The Guardian
Andrew Pulver
- Hail, Caesar! star says the film world ‘reacts’ rather than ‘leads the way’ when confronted with humanitarian disasters, such as Syria and Sudan
George Clooney said the film industry takes too long to respond to humanitarian crises in the wider world. Speaking at a press conference for his new film Hail, Caesar! at the Berlin film festival, Clooney was questioned over the frivolity of the film in the face of nightmarish social and political problems, including the war in Syria and consequent refugee crisis.
Clooney said: “The unfortunate thing about film community is we react to situations much more than we lead the way. Things happen, scripts are written, and it takes a couple of years before people are actually making films.
He continued: “It also very difficult to just make a ‘subject’ film; you have to have a proper reason to do it. I’ve struggled to find ways to make a film about Sudan, about Darfur, something very close to me, and which I spend a lot of time on it – but I havn’t been able to find the proper script. It’s hard enough to find a good script for anything, and you don’t want to do it badly – because if you do you only get one chance.”
Clooney – in an otherwise good-humoured encounter with the Berlin press corps – was briefly nettled when questioned in a similar vein by another journalist who questioned the film-makers’ commitment to addressing the refugee crisis.
Clooney responded by citing his well-publicised humanitarian interventions as well as a planned meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel the next day – as well as directly challenging his questioner on their own activities. “I spend a lot of my time working on these things, and it’s an odd thing to have someone stand up and ask, ‘What are you doing about it?’” Hail, Caesar! joint director Joel Coen also defended his own, seemingly apolitical, stance. Coen said: “It’s absurd, if I may say so, to say that anyone who happens to be in public life, or in some creative endeavour, to point the finger and say, you should be telling one particular story. That’s a misunderstanding as to how films get made. Are those stories important? Yes. Does it make sense to say: you’re a public figure, you tell stories, why don’t you tell that story? It’s not a question.” Coen also suggested that the award of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015 – by a jury of which he and his brother Ethan were co-presidents – to the Jacques Audiard thriller Dheepan, which revolves around the difficulties that a trio of Sri Lankan Tamils face while living as refugees in France, was an acknowledgement of the issue. “It has a lot to contribute to that discussion,” he said. On a more genial note, Clooney talked about his collaborations with the Coens, with Hail, Caesar! being the fourth film they have made together. In Hail, Caesar! Clooney plays a somewhat slow-witted star actor of 1950s Hollywood called Baird Whitlock, who is kidnapped by a shadowy group calling themselves “the Future”. Said Clooney: “Every time they send me a script, they say: you are going to play a knucklehead. I didn’t know I was going to be this stupid. When they sent me Burn After Reading, we wrote this part with you in mind. This jackass with a sex toy in the basement … I greatly enjoy how much fun they make of me.”
