George Clooney had an enraptured London crowd in stitches Friday, taking comedic jabs at President Trump and Brad Pitt, while also sharing the devastating put-down he received from his son recently. Clooney, whose latest film “Jay Kelly” was released in theaters earlier this month, was in conversation with Scottish broadcaster Edith Bowman at the British Film Institute’s large theater on the south bank of the River Thames.
Looking back at his first film with the Coen Brothers, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” he joked that “they like to make me out to be, you know, just a pure knucklehead in every film.” He recalled how nervous he felt when he shot his first scene, in which he gets the shit beaten out of him by John Goodman. “Joel came over and goes, ‘Yeah, that’s great. It’s just, you know, you’re not dumb. You’re the smartest guy in every room you walk into’ – which, of course, is what I should have thought of as an actor. I should have understood that dumb people don’t think they’re dumb. They think they’re smart. You know, we have a President to prove that.”
Discussing “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which he directed, co-wrote and acted in, he explained that he was prompted to make the film because of the Iraq War, which was “a pretty shameful moment in our history when the three branches of government – the judicial, the executive and the legislative branches – all failed in their job.”
Reminding the audience that he was “the son of a newsman,” he continued, “The Fourth Estate, meaning journalism, has the responsibility to question authority, has to, and when it doesn’t – it didn’t and it failed – we end up in a war in Iraq, a war of choice.”
He also mentioned the flak he received for criticizing the war. “And it’s funny too, by the way, they protested against me. There was only about five of us that came out at that point. People forget that. The government put me on a deck of cards, called it a deck of traitors. They picketed my movies, put me on TV shows, and all this shit, and those exact same people now they all talk about how bad that war was, so it’s like, ‘Fuck off.’”
He added, “So I wrote ‘Goodnight, Good Luck,’ because I wanted to talk about when journalism, when the Fourth Estate, stood up to a populist, stood up to a bad idea when it wasn’t convenient, and when it was difficult to do and when it mattered.”
Although he didn’t play the lead role of Edward R. Murrow in the film, he did in a stage version on Broadway earlier this year. “It was fun to do it, and there was a different urgency to do the play this spring. It felt like we were talking about things now that, you know … the idea of telling the truth and speaking truth to power is more important than ever. Truth is more negotiable than ever.
“There’s a line in this that Murrow said, this isn’t my writing, ‘We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. You must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who fear to write, to speak or to associate with people whose ideas for the moment are unpopular.’
“It was important to say those words,” he said to warm applause from the London crowd.
At the end of the play, he said, “Murrow looks out at the audience and says, ‘What are you prepared to do?,’” and some in the New York audience, he said, shouted back, “Resist!” He added, “It’s an interesting thing to remember that each of us, each one of us, our voices, have to matter, and being silent is not an option.”
Asked about the challenges of being a movie star, he mentioned that he had to watch what he said. “Every opportunity to have an interview or to have a conversation could result in the end of your career. You know, I’m not on Twitter or Instagram or any of that bullshit because … I drink. You know, 3 a.m., my Mother Teresa joke might not play so well when I wake up the next day.”
He added that his children keep him grounded. “My son, for Halloween, dresses up as Batman. He has no idea that I’m Batman. And I said, ‘You know, I was Batman,’ and he’s like, ‘Err … no.’ He has no idea how right he is.”
Clooney made repeated references to his age, 64. He joked that in the upcoming “Ocean’s 14,” starring Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts, “we are all in wheelchairs.’” He later added, “It is like, you know, all the things we used to be able to do that we can’t do anymore […] It’s gonna be like ‘The Golden Girls.’ […] So, we’re looking forward to that, and I’m not sure when we start that yet. It’s about getting the schedule going, and we also have to take all of the budget and give it to Brad, now that he’s had a hit. He’s hard to live with, you guys.”