Posted on 02/15/2003 7:09:24 AM PST by aculeus
If you're a hugely bankable Hollywood star, there are certain expectations of you. Maintain your profile, toe the line and keep schtum about politics. George Clooney, on the other hand, is hollering his disdain for his government and its dumb war plans, and he's directed his own, somewhat risky, film. Interview by Sally Vincent.
[Fanmag fluff snipped.]
"The question is," he goes on, "do we go on murdering each other, or are we going to take time out to ask ourselves why we're so angry in the first place? I get mad at someone, then I find out more about why they did what they did to make me mad, and the anger disperses. We get angry because we don't have enough information." His mousseline is now neatly stacked on the side of his plate. All tidied away.
"It's the head guys who really tick me off," he says. "You dumb down at the top, so what does that do to the bottom? Who's going to stand up for us now? I just want someone smart to stand up and shout, 'Bullsh**!' They tell us we're going to war and no one's saying 'Bullsh**' loud enough. And the language! Listen to the language! 'Evil.' 'Evil'? 'Nexus of evil'? 'Evil-doer'? That's my favourite, 'Evil-doer'! What's wrong with their vocabulary: couldn't they come up with 'schmuck'?"
This makes me laugh uncontrollably. I wonder if he'll mind if I gobble up his mousseline. "Look at us," he cries, "we're the guys who marched into France and liberated them, handing out stockings and chocolate. And we've slowly become all the things we fought against. How'd it happen?"
I feel the soul of America is at large. The words of Walt Whitman beat in my brain. "O Captain! My Captain!" I bleat. Clooney looks at me sideways. "We're so smart we don't even try to elect a leader. We elect someone to manage our country. Bush was elected, or sort of elected, on the issues of school vouchers and welfare reform. When the big one hit, we found we didn't have a leader at all. What did Bush do on 9/11? He ran away and hid. Even Reagan knew more about leadership than that, and he was as bad a symbol of America as I can think of, off-hand. But at least he's been in enough cowboy movies to know he had to come out and stand on top of the rubble and be seen shaking his fist or something. What has it all come down to? Selling things on television, is what. The three-second soundbite. We don't have any great speakers any more, we don't have great television any more, we don't have great films any more. Everything's knocked out by committee. That's how it is. How we deal with everything. That's politics. You turn on the TV for the news now and what do you get? 'Showdown in Iraq!' it goes, like it's a game. The news is a f***king game show. They're selling us a pre-emptive war and no one says, 'Bullsh**'. It's a conglomerate decision, all rounded off to make it palatable so we'll swallow it, believe it. But it's a lie. Of course it's a lie. We've been lying to ourselves since Vietnam. And if you say that, if you stand up and say no to the war in Iraq, immediately you're being 'unpatriotic'. But if you don't, if it's not you, who the f**k's it going to be?"
O Captain! My Captain! "It's not my place. I'm not a big, like, yogi guy, I'm just a stoopid film star. Stooooopid, goofball film star."
"Big guru guy," I say.
"Big guru guy," he says.
....
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Gee, thanks for that helpful information.
Having posted countless articles complete with a link since 1998 I happened to goof this time.
AM, could you fix this? Many thanks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Film/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,894876,00.html
Georgie might have overlooked a few military actions that led up to being able to march through parts of France. But then, it sounds like he learned all he knows about war from the movies.
George Clooney's latest film 'Solaris' has bombed at the box office in the States.
The flick only took $6.8m (£4.4m) in ticket sales at the weekend and landed at No.7 in the film chart.
George Clooney reckons his A-list career has ground to a halt - the Hollywood hunk admits he hasn't been offered a good movie role for a year.
His latest film 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' - which he directs and stars in with Drew Barrymore - goes on US general release tomorrow (Friday). He also has another flick in the bag, 'Intolerable Cruelty', out later this year, co-starring Catherine Zeta Jones.
But despite all that, the star admits he's being overlooked these days:
"Weird thing… you get into the position I'm in and you think all of a sudden it's just gonna be pearls. And the truth is it's one or two scripts a year - at best. It's funny, there are no original ideas. Good dialogue is hard to come by. It's really wild."
"I'm gonna take a little break and figure out what I'm gonna do. I'm trying to find a job."
......good post..Perhaps Clooney can get a job in France!
My brother spent the night at Clooney's house a couple of times - along with others in the den. My brother said back then that he (Clooney) was a jerk then, too.
He was a jerk then and REAL JERK now!!
Nonsense! This boob rips our President to a British leftwing reporter when we are on the threshold of war and you want that not to be known to Americans?
He needs maximum exposure ... for being the vile idiot he is.
Nina Burleigh clone alert.
"Every once and a while a man comes along who not only deserves a pounding down right begs for it. It is every man's duty to accomodate him for one day it may be himself that is in need."
First of all, who in America believes that Bush was elected on the issues of school vouchers and welfare reform? If we polled the Bush-2000 supporters, we would find that school vouchers was not the reason he was elected. And welfare reform? When was welfare reform even a campaign issue? Clinton signed it, and Gore HAD to support it.
And as far as Bush hiding, Clooney can go screw himself.
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