George Clooney (28 page)

The film is a rare example of a narrative where ideas and words predominate. The film takes place almost exclusively in the CBS studios. There is no action in the sense of chase sequences, only a suppressed romance between a married couple, and the resolution, though complete in terms of starting to bring McCarthy to account, is still relatively downbeat in Murrow's bleak warning about the future of television. The narrative dramatizes a standing up for principle, knowing the potential risk but not the audience reaction, until the phones start ringing, showing the support of the public. As Murrow says, “It occurs to me that we might not get away with this one.” The close of Murrow's program on
McCarthy ends with rapturous applause from the control room, reflecting a sense of euphoria, relief, and also the sense that this is very much a theatrical performance on the part of Murrow.

The film celebrates a different kind of heroism: a quiet, articulate kind rather than the usual variety we are offered. The idea, as expressed by Murrow that he and Friendly would be prepared to split the cost of a commercial between them in order for a controversial broadcast to go ahead, would be hard to imagine today. It is also a film that keeps things back: obvious outpourings of emotion, unnecessary exchanges of dialogue, even whole scenes. We never learn exactly what Paley says to Friendly when he asks him to stay behind (it is reported a few seconds later as a desire to lay some people off) or exactly what the lawyers say to Palmer Williams (Tom McCarthy) except that he is subdued after meeting with them.

William Paley represents the commercial and political pressures on a TV station, stressing (through Mickelson) that they are reliant on sponsors, who may have military contracts. He does, however, warn Murrow about the tactics McCarthy will use (personal attacks on individuals rather than what they are saying) and promises that the corporate interests of the company will not interfere with editorial ones. He also warns Murrow that “we don't make the news, we report the news,” suggesting he is uncomfortable with CBS's reporting becoming the story itself. The film touches not just on the moral responsibility of the media but also on its power to influence viewers and listeners. Even the Kent cigarette commercial is prefaced by some flattery of the average viewer of
Person to Person
as not easily persuaded by advertisers, before the program proceeds to try and do so. An idea of Langella's, we see Paley walk into a darkened and empty studio, shortly after McCarthy's rebuttal, possibly suggesting that he may have to say goodbye to his empire shortly. Structurally, the fates of Murrow and McCarthy run parallel. McCarthy stays in the Senate but like Murrow is somewhat put out to pasture, moved away from the center to the periphery of things. Paley's final exchange with Murrow and Friendly underlines how their professional relationship has shifted, so that Murrow is offered only a five-episode series on Sunday afternoons.

The slide into celebrity culture is already signposted in Murrow's own banal interviews on
Person to Person
with figures like Liberace. Clooney has some fun (as with the clip from
The Newlywed Game
in
Confessions
) using some material, which now seems absurd, as Liberace talks about settling down and showing some romantic interest in Princess Margaret. The compliment from a member of the studio crew “Good show” is met
by a withering look from Murrow and silence as he remains sitting as the studio lights gradually go out—he knows exactly the kind of program he is being forced to make. Later, he is seen sneaking glances at 45 degrees to his interviewee (Gina Lollobrigida) of McCarthy being subjected to the same kind of questioning that he forced on others. At the same time, the film accepts the commercial reality of television, not just for the channel but for the individuals concerned. Murrow has to admit to Paley that the patronage of CBS helped him put his children through school and on balance has allowed him to do many things that rival channels might well have refused. For his part, despite being old friends through the war, Paley seems unhappy that his star has been eclipsed by Murrow's notoriety.

We also see in Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise) a parallel for Murrow, someone who might share and support the same principles but does not have the personal strength, or perhaps luck (his wife has just left him), to stick to them without paying a price. The fixed grin that Hollenbeck sports through most of his scenes, twitching slightly in the bar later as Shirley reads the critical reviews, only serves to underline its opposite: that here is a man near breaking point. The pressure from critical journalists like the unseen Jack O'Brian had been present for several years on the real character, who found it increasingly hard to bear. Words can be used to speak the truth as in Murrow's campaign but they can also injure and at extremes even kill.

Using two long lenses (as he also does in
Confessions
), Clooney often racks focus, so that our attention is very much directed by what is sharp on screen, no matter where it is in the frame. Hence, in Murrow's own counterrebuttal we shift attention from a side-on shot of him in the studio to his image behind on the monitor, looking head-on at the camera. In the newsroom meeting, the slow zoom into Murrow sitting in shadow, thinking, as others argue around him about the legality of McCarthy's tactics, underlines his greater vision of the situation. He cuts through their focus on small details with the wider picture (that McCarthy will come after him personally). Correspondingly, in the following scene there is a slow zoom-out from Murrow, a lone figure at a typewriter, working at his all-important closing argument, like a lawyer in a high-profile court case.

The flip side, which is not completely ignored here, is whether Murrow's campaign (and therefore Clooney's film in dramatizing this) becomes something of a personal crusade, losing sight of wider pressures. The scene between Joe and Shirley in bed together, with Joe wondering “What if we're wrong?,” does show the presence of doubt, even among
those who suffered the most detrimental consequences for themselves personally. The fact that Murrow shows some surprise at the revelation of the secret marriage suggests that he is perhaps too focused on his battle of principle to notice more personal things around him. In the bar, he is framed in sharp focus, biting his nails in apparent worry, looking up at Hollenbeck, blurred in the foreground, but if he senses the strain the other man is under, he does not say or do anything to try and prevent the other man's suicide. The film does not duck opposing views, such as the military's faith in the judgement of superior officers, the presence of Bobby Kennedy on the McCarthy panel questioning Moss, and Paley challenging Murrow about whether people really want a “civics lesson” rather than entertainment.

Clooney's own performance (hampered by a back injury sustained during
Syriana
) is relatively low-key, with relatively few close-ups, so that he is a backroom presence, guiding proceedings in the newsroom but doing so in a way that leaves the story as the central character rather than his orchestration of its telling. The iconic exchange with Murrow, when he crouches down at his feet and taps his leg with a pencil just before they go on air, reflects not a subservient relationship, despite the low angles used, but the camera tends to stay on Murrow: it is his show and it is his words that are spoken, supported technically and morally by Friendly. Mickelson derides the cliché of being “all in a big boat together,” undermining Friendly's position at this point (a brave line for a writer/director to include about his own character). The real Joe Wershba describes the actual relationship being closer to “hero worship” on Friendly's part and Murrow's sometimes patronizing disdain.
⁴
Clooney shifts this more into the buddy territory of wise-cracking equals (akin to his own relationship with Heslov). The film would perhaps struggle to hold audience attention if the plot deviated too far from the razor-sharp precision of Murrow's words on camera. Generally, the scripts were actually coproduced more heavily by Friendly but the film emphasizes the shift in the attacks on McCarthy toward Murrow working alone.

At the news by phone of Hollenbeck's suicide, Clooney's head drops. However, both what he hears and then what he says to Murrow is not audible, so that we focus on the actor's reactions. We cut to Reeves singing “How High the Moon” (a song present in the film's conception from the very outset) to establish an elegiac mood, and this bleeds over the following scenes, describing Hollenbeck's actions and the words of a reporter, the unseen O'Brian, who is hostile even in recording Hollenbeck's death. Murrow is framed looking at Reeves through glass (specially placed for just this shot), so that her reflection is partly seen
superimposed over his face. It is a rare example of quite an artful shot, but here the emotion of the moment justifies it rather than seeming self-indulgent. Murrow's succinct on-air obituary is contrasted with O'Brian's tasteless hostility.

To secure financial backing, Clooney had to add 5 pages to the original script of 85 pages, but probably most of this length is pared back again in production, with a focus on the silences, like the slight awkwardness of Friendly and Paley in the elevator. Cut out or down are Wershba interviewing Radulovich, Murrow talking to Gina Lollobrigida, the second scene between Murrow and Hollenbeck, lengthier questioning of Annie Lee Moss, and some of the banter between Friendly and Murrow before McCarthy's rebuttal is shown. In all these cases, the substantive details are present elsewhere and anxiety is better conveyed by silence than nervous chatter. Some reaction from Murrow and Friendly during McCarthy's rebuttal is also cut, which would have had Friendly deliver the line “We've got him, Ed,” which might have seemed too premature and triumphalist. Without it, there is more tension as we are unsure exactly how the public reaction will play out. Clooney cuts some of Murrow's speech where he mentions his coverage of Soviet atrocities during the war, which perhaps would have confused audiences and drawn them away from the focus on an American story in the present.

The subplot of Joe and Shirley Wershba (Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson, respectively) and their secret marriage (which Heslov suggests he and Clooney did not know about until they actually met them), symbolized by their daily removal of rings, does have the effect of creating a parallel in a personal sphere at a time of growing cultural paranoia, particularly Shirley's line about looking over her shoulder at work before answering what seems like a perfectly innocent question.
⁵
However, just because something really happened does not make it dramatically compelling in fiction, and such etiquette existed long before McCarthy. There is a repressive element in wider society at work here. Later, Murrow concedes that McCarthy “didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it.” Perhaps it could be said that the throwing off of McCarthy's influence allows people to question other subjective codes of behavior, but these scenes act as a hiatus in the main plot, rather than adding a great deal to it. The film does not really explain how their secret is exposed at this precise moment. The suggestion is that everyone knew and it reflects a bowing to extended pressure. The script talks of a “melancholy” at the moment when they are presented with their ultimatum, but the film as shot plays up a quiet relief that they do not need to hide anymore.
⁶
Although in real life, the pair went on to be successful
producers, in the world of the film, without this information their future remains uncertain.

The newsroom scenes are certainly informed by Clooney's own upbringing, and his love of films from the 1970s like
All the President's Men
(Alan J. Pakula, 1976) is reflected here in overlapping dialogue (even scripted in parallel columns), panning around a group of passionately committed young men, with only the speaker in clear focus. As part of the preparation process, Clooney had the props department give out stacks of actual newspapers from the period, from which the cast had to pitch stories as in a real newsroom.

Murrow is initially framed slightly side-on, with the camera he is addressing in the left side of the frame so we have a sense of a program being made, but as the narrative gathers dramatic momentum, Clooney uses more shots straight down the lens of the camera, giving us the experience closer to a TV viewer of the time. There are a large number of shots of Murrow framed against monitors, some showing himself at that moment speaking but also of his supposed guest. For this, Clooney and Heslov need to carefully select and coordinate quite a large amount of real footage that needs to be timed so that it creates the sense of a genuine conversation taking place. At times, this meant using footage of the real Murrow, as in the Liberace interview, but the image is too small (and the match with Straitharn too good) to see any difference. In Murrow's longer speeches, there is very little camera movement beyond a slow zoom for a closer, more dramatic climax.

The postshow scene in the Pentagon bar, one of the few location shots in the film, as the group waits for the early editions of the papers, originally carried more dialogue but Clooney cuts nearly two pages of anxious small-talk, opting for a longer silence, underlining how the initial euphoria (more effusive in the film than the script suggests) and laughter fall away and for several moments they consider more soberly but silently what might be the reaction to what they have done.

Rather than a montage of moments from television history, which was shot, Clooney and Heslov opt to end the film within the context of the film and return to the frame story. Giving the last words to Murrow himself means the film ends on quite a bleak note with a warning and a simple fade-to-black. In his closing remarks, Murrow encourages his peers and by extension the wider viewing public to “exalt the importance of ideas and information,” arguing for a mix of programming, with some educational content mixed in among the entertainment.