, we thought we had done as much as we
could do and wanted to put it away--Carol O'Connor decided that he
wanted to go on doing the character and call the show Archie Bunker's
Place. I didn't want that to happen, but Paley wanted it on the air. So
I got a call from Mr. Paley and met with him because they needed me to
say yes to do it. Ultimately I did because at the meeting they made a
big case for it, saying "This is the amount of people who will be out
of work if you don't say yes." But I just thought we ought to tie a bow
on the character and put it on the shelf.


GC: If you were to look at all the characters that you've created over
the years, is Archie Bunker the most rewarding one? The whole idea of
trusting that the American people will figure out that you're making
fun of him and making fun of prejudice by showing it that way was a
pretty bold step.


NL: Well, there was a big concern that they wouldn't get it. But most
people did. What I used to get from people who thought Archie was right
was a postcard or a letter at the end of which was written: "Why do
they make a fool of such a good man?"


GC: Oh, that's so funny.


NL: But that's what I would get. It was either that or "Go home, Jew
bastard."


GC: It's funny because I have been in a lot of network meetings where
people say, "The American audience will never get it." And you find
that the American audience actually does get it, if you look back at
the shows that they truly celebrated, like M.A.S.H. and All in the
Family and Maude and Cheers and ER, they are shows that were, for the
most part, really intelligent.


NL: And South Park right now. There's some wonderful stuff out there.


GC: And you look at it and think, Maybe it's the networks themselves
that are keeping the bar rather low.


NL: The two things that I used to hear all the time from the networks
were "It won't fly in Des Moines" and "There is going to be a kneejerk
reaction in the Bible belt or the middle of the country."


GC: And there wasn't.


NL: There never was. What you constantly hear is "This is what people
want, so this is what we give them." The establishment uses that
rationale all the time, and that's why we do what we do. But leadership
requires some understanding that you can say no. People have base
instincts, but the transcendent also appeal to them.


GC: Well the argument is this: We're always going be a society that's
going to slow down and look at the wreck on the side of the road if
there is one there. We're always going to do that because it's still
fascinating and it's human nature. But it's criminal to put that wreck
on the side of the road simply to have everyone slow down and look at
it. That, to me, is the most irresponsible social thing you can do, and
it's causing quite a traffic jam. To me, the issue is that you have a
responsibility as a broadcaster, so you get good numbers watching
people blow themselves up and run in front of trains and get their
heads cut off in cars, but is that what you want to be showing? It's a
tricky argument, but I find it sort of fascinating. Listen, I've been
in some very violent films over the years, so I have to sort of say,
"Well, I've participated in part of that." But at least movies are
voluntary: You buy a ticket, you go into a theater, and it's not part
of the news program that's sold to some advertiser. But I do have a
responsibility, and I have to sort of take that in and say, "I'm going
to try to do better."


NL: But that's the message: try to do better.


GC: Yeah, and that's the secret in failing miserably at it. [laughs]
I'm going to go videotape my friends running into each other now.


NL: Basketball? The people who are taking the trouble to read this
interview should know that Clooney plays a mean game of basketball. A
solid game--I shouldn't say mean.


GC: We played. I should mention that we spent a few days together in
Italy, and it was your family and my family and friends, and it was
just as fun a time as you could ever have. You have an absolutely
stunning family, and it starts from the top, but it is just the
greatest time.


NL: You, my friend, were the coup de grice. What is the name of that
restaurant that overlooks the world?


GC: II Gatto Nero. The Black Cat.


NL: Let's send everybody we love there!


GC: Okay, I'm all for it. I think we should send everybody who reads
the magazine, there, too.


NL: Okay, done. Thanks, George!


GC: Okay, I'll talk to you soon.


NL: Goodnight and good luck.


GC: You too, my brother.