George Clooney On Kimmel, Biden As Broadway ‘Good Night’ Hits Streaming

EXCLUSIVE: Without advance notice, Magnolia Pictures on Friday will release Good Night, and Good Luck: Live From Broadway on Prime Video and other digital platforms. The David Cromer-directed film is is a live-capture of the Tony-nominated play that broke records during its limited Broadway run at the Winter Garden Theatre. George Clooney directed the acclaimed 2005 film and played CBS producer Fred Friendly, but this time he plays Edward R. Murrow, the chain-smoking iconic newsman who took on Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee cancel campaign undertaken to root out communists at the height of the Cold War. His on-air stand helped stunt McCarthy’s momentum by exposing the fearmongering and disinformation done to ruin perceived enemies. That stand came at high cost to Murrow and cohorts that included future 60 Minutes architect Don Hewitt.

Magnolia owns worldwide rights and releases the film through 2929, which produced the original film with Participant. The live-capture film going on sale and rental platforms stars Ilana Glazer, Glenn Fleshler, Clark Gregg, Carter Hudson, Paul Gross, Christopher Denham and Fran Kranz. Clooney and Grant Heslov wrote the play from their original script for the 2005 movie. The film premiered in a one-night-only showing on CNN in June. Todd Wagner & Mark Cuban, who own Magnolia & 2929, produced the original film with Jeff Skoll, and they were investors in the play as well.

Clooney just bowed Jay Kelly at the Venice Film Festival, starring with Adam Sandler in the Noah Baumbach-directed Oscar-buzz Hollywood tale. That film will be front and center for him, but he took time to discuss his Murrow movie with Deadline. Beyond a barrage of images about seismic TV events from 9/11 to Elon Musk’s alleged Nazi salute, there are strong parallels to current events. That includes the temporary shelving of Jimmy Kimmel and the pressure on corporate parents that prompted the multimillion-dollar settlements of dubious lawsuits against ABC News and CBS News. Clooney also lends clarity on his decision to write a gutsy New York Times op-ed piece urging Joe Biden to not seek reelection, after Clooney set up a lucrative fundraiser for the incumbent and observed close up the decline in mental acuity that other Democrats were downplaying. Buckle Up.

DEADLINE: Good Night, and Good Luck follows Edward R. Murrow and his CBS News cohorts’ decision to confront on-air Joseph McCarthy’s steamrolling campaign to call out communists, which prompted the notorious Hollywood Blacklist and heightened paranoia. The “Junior Senator from Wisconsin,” as Murrow dismissively referred to McCarthy, used threats and bullying tactics like falsely accusing Murrow and his colleagues of concealing communist ties and sympathies. Great pressure was placed on CBS chief executive William Paley, who hung in there but kind of waffled at the end by placing Murrow’s See It Now off primetime and onto a weekend day slot. The parallels to what is taking place right now, especially the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, is uncanny.

GEORGE CLOONEY: Yeah, it really is that. Those conversations Bob Iger is going through is very much the conversations that Paley was going through, and the idea of what part of this government incursion are you going to cave to? It is really fascinating.

DEADLINE: A big difference now is that we don’t have a Murrow, a prominent broadcast journalist trusted by the masses who might stand up to the government. Both the corporate parents of CBS News and ABC News have paid off Trump on lawsuits that seemed shaky had they gone to court. Instead of Cronkite or Ted Koppel, that burden of bravery has fallen upon late-night talk hosts with comedy backgrounds, including South Park’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker. You played a role in helping put that show on Comedy Central, after that duo made The Spirit of Christmas (the short introduced the South Park kids and a death battle between Jesus and Santa) for a Fox exec who sent it as a holiday greeting to friends. How much of an idea did you have that you might be unleashing First Amendment warriors who relish prodding President Trump in most personal ways?

CLOONEY: Are you kidding? No way. I saw it on a VCR, and I kept sending it out to the guys at Comedy Central. Eventually, they gave the guys a job there. I just thought they were funny and I didn’t really think they were going to be standard bearers for democracy and free speech. The most trusted people in America were journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Then it became that the most trusted man in America was Jon Stewart. That’s how desperate we are. Jon would be the first to say, you’re looking at me, but I’m a comedian who is just trying to speak truth to power. Watch Jimmy Kimmel and how good he is at it, and John Oliver. You’ve got these really smart, funny guys who are reminding us of what we’re supposed to be, and making the argument for the importance of freedom of speech.

RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel Returns: “Our Government Cannot Be Allowed To Control What We Do & Do Not Say On TV”

DEADLINE: What does it say about society that we rely on comedians and shows like Saturday Night Live for hard truths and scrutiny of government? They certainly get under the skin of our president.   

CLOONEY: I think what’s happened is, we’ve sort of been tamped into our own silos and we’re getting information from the place that best represents our belief systems. Kind of like what we used to do with newspapers, but we’re doing much more so now, not as much with network television as the internet. So we’re just only getting these information cycles that reinforce what we believe and sometimes even accelerate it. It has just separated us from the starting point that was Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, whose work was based on facts. You could have your version of a conservative view or a liberal view, but they wouldn’t start with a different set of facts, and there could be a consensus around certain things.

Now you’ve got the (House) Speaker (Mike Johnson) saying on TV (this week), well, we don’t know if January 6th wasn’t just started by a bunch of people sent by the left. And it’s just like, come on, open your eyes and look at what you’re actually talking about. It’s ridiculous. But we’re all siloed now in a way where it’s very hard to get a consensus on someone to trust. And quite honestly, it’s probably best that it isn’t that now. What if there was a most trusted person in America and it wasn’t Cronkite or Murrow? A scarier thought is it could be somebody who’s truly wholly irresponsible, like McCarthy.

DEADLINE: What’s the difference between Murrow and what he did in standing against McCarthyism and what we’re looking at now? You mentioned Bob Iger, who runs Disney and has to put its welfare and shareholders ahead of his conscience. Crossing the Trump administration and its MAGA crowd is perilous. The same concerns exist for tech companies seeking government permissions to grow their businesses through acquisitions. Skydance bought Paramount Global, and somehow Trump critic Stephen Colbert had his show canceled, and 60 Minutes and CBS News got demoralized by a $16 million payout to Trump when most critics believed his lawsuit would have been tossed if it went before the courts. Where is that courage going to come from?

CLOONEY: Well, I will say this. I think Bob Eger displayed courage. He came out and said, okay, we’re not going to do this. We took a pause, but Jimmy’s back on the air, and he took heat for that. I see it as something to be proud of. I find that we’re going to take these sort of victories for the First Amendment very seriously and celebrate them. Because there are an awful lot of people trampling on it. Now, there are a lot of similarities if you think about it. Back then, it was the second most powerful man in America. Now it’s the President of the United States trying to pressure media to censor themselves.

Remember, the Blacklist wasn’t set up by the U.S. government. The Blacklist was set up by our industry, which said, we’re not going to hire these people because we don’t want to be labeled as communists. The same thing is happening now. The president is coming out, giving a bunch of names, and tons of people who are getting messages from above them say, please don’t talk about these subjects; please don’t take these subjects on. There are great many similarities. We’ve seen some courage, but we’ve seen an awful lot of cowardice. Particularly from these rich tech guys who could do anything they want. The fact that they’re afraid that they might lose a billion out of their 400 billion dollars is pretty crazy to me. But we’ll get through it. It’s just going to be a frustrating period where trustworthy information is getting harder and harder to come by.

DEADLINE: The ABC and CBS News legal settlements, and President Trump bragging loudly about the sums he has received. If he wasn’t in the White House, isn’t it fair to imagine he would have been told by these corporations to pound sand?

CLOONEY: We’ve made mistakes. The law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, if they hadn’t caved, if Columbia University hadn’t caved, I don’t think the levers that the administration has been using would ever have been effective. If the very first people had said no, I think we would be having very different discussions about this. Having said that, we are where we are, and we’re going to wait. And look for moments of clarity and courage. I have to say, when I’m on the same side as (U.S. Senator)Ted Cruz on the subject of the First Amendment and the lines that have been crossed? You just have to go, guys, remember this. I know that everybody who’s in power right now thinks it’s permanent. But we’ve all been here, and it switches every two years. And when it switches, you don’t want to be the one who was infringing on freedom of speech and the First Amendment. Because that pendulum swings the other way, too.

That’s what Ted Cruz was saying. And so that’s the truth. That’s how this works. Whatever side you’re on, everyone should be very concerned about infringing on the very first amendment of the Constitution. It was put it in there very specifically because it was important. The argument about, well, (Stephen Colbert) got kicked out for low ratings, that just doesn’t play out. It is fine for a business to say, well, we don’t want to work with them anymore because their numbers aren’t good. But you don’t fire somebody on a Wednesday because the FCC chair just said, we can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way. That’s not a company, that’s not Disney and ABC saying, well, Jimmy Kimmel’s numbers aren’t great, so we’re going to pull him. It’s, we’re pulling you because we don’t like what you say. And that’s a very different thing. MSNBC and Fox News should be very concerned being on both sides, of anybody saying, we’re going to pull you for the kind of information that you’re putting out.  

DEADLINE: Kimmel didn’t get the opportunity to clarify the point he made about Charlie Kirk’s assassin. But in the same news cycle, we watched longtime Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade advocate forced lethal injections for the mentally ill, reinforcing it with “kill them all.” This is a show President Trump patronizes and uses to deliver his messaging. Kilmeade issued an apology, but basically emerged unscathed, especially compared to Kimmel.  

CLOONEY: It gets worse than that. The editor of the Daily Caller is calling for actual murderous bloodshed in the streets and saying, it should be disproportionate. That’s the site that Tucker Carlson founded. This goes both ways. I think everybody needs to tone it down. This idea of political violence? Most people don’t commit violent acts, but in the hands of someone who’s fired up and mentally deranged, anything can happen. When you start telling everybody that these people are vermin and scum, then you’re telling someone who’s crazed and armed that maybe they should do something about it. And that’s a very dangerous world to live in. That’s throwing gasoline on a fire. We don’t need to be doing that; we need to pay attention.

DEADLINE: How did this streaming platform release of Good Night, and Good Luck: A Night On Broadway come about with Magnolia? Why was it important to you and your Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov?

CLOONEY: Grant and I were talking about the play. It was just this ridiculously big hit and it broke all the box office records, by a lot. And we were looking at it and we thought, well, I always hear how great South Pacific was with Mary Martin. And I’m like, well, I didn’t see it. I don’t know what it looked like. And I thought, let’s record it. Let’s have a record of this, and let’s do it live. Let’s make it a challenge for us, and not just record it to put it out. Let’s do it as a live show. We went to a bunch of places and nobody really was up for it. And then CNN jumped in, which was great, and Magnolia jumped in and we said, okay, let’s do it. So we started planning two weeks before we did it.

We had 27 cameras. We loaded in on Friday night while we were doing the (Broadway) show, we had a kind of run-through. We got nine trucks out on the street we loaded in Friday night. Saturday we did our first dress rehearsal, which was our actual Saturday matinee, and Saturday night we’re live on the air, man. The balls it took for everybody to jump in and do this, I can’t explain to you how crazy it was that we pulled it off. Because it’s one of those things where you go, I don’t know that this is going to work. Because we’re shooting it all from the front. When you see it, we shot it like a movie, really elegant and beautiful. It was important to us to make sure that you got to see this as not just sticking a camera on the front seat of a play.

We wanted it to look like a film, and we managed to capture that, although we also wanted you to be able to understand there was an audience there. You could see that too.

DEADLINE: Sounds like you went to a lot of trouble…

CLOONEY: We were all very proud to do it because one of the things you got to see is, this is a form of resistance. This is the ability to talk about who we are, at our best. Murrow certainly was one of those people, us at our best. Same with these young men and women. Shirley Wershba was one of them, and she came (to see it). She was in the room where it happened 70 years before and she showed up and we got to celebrate courage because courage is a really — it’s really easy to talk about in the abstract, but it’s really something when it counts and it’s on the line. All of these people lost their jobs for (defying McCarthy) and they did it anyway. Murrow’s show was moved to a Sunday afternoon slot. But by the way, most of the guys in that room, Joe Wershba and Don Hewitt, they went on to start 60 Minutes. So this was the beginning of teaching young people how important it was to hold truth to power. And that’s what Murrow did at a time that it wasn’t easy to do.

DEADLINE: There’s a scene with a military leader telling Murrow’s producer Fred Friendly to back down, and that Murrow was basically a communist. When Friendly pressed for specifics and evidence, none was presented. Sounds familiar. What was the eeriest parallel to what we’re seeing now?  

CLOONEY: That scene with Fred Friendly and the military guy. The guy says, we know this. And Friendly says, who are these people? Are they elected? The guy says, wouldn’t you think we would know more than you since we’re in the military? And Friendly again says, who are these people who know?

And here’s the problem with that. Okay, we decided to do these extrajudicial killings of people on boats, coming in with drugs. Now they very well may be people on boats coming in with drugs. So arrest them, throw ’em in jail, send them back to their country. Great. Give them a trial. Let them face their accusers. Let them be confronted with the evidence against them. Good. That’s what we are supposed to do. But deciding to just extrajudiciously kill them is not who we’re supposed to be. Those are the questions and those are the issues. Who’s making these decisions and why? Is it just okay to say, well, we’re going to just do that now. And I’m not saying that they aren’t bad guys, but that’s not the point. The point is you (can’t use the argument) because they’re bad guys and you can’t make us the bad guys in trying to defeat them. We have to stand for something. It’s important that we stand for something.

DEADLINE: What are your hopes for this streaming release? The movie you directed was celebrated, and so was this play. What would you like for people to come away with if they rent this or buy it?

CLOONEY: It was in a big theater, where they usually do musicals, and every night they were sold out 102%. What you got to see every single night was a group of people sitting in a room understanding that there are other people who feel the same way. The whole front two rows. By the end, when I ask the audience, what are you prepared to do (the final line Murrow delivers in the play, directly to the audience) they’re just weeping. It was a cathartic and I think helpful moment for a lot of people, to be reminded that we can be better than this. That we are actually the country that defeated fascism and Nazism and overcame some of our greatest mistakes, particularly slavery. And we’re still a work in progress. But we have achieved such incredible things as well, and we need to rise above some of the issues that we’re facing, these issues that don’t reflect who we are. They’re not who we are.

We’re not a country that just rounds people up in the middle of the streets without a hearing, without being able to plead your case. That’s not who we are. Now, of course, we have done it, like during WWII when we were at our most honorable, but did that to the Japanese community. So we’ve done it, but it’s not our higher angels and it’s not who we want to be, not who think we are. It was a pretty fun thing to be able to stand there and have 1600 people at the end stand up and cheer. And when I would say, what are you prepared to do? And the audience would start screaming, “resist.” It’s an interesting thing. And by the way, if someone on the left was taking things this very far, then the people on the right would have a play like this and they would all be screaming the same thing. That’s fair. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing, it’s what a democracy is.

I think everybody needs to just relax a little bit and start to remember who we are, at our best. And also remember that 99% of this country wants the same things. We want a job with dignity. We want our family to be healthy and happy. We want our children to do better than we did. We’d like to not get destroyed by healthcare costs. We’d like to not have our entire livelihood taken away because of a car accident. Basic things. We all feel that way and we all want those things. We have so much more in common, and all this drumming up of hatred isn’t helpful. This play doesn’t drum up hatred. This play reminds us of who we are when we stand up against that kind of rhetoric and the politics of fear.

DEADLINE: Some of this is about standing up based on your conscience to do what you know is right and not follow a partisan crowd, on both sides. It took courage for you to write that New York Times op-ed column suggesting after you organized a big fundraiser for him, you observed that President Joe Biden was not the same sturdy man you knew years back, and in his advanced age should not run for reelection. It was controversial and made an impact in his withdrawal. How does that stance you took feel now, standing up against the status quo and alienating many in your circle who were downplaying the signs?  

CLOONEY: The only thing I would say on that is, I was raised to tell the truth, period. I wasn’t getting in that, to get in it. It was after they came out and said, what you saw at the debate was the first time ever. And I was like, well, that’s not true. That is actually not true. I had seen it up close. My understanding was that he had just flown in and was tired, and so I took them at their word. And then when I saw it again, and they said, nothing to see here, I said, well, actually there is. Honestly, I was raised to tell the truth and I did that. And from all the election experts, we were going to lose badly, and lose more House seats. But it was a chance; we knew it was going to be a long shot. I think that there were some mistakes made in how it was handled. It wasn’t what I asked to do. I thought we should have had a quick primary. I think we could have pulled that off. France had just done something very similar, the week before. I don’t think it was handled well, but we are where we are because of decisions that were made a year earlier. I think those decisions were a mistake.  

DEADLINE: It certainly left little time for voters to get to know Kamala Harris; in her turn as Vice President she largely stayed in the shadows…

CLOONEY: The vice president’s job is always the worst job in the world. But I would also say that her being the nominee meant that she couldn’t run against her own record. That’s a very hard thing to run against. I would defend her in the sense that it’d be very hard to win, running against your own record if you’re not good at defending your record. You could be pretty good at defending your record, but they weren’t. She didn’t help herself in some of her interviews and things like that as well, which she has admitted in her book.

But look, we are where we are. They won. They get the gavel and what am I supposed to do? Storm the Capitol? We have to take this, it’s what democracy is. The majority of people voted for this. I think most of the people who voted for this are thinking, well, maybe this isn’t exactly what I voted for, but that’s what elections are for. And we have an election in a year and a half or less, and hopefully we’ll be able to right some of the ship along the way. That’s the goal.