George Clooney, who received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from his “Jay Kelly” co-star Laura Dern on opening night of the Venice Film Festival, sat down for a masterclass at the Lido’s Match Point Arena to look back on a career spanning nearly five decades. His relationship with Venice stretches back nearly three decades, beginning with “Out of Sight” and continuing with films including “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Michael Clayton,” “Gravity,” “Suburbicon,” “Wolfs,” and, last year, Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly.” During the wide-ranging talk, Clooney reminisced about the risks he took to make “Good Night, and Good Luck” two decades ago, recalling that he “mortgaged my house to make it” before bringing the film to Venice in 2005, where he watched it with an audience for the first time. The story — about legendary CBS journalist Edward R.
Murrow standing up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare — remained deeply personal to Clooney, whose father, Nick Clooney, was a journalist and news anchor. He said he felt compelled to revisit the film the stage at a moment when its themes of press freedom, political intimidation and the responsibility of journalists to challenge those in power still strike a chord.
And so I thought it was important to say those words,” he said about the Broadway adaptation. He paid tribute to his father for inspiring his activism and the launch of the Clooney Foundation, which he said has already “gotten 100 journalists out of jail.” “When I was a kid, I was like seven or eight, believe it or not, my dad used to say to me, ‘I don’t give a shit what you do in life. You have one responsibility, and that is to challenge people with more power than you and to defend people with less power than you.
That’s it.’” Clooney said the philosophy continues to shape both his activism and that of his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. And so our job is to be part of that solution.” Clooney also recalled his own years of campaigning to bring attention to atrocities in Darfur and admitted he hasn’t been as successful as his wife in actually bringing perpetrators to justice. When Murad first came to their home, Clooney said Amal — already overwhelmed with cases — had warned him not to let her take on another one.
Four hours later, he found the two women sitting on the floor crying together. During the panel Clooney passionately also discussed the balance of power between an actor and his director. The sound design, the cinematography.
And the director gets to dip his brush into each one of those,” he added. I could cut them out, for that matter.” Clooney talked about working with Terrence Malick on “A Thin Red Line.” Malick “hadn’t worked in fifteen years and wanted to come back and do a film,” he said. I was like: he cut me completely out.
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