Geoffrey Macnab of Sight & Sound on George Clooney's tribute to speaking your mind:

George Clooney's second feature as a director is set in the early 1950s at the height of Senator Joe McCarthy's communist witch-hunt. CBS reporter and anchorman Ed Murrow, one of the legendary figures of US journalism, challenges McCarthy's bullyboy tactics on air. In doing so he puts his career in jeopardy and exposes the network to McCarthy's wrath.

Clooney's film has the same edge and intensity as the live US television dramas of the 1950s (Marty, Requiem for a Heavyweight). He fills the soundtrack with music from jazz singer Dianne Reeves and the film is shot in black and white with almost all the action concentrated in the CBS offices and studios where Murrow works. As in the great cinéma vérité documentaries Primary and Crisis (which Clooney has acknowledged as influences), there is often a sense that we are eavesdropping on momentous events.
Good Night, and Good Luck is also a celebration of professionalism. Clooney (whose father was an anchorman) evokes a lost era of journalism, long before the excesses of Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Fox News besmirched the reputation of the US media. By 1958, the point at which the film starts with Murrow making a valedictory speech, the rot is already setting in. Murrow may be revered, but his bosses no longer want him on the air.

The screenplay, by Clooney and Grant Heslov, doesn't just concentrate on the Murrow vs McCarthy stand-off. As in all newsroom dramas, there is an emphasis on the camaraderie and backbiting behind the scenes. One newscaster is so dismayed at being labelled a communist that he is driven to suicide. Another couple need to keep their marriage secret or risk losing their jobs.

"I didn't make this film as a protest against any administration," Clooney has stated. "I made this film as a historical record because I grew up as a fan of Murrow." Nonetheless, he points out that Good Night, and Good Luck (the title comes from Murrow's catchphrase) is not intended as a biopic. Few Americans nowadays remember the great newscaster - and at a preview screening in Los Angeles, 70 per cent of the audience didn't even recognise McCarthy.

David Strathairn's extraordinary performance dominates the film with its gravitas, pathos and even a streak of deadpan humour. With a cigarette held between thumb and forefinger, the chain-smoking Murrow banters with colleagues, but the moment he's on air he speaks intently and with utter conviction. "We needed an actor who seems to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders. You always felt that with Murrow," says Clooney of the decision to cast character actor Strathairn (best known for his roles for his friend John Sayles).

McCarthy, meanwhile, plays himself in that Clooney uses only old newsreel footage for the Wisconsin senator. "If we'd had an actor, people would have said we were making him too harsh or too feeble," the director says. "We thought McCarthy could do the best job playing himself - there's even word that he's up for Best Supporting Actor."

An interview with George Clooney, by Amanda Lornie

George Clooney has been an outspoken critic of the media for many years - but with his latest Oscar-nominated film, Goodnight and Good Luck, he's paying tribute to the newsmen he wished still ruled the airwaves. As the son of television broadcaster Nick Clooney, young George always felt at home in a newsroom and became enamoured of all its activity, spending his youth on the set, working the teleprompter and watching reporters prepare for their stories.

In his new film, Good Night and Good Luck, the actor/director takes film fans back to the 1950s, when revered US newsman Edward R Murrow triumphed in bringing down Senator Joseph McCarthy, who staged a witchhunt for communists in celebville and their sympathisers. Clooney took painstaking care with every fact and detail of the film to authentically portray the era. We caught up with him to find out more...
You recently hosted a viewing party of this film with today's top TV newsmen. How did that go?
We had a screening of the film that Walter Cronkite hosted for us, and it was with US news Anchors Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Morley Safer, Brian Williams, even Bill O'Reilly [Clooney's one-time adversary]. My dad was there too, so it was a really exciting night to show it to those guys. I got a text message from Morley Safer which is as good as any review. It was a good night.

There was an awful lot of cigarette smoking going on in the film. Did anyone have to sign any health insurance policies?
We figured with David Strathairn, his Oscar acceptance speech will be 'I'd like to thank...' in a gravelly voice. We were the only set you've ever seen where people had to go outside to get fresh air, instead of smoking outside. It was rough, although I didn't have to smoke. But nobody had to sign anything. When you look at the all of the photos from the time, that's how it was.

How did your father's career in broadcasting influence your approach to making the film?
I wanted to use the 'Box of Lights and Wires' speech from Edward R.Murrow describing the impact of television to his audience. My father used to do it for me, along with Shakespeare. He'd stand up on a chair when I was 10-years-old. I talked to my dad about getting the facts right because if we got anything wrong we would be marginalised. If you get anything wrong they could go, 'That's all horses**t.' We double-sourced everything, like my father does.

What was so compelling about your dad's career to you?
My fondest memories are of sitting on the floor of a newsroom in the early 1970s watching two reporters, Deborah Dixon and Howard Ane, preparing for a 5.30pm news broadcast, pitching their show. Watching my dad decide what the lead story is, watching them piece together what is news and what is entertainment and trying to discern between the two. I ran a teleprompter for my dad when I was 11, which was fun. Then it was just papers taped together and you'd be running it through a motor with a foot pedal. It was great. We didn't have a babysitter, so the newsroom was where we lived. It was a great place to grow up.

Why didn't you follow your father's footsteps into journalism?
I wasn't anywhere near as bright as my father was. I tried it. I did some interviews for a Warner Amex cable show for a while, which was really bad. I lacked talent at it! But my father just said, 'Get the facts right,' which is the most important thing you can do. We screened the film for him. He was the first person we showed it to - he just stood up and tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'You got it right.' George Clooney as Fred Friendly

How did you guarantee authenticity with the actors who played the journalists in the newsroom?
You'd have real newsman Joe Wershba, played in the film by Robert Downey, Jr, sitting in the corner with headsets while we were in the room doing all the news scenes. I'd say 'That's a civil rights issue,' and he'd yell out, 'It's civil liberties!' The news scenes were fun for us because we'd give all of the actors three or four newspapers of the day, let's say October 4th, 1954. They'd show up, each of them had their own typewriters and desks with a copy of the New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Post from October 4th, 1954. They'd go through it and type their group out there that are entertaining the thought that McCarthy was now right and Murrow was wrong. We thought it was important to be very careful with the facts. If you had an actor that played him perfectly everyone would say you're making him too much of a buffoon. You couldn't really actually believe someone could act like that.

Why did you use actual archival footage of Senator Joe McCarthy?
We wanted to let him use his own words. We thought that was the smartest thing to do because we had to send researchers into the archives to find footage which was in a state of disarray so there was restoration that had to happen. It was tedious work. Grant was doing so much research I thought it was going to kill him. There was actually some footage with my Aunt Rosemary (Clooney), which we didn't use. There was also some stuff with Gina Lollabridgida, where she's talking about fashion with (President) Nixon.

How would you describe your style as a director?
I think silence is incredibly fascinating. If you watch the original film Fail Safe, where Henry Fonda is sitting in the room waiting for the phone to ring to find out whether or not Moscow is gone, there is nothing but silence and stillness. To me, that is deafening now in an MTV generation, where everyone is anxious to keep everyone's attention constantly. I find that tension can come out of quiet and still. I'm dubious, at best, at acting and directing, but I'm a good casting director. With this, I needed someone who felt like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders and David Strathairn is that actor. You felt as if he was carrying democracy up a hill. This movie can't be made without David Strathairn. Grant and I called him from Italy and had never met him before. We didn't know he could do it until three days before shooting when we did the camera test. That was the first time we saw him as Murrow and both Grant and I high-fived each other.

Do you think that Edward R Murrow's speech 'we cannot use fear as a weapon' is applicable to what's going on in the world today?
It's a constant vigil. We do this every 30 years. We panic! Something big happens and we panic. We got bombed at Pearl Harbor and we rounded up all the Japanese Americans and stuck 'em in a detention camp, which is not really very democratic of us. But we do come to our senses. It wouldn't have been fun to be a Muslim American in the United States weeks after 9/11. It's probably not great to have been one of the detainees for three and a half years and then set free because they had no evidence against you. The Patriot Act is certainly a concern; all of those things are dangerous. I think more important than me preaching is that we as a nation have to have the debate. I don't know what the answers are. I just know that if the idea is to say talking about it makes you unpatriotic, I've got to call your bluff on that.

Do you think the media has too much power?
When you have a man who has 40 million people watching him, like Murrow did; they had an awful lot of power. I don't think you'll ever that kind of power again with any one person, which may be good - if that one person is Bill O'Reilly, then maybe that's a bad thing! I saw some teeth in the handling of Hurricane Katrina, which I thought was nice to see. This administration is the first one in a long time that gets to take a pass on responsibility because you can hide behind patriotism. I grew up in a family where my father went after Jimmy Carter during the OPEC nations raising the price of gas; he went after Gerald Ford for pardoning Richard Nixon. He believes that your responsibility - not just your right, but your duty - is to question authority, period, and all government.

What are your feelings about the production studios like Warner Brothers having their own blacklists at one time, and is there a blacklist of actors and producers etc today?
The nice thing is that Hollywood's best apologies for blacklisting are to do films like this one, or The Crucible or Guess Who's Coming To Dinner during the civil rights movement, or the Young Lions after World War II. It seems that those might be better ways of apologising than just sending out an apology letter. As we were waltzing into war in Iraq very few people, especially the Democratic senators, were asking tough questions; they were all taking a pass. Some of us actors were getting hit pretty hard for being asked questions and answering them honestly and put on the front of magazines that called us traitors. The difference now is nobody is bringing us in front of the House of Representatives investigating us. It is nowhere near as powerful as it was during Murrow's time. There is no such thing as a blacklist anymore. For anybody who would blacklist you, there are 50 people that would hire you now.

Your next big venture is a Las Vegas casino. When is the projected opening?
Two years from this December. It's going to be fun. I'm really excited about it. The whole place is called Las Ramblas and it's based on the road in Barcelona. We have this romantic vision of putting on a suit, getting dressed up, going down to the casino and having a big band playing, having dinner and pushing the tables back and people dancing. It's the way I grew up watching Rosemary sing at those places. I've found some people who are crazy enough to let us get away with it. We're going to take 25 per cent (of my profits) and put it into the Make Poverty History campaign. It's a good thing to do.

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