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Clooney sheds playboy image to get serious
By Andy Goldberg 

Los Angeles, Oct 8 (DPA) In a radical image change, fabulously wealthy movie star George Clooney, regularly voted one of the sexiest men on the planet, has lined up a slew of films based on serious issues facing America today.

In a recent series of interviews for his critically acclaimed new film "Good Night, and Good Luck", the actor-turned-director is hammering a constant message: it's time for him to get serious.

The movie in question is a documentary-like account of one of the great political confrontations in modern American history. It recounts the tale of how iconic American anchorman Edmund Murrow took on senator Joe McCarthy when the rabid anti-communist was at the height of his power.

Clooney financed the movie himself by mortgaging his Los Angeles mansion, while keeping his palace in Lake Como, Italy, out of danger.

Unlike his other recent ventures, "Ocean's Eleven" and "Ocean's Twelve", the new movie contains no glamour, diamonds or adrenaline-fuelled heists. It is filmed in black and white, features no physical violence or sexual imagery and includes Clooney in a relatively minor role, as a nerdy television producer rather than a sexy playboy.

Clooney is not shy about the political and cultural relevance of the movie in post-9/11 America, where he believes journalists have shirked their duty to ask the hard questions, as the administration and its allies repeatedly dismiss doubters of their policies as unpatriotic.

"I thought it was interesting to hear politicians using fear to erode civil liberties... Power unchallenged and unquestioned will always corrupt. You will find that happens in times of fear, and that some in the press take passes at exposing it," he says.

The movie is the first in a series of projects in which the Hollywood icon turns his attention to some of the most difficult issues shaping modern America.

Next up is "Syriana", which examines how the CIA let its guard down in the Middle East after the end of the Cold War and allowed the formation of today's terrorist networks. Clooney is producing the movie and co-starring with Matt Damon.

It will be directed by Stephen Gaghan, who won an Oscar for writing "Traffic", and is sure to light a firestorm of controversy.

"It's going to make 'Good Night, and Good Luck' look like a Disney film," he told USA Today.

The movie following that is equally challenging.

"The Good German" is a collaboration with business partner Steven Soderbergh and will see Clooney play an American reporter sent to cover the Potsdam conference at the end of the Second World War. There he uncovers a disturbing Allied plot to harness German military expertise.

Clooney is also working on a remake of the classic movie "Network", in which an embittered news anchor rants on air, exposing the corruption of a dumbed-down media that fails to reveal the hypocrisy of the political system.

The project will take the form of a live television performance, with Clooney in the role of the semi-delusional anchor made famous by Peter Finch in 1976.

Cynics might argue that all these dark films are just Clooney's attempts to nab the Oscar that has so far eluded him. But the actor insists his goal is to make people think.

"I'm working on projects that I want to raise a debate about," says Clooney. "I'm interested in films of the 1960s and 1970s that were political. They were born out of the civil rights, Vietnam War and women's rights movements. I feel it's a good time to have the entertainment community start asking questions again."

Yet, at the same time, he is smart enough to know that the films have to work first as entertainment, because nothing turns away moviegoers at the box office faster than a sparkling Hollywood star preaching about peace and justice.

"I didn't want to preach," he insists.

"I've always believed that polarising people doesn't do us any good; that just means I appeal to 48 percent of this country, and nobody else opens their eyes and their ears. The trick is to go in and say that this is a debate. The issues are more complicated than right or wrong."

That's not to say that he's ditching his left-wing allegiances. On the contrary, he believes it is time for Americans to rethink their knee-jerk aversion to the L-word - liberal, which in America has a social-democratic connotation very different from the pro-business, free-market liberals of Europe.

"I'm going to keep saying 'liberal' as loud as I can and as often as I can," Clooney told Newsweek magazine.

Continuing in the same politically irreverent vein, he declares, "I would argue that throughout American history, it's pretty hard to find a time when liberals were on the wrong side of an issue. We thought women should be able to vote and blacks should be allowed to sit at the front of the bus and Vietnam was wrong. We haven't really been on a lot of wrong sides for us to be sort of used as this bad word."

Indo-Asian News Service