Other Crap

Clooney Doesn't Expect to Win Any Oscars

• I think he's right, but if the Oscars were based solely on my opinion, he would be on the short list for Good Night and Good Luck
• He had to make some key directorial decisions in the course of creating that movie, and if he screwed up any one, the film would not have worked.
  1. He had to use Joe McCarthy instead of an actor playing McCarthy. McCarthy was such an exaggerated and unpleasant character that if an actor did a perfect impersonation, the right wing nutburgers would have jumped on Clooney for creating a hatchet job. He decided correctly (as Murrow once did) to let McCarthy hang himself.
  2. He had to film in black-and-white, not just because of some arty whim, or to create a fifties feel, but because it was completely necessary to make the McCarthy footage fit in seamlessly, and because the "real McCarthy" decision was immutable.
• I don't know if he did a better job than Robert Rodriguez (unnominated), Peter Jackson, or Steven Spielberg, but if I had to choose between Clooney and Ang Lee in that category, I'd probably vote for Clooney.