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Clooney: Liberal 'As Loud As I Can'
Actor George Clooney tells Newsweek's Film Critic David Ansen he's upset 'liberal' has become a dirty word. "It blows my mind, because [unlike conservatives] we don't have to put the word 'compassionate' in front of it to say we actually give a s--t about people. I'm going to keep saying 'liberal' as loud as I can and as often as I can," he says in the October 10 issue (on newsstands Monday, October 3). Ansen talked to Clooney while he was in New York promoting the New York Film Festival debut of "Good Night, and Good Luck," a film co-written and directed by the former star of "ER" Made for a mere $7 million, it's a 90- minute, black and white movie about journalist Edward R. Murrow and his historic confrontation with Red-baiting Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950's.
It's a passionate, serious, impeccably crafted movie tackling a subject Clooney cares about deeply: the duty of journalism to speak truth to power. It also happens to be the most compelling movie of the year so far, writes Ansen. "Good Night" arrives, post-Katrina, at what feels like a watershed moment in the relationship between the press and the presidency, and a turnaround in the public's attitude toward TV news, writes Ansen. Clooney wants us to remember what reporting at its best can be. "In the end it all comes down to journalists," he says. "They're the first writers of history. There is no civil rights movement without journalists. There is no end of McCarthy. It's been a tough time for journalists -- if you ask a tough question of this administration, on a rare occasion when they have a press conference, you're put in the back of the room, or you're Maureen Dowd and you get your credentials pulled. To question anything about them is meant to be
Story Continues Below unpatriotic."
And "Good Night" is only one example of how Clooney is shedding his party boy persona and becoming more of an "actorvist." This past year he found himself picking out restaurants for a casino that he and partner Randy Gerber will open in Las Vegas.
"At the same time, I'm at the G8 Summit in a room with Paul Wolfowitz and Bono trying to get $50 billion in relief for Africa," he says. "I'm in this weird place: I have this beautiful house in Italy and I have these social agendas. I don't want to give up that lifestyle because I enjoy it, but I also feel that I have a responsibility. So the way I try to rationalize that, and it may just be Irish Catholic guilt, is, for instance, with this casino 25 percent of anything it makes will go the Make Poverty History campaign. It's the only way I can reconcile being successful." Editor's note:
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