Jon Wertheim (00:04):
Yes, in film, but even more so in theater, the sense of timing is essential. At age 63, George Clooney makes his Broadway debut this month, starring in an adaptation of the 2005 Oscar-nominated movie, Good Night and Good Luck.
(00:19)
Clooney co-wrote both the original screenplay and this play, telling the story of pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow, who took on strong-arming Senator Joseph McCarthy, all while withstanding pressure not to make waves at his own news network, this network, CBS.
(00:35)
The plot revolves around themes of truth, intimidation and courage in the face of corporate media. It is set in the 1950s. Clooney always meant for the story to echo today. He just didn't realize how loudly it would.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
The story will continue in a moment.
George Clooney (00:56):
Ooh, it's cold. Wow, it's cold.
Jon Wertheim (01:00):
Deep February, Winter Garden Theatre in the heart of Broadway, the set still under construction. George Clooney arrives in character.
George Clooney (01:09):
This is how they treat the two-time sexiest man alive. You see that? Oh, there he is. Hey, Jon. How are you, man?
Jon Wertheim (01:15):
How are you?
(01:15)
Ever the everyman, he doesn't stand on ceremony. He hurtles over it.
George Clooney (01:20):
They don't care. They don't care.
Jon Wertheim (01:22):
But now it can be told, Hollywood's famously cool leading man has the jitters.
George Clooney (01:27):
I mean, look at this place. This is proper old Broadway. And it's exciting to be here. Look, let's not kid ourselves. It's nerve-wracking, and then there's a million reasons why it's dumb to do.
Jon Wertheim (01:41):
What do you mean?
George Clooney (01:41):
Well, it's dumb to do because you're coming out and saying, "Well, let's try to get an audience to take this ride with you back to 1954."
Speaker 4 (01:50):
One minute.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
We need a live mic on the floor. It's front loaded.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
How much?
Speaker 5 (01:55):
By about five seconds.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Five seconds. That's too much.
Jon Wertheim (01:58):
The play brings to life the humming CBS newsroom of the 1950s, all typewriters and smoldering cigarettes. Having dyed his hair, upsetting that familiar salt and pepper ratio, Clooney plays the protagonist Edward R. Murrow, host of the weekly television news program See It Now.
Edward R. Murrow (02:18):
Good evening. A few weeks ago there occurred a few obscure notices in the notice.
George Clooney (02:21):
… notices in the newspapers about a Lieutenant Milo Radulovic. We propose to examine insofar as we can.
Jon Wertheim (02:27):
You wrote the script to the film more than 20 years ago. You played Fred Friendly.
George Clooney (02:33):
Yeah.
Jon Wertheim (02:33):
Murrow's producer. You didn't play Murrow?
George Clooney (02:34):
No.
Jon Wertheim (02:35):
Why did you not want to play him?
George Clooney (02:37):
Murrow had a gravitas to him that at 42 years old I wasn't able to pull off.
Jon Wertheim (02:43):
Murrow earned his gravitas during World War II.
Edward R. Murrow (02:46):
Just overhead now the burst of the anti-aircraft fire.
Jon Wertheim (02:50):
With eyewitness radio dispatches from London amid the blitz.
Edward R. Murrow (02:56):
Good night and good luck.
Jon Wertheim (02:57):
His trademark sign-off doubles as the play's title.
(03:02)
Clooney wrote the story with his longtime friend and creative partner, Grant Heslov.
Grant Heslov (03:07):
We have the same suit on. Is it the same color?
Jon Wertheim (03:09):
How does this partnership work? Who's at the keyboard?
George Clooney (03:12):
Oh, you're at the keyboard.
Grant Heslov (03:14):
He doesn't know how to use a computer. He can barely …
George Clooney (03:16):
No, I am like this. I'm the luddite.
Speaker 8 (03:19):
Through the first writers meeting …
Jon Wertheim (03:21):
They met in LA in the early '80s when both were struggling actors. Now they run a production company together. Full disclosure, the three of us collaborated on an unrelated sports documentary out later this year. Clooney and Heslov conceived of the story of Good Night and Good Luck in the early 2000s when the US went to war in Iraq.
George Clooney (03:42):
I just thought it was a good time to talk about when the press held government to account.
(03:49)
Because a report on Senator McCarthy is by definition controversial, we want to say exactly what we mean.
Jon Wertheim (03:55):
A show within a show, the play recreates the historic television face-off between Murrow and Joseph McCarthy with McCarthy essentially playing himself through archival footage.
Joseph McCarthy (04:06):
… that Mr. Edward R. Murrow, as far back as 20 years ago, was engaged in propaganda for communist causes.
Jon Wertheim (04:14):
At the height of the red Scare, the Wisconsin Senator led a crusade to weed out supposed communist infiltration of the US government.
George Clooney (04:23):
We're going to go with the story because the terror is right here in this room.
Jon Wertheim (04:27):
Murrow and his team overcame the climate of fear and intimidation to expose and help take down McCarthy with measured fact-based editorials.
George Clooney (04:36):
This proposition is a very simple one. Anyone who opposes or criticizes McCarthy's methods must be a communist.
Jon Wertheim (04:43):
Are you guys using McCarthyism as a parable for today?
Grant Heslov (04:47):
Originally it wasn't for today today, but this is a story that stands the test of time. I think it's a story that you can keep telling over and over. I don't think it'll ever thematically get old.
George Clooney (04:58):
Hey guys.
Ilana Glazer (05:00):
Hey George. Good to see you.
George Clooney (05:00):
Good to meet you.
Ilana Glazer (05:01):
Thank you so much for having me.
George Clooney (05:02):
I'm so happy you're here.
Jon Wertheim (05:03):
At the table read in a downtown Manhattan studio.
George Clooney (05:06):
I'm a little nervous.
Speaker 11 (05:07):
Yeah, I'm a little nervous too.
Jon Wertheim (05:09):
Clooney met the cast and wasted no time addressing what he sees as the parallels to today.
George Clooney (05:14):
When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed, has to succeed as 60 Minutes is here right now on our first day.
Jon Wertheim (05:28):
Kidding aside, Clooney made the point these are chilling times for the news media.
George Clooney (05:33):
ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration and CBS News is in the process of …
Jon Wertheim (05:39):
The process he's talking about, President Trump has lodged a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS making the unfounded allegation that 60 Minutes engaged in election interference. CBS has since filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. All this as the network's parent company, Paramount is trying to close a merger deal, which requires approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
George Clooney (06:05):
We're seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations to make journalists smaller. Governments don't like the freedom of the press. They never have. And that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you're on. They don't like the press.
Jon Wertheim (06:26):
What does this play tell us about the media's ability or willingness to withstand this kind of pressure?
George Clooney (06:33):
It's a fight that is for the ages. It will continue. You see it happening at the LA Times. You see it happening at the Washington Post for God's sake.
(06:42)
You guaranteed the corporate would have no influence over news content.
(06:48)
Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged, like war is waged. It doesn't just happen accidentally. It takes people saying, "We're going to do these stories and you're going to have to come after us." And that's the way it is.
Speaker 12 (07:06):
Places for top of scene two, please.
George Clooney (07:08):
Boom, boom. Boom-boom-boom.
Jon Wertheim (07:10):
When we dropped in on rehearsals, the mood was as light as the material was heavy.
Ilana Glazer (07:15):
You're insured, right?
George Clooney (07:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon Wertheim (07:17):
Comedian and producer Ilana Glazer plays CBS news writer Shirley Wershba.
(07:22)
How is George Clooney doing leading a troupe of stage actors?
Ilana Glazer (07:26):
It's shaky.
Jon Wertheim (07:26):
Shaky?
Ilana Glazer (07:30):
It's shaky, Jon. It's tough. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 13 (07:31):
Let's do it live.
George Clooney (07:38):
Let's do live.
Ilana Glazer (07:38):
We're all so focused on this material and it's serious and I'm trying to make it as honest as possible. So George really will let the tension release and break the tension with a joke at the right time.
David Cromer (07:49):
Wait, let me just jump in a second.
Ilana Glazer (07:50):
One of Broadway's most in-demand directors, David Cromer, is the man in charge.
David Cromer (07:55):
This has to do with the pressure on you.
Jon Wertheim (07:58):
Your Murrow character's being portrayed by someone with a considerable star wattage. What challenge does that present to you?
David Cromer (08:04):
It doesn't present a challenge. It helps. Edward R. Murrow was a star. He was the most trusted man in America. He had this very serious news show, but he also had this incredibly popular entertainment show, which is on Friday night. It's called Person to Person. And he went into Liberace's house and he went into all these people's houses.
Edward R. Murrow (08:25):
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 16 (08:26):
Thank you so much.
Edward R. Murrow (08:26):
Good night, Lee.
Speaker 16 (08:27):
Good night Ed.
David Cromer (08:28):
If he were playing Willy Loman, that would be different. You know what I mean?
Jon Wertheim (08:32):
A smaller figure than Murrow.
David Cromer (08:33):
If he were playing a little man. If he were playing a little man. He's playing a great man. He's a great man. He's playing a great man.
George Clooney (08:40):
Next week we'll take you to Beverly Hills, California to the-
Jon Wertheim (08:43):
As for the play setting, Clooney knows his way around a newsroom. His father, Nick Clooney was a long-time journalist in Anchorman.
George Clooney (08:50):
When I was 12 years old, my dad was working at WKRC in Cincinnati. I would run the teleprompter. In those days, a teleprompter was sheets of paper taped end to end with a camera pointed down and you'd feed them like this underneath the camera and my dad would be able to read it on the teleprompter. And then at the commercial they'd say, "Okay, cut three minutes out of that story," and you had to, at the end of it, a paper cutter and you'd just go sh-dunk.
Grant Heslov (09:14):
You really are old.
George Clooney (09:16):
I'm old, man.
(09:17)
It feels like I'm running for something.
Jon Wertheim (09:19):
Clooney says he's running for nothing.
Speaker 17 (09:22):
Touche.
George Clooney (09:22):
So yeah, exactly.
Jon Wertheim (09:24):
But he makes no secret of his politics. A lifelong Democrat, he made news last summer when he wrote a pointed essay calling on Joe Biden not to seek re-election on account of his age.
(09:35)
Looking back on that, happy you did it?
George Clooney (09:37):
Yeah. I'll make it kind of easy. I was raised to tell the truth. I had seen the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised. And so I feel as if there was a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that, and I was not proud of that, and I also believed I had to tell the truth.
Jon Wertheim (10:02):
Truth, an increasingly elusive concept. Clooney says that for all the parallels between the play and these convulsive times we live in today, disinformation is one critical distinction.
George Clooney (10:14):
Here's where I would tell you where we differ from what Murrow was doing. Although McCarthy would try to pose things that he'd show up a blank piece of paper and say, "I've got a list of names." Okay. So that was his version of fake news. We now are at a place where we've found that it's harder and harder and harder to discern the truth. Facts are now negotiated.
Jon Wertheim (10:36):
You and I can agree or disagree, but if we can't reach a consensus that this chair is brown.
George Clooney (10:41):
Yeah.
Jon Wertheim (10:42):
We're in trouble.
George Clooney (10:43):
That's right.
David Cromer (10:44):
Can we turn the camera on and look at the opening shot?
Jon Wertheim (10:46):
By March rehearsals had moved into the theater, a big production issue on this day, the prop cigarettes.
David Cromer (10:53):
Any trouble with cigarettes, lighters, ashtrays, anything like that?
George Clooney (10:56):
We'll have to talk about ashtrays 'cause …
(10:58)
The hardest part for me is smoking.
Jon Wertheim (11:00):
What do you mean?
George Clooney (11:00):
Well, he smokes a lot, and we smoke a lot in the play. Everybody smokes in the place, so the place is covered in smoke. And smoking in our family is a big problem. Grew up in Kentucky, a lot of tobacco farmers, and almost all of my family members died of lung cancer. My father's sister Rosemary died of it. She was a wonderful singer, died of it. And my dad's 91 because he didn't smoke. So smoking has always been, it's a hard thing to do.
(11:28)
Get an albuterol nebulizer. Let's get a pulse ox right away.
Jon Wertheim (11:31):
It's easy to forget, George Clooney has been an A-lister for 30 years now.
George Clooney (11:36):
Usually he sleeps on the foot of my bed, but he's gotten so fat.
Jon Wertheim (11:39):
In 2003, he was a bachelor living with a pet pig when 60 Minutes profiled him.
Speaker 18 (11:44):
George.
Speaker 19 (11:44):
George.
Speaker 20 (11:44):
George.
Jon Wertheim (11:47):
You were in the Sexiest Man of the Year phase.
George Clooney (11:50):
Sure. That was a big time for me. I was very-
Jon Wertheim (11:52):
Not that you're not sexy now.
George Clooney (11:53):
It's okay. I'm not hurt, Jon.
Jon Wertheim (11:54):
He's married now. His wife and their two kids left the home they keep in Europe to spend this spring run with him in New York. Clooney is also in a different phase of his life professionally.
George Clooney (12:06):
Look, I'm 63 years old. I'm not trying to compete with 25-year-old leading men. That's not my job. I'm not doing romantic films anymore.
(12:15)
So we just put the catwalk in up here.
Jon Wertheim (12:17):
Opening night set for April 3rd, George Clooney's turn on Broadway puts him a few feet from his audience.
(12:24)
They can see you. You can see them too.
George Clooney (12:25):
I'm not looking at them. I'm putting my wife in the very, very, very back.
Jon Wertheim (12:30):
You wish you had done this earlier in your career?
George Clooney (12:32):
I don't know that I could have. I wasn't … I didn't do the work required to get there.
Jon Wertheim (12:38):
But I saw the smile when you came out here and-
George Clooney (12:40):
Oh yeah, it's cool-
Jon Wertheim (12:40):
… looked out here.
George Clooney (12:41):
Yeah. Anybody who would deny that would just be a liar. I mean, there isn't a single actor alive that wouldn't have loved to have been on Broadway, so that's the fun of it. It's tricky the older you get, but why not?
(12:54)
And so the question is a very simple one, not what power unchecked will do. We've seen that answer. The question is, what are you prepared to do. Good night and good luck.
