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We were out for dinner recently with a friend whose opinion of movies we usually value very highly, during the course of which we agreed on the greatness of Brokeback Mountain and what an abomination it would be if Crash won Best Picture at the imminent Oscars. Another friend offered that he would be pleased to see Matt Dillon win Best Supporting Actor, and this first friend said something to the effect that he didn't care who won in that category, as long as it wasn't George Clooney. We were scandalized: he didn't like George Clooney? Nobody doesn't like George Clooney! Our heedless friend went on to say that he thought George Clooney couldn't act. By way of defense, all we could think to say was, "...But he's so cute!" And that's when we realized that it doesn't matter if George Clooney can act, write a credible screenplay, or direct a film, even though the Academy seems to think he can do all three just fine, Quinn. It doesn't matter how much talent Clooney has, because he is lousy with fame.
In fact, the first time we audited Clooney -- just about five years ago -- even we conceded that he wasn't "the most polished thespian per se," but pointed out that he "bleeds charisma like a maple tree bleeds sap." And if we have to be completely honest with ourselves and our critical friends, it's true: Clooney isn't exactly a chameleon. One could argue that he won the nomination for Syriana because it's his first performance in memory that didn't rest entirely on charm -- that even if he wasn't perhaps entirely convincing as a CIA uber-agent, at least he didn't play Bob Barnes like Danny Ocean in the middle of a really long con. And, truly, we're only half-granting Clooney's acting non-acumen in distant retrospect; it's not something we noticed while we were watching the movie because we might have been too busy being amazed that, even though he was twenty pounds (or whatever) over his fighting weight, we would still totally hit that. (Seriously, Cloons, if you're reading this: totally.)
We already discussed, in his last Audit, the way Clooney had just up and decided to stop making crap, resulting in a raft of movies that, even though they weren't all great, we were excited to see and appreciated that they weren't so much generica -- not a Don't Say A Word in the bunch. Five years on, that's still true: Intolerable Cruelty was a predictable trifle, but an appealing one and an interesting failure; Ocean's Twelve was two hours of huge movie stars thinking they were being fetchingly cute rather than just pleased with themselves, but at least we could amuse ourselves by thinking how much fun they must have had making it; Solaris may have been inaccessible and cold, but he showed his ass. Whatever he does these days, Clooney seems like he's trying, at least, and like he had reasons for doing even the less enjoyable movies other than that he was bored or broke; Richard Gere and John Travolta haven't been able to say that since the '70s, and even then it was kind of a stretch.
Moreover, Clooney isn't just sexy because he's a remarkably well-made specimen of manhood (though he is also that). Another facet of his attractiveness is the fact that he is using his fame to make the world a better place. The two films for which Clooney is Oscar-nominated -- Good Night, And Good Luck. and Syriana -- were both made under the umbrella of Participant Productions, a company the explicit mission of which is to produce movies that dramatize progressive causes. In his original Audit, we commended Clooney for making fun of John Ashcroft in the course of his Golden Globes acceptance speech; now we can commend him for taking his political dissent from sideline-sniping to activism -- for backing up his liberal disses with full-length artistic arguments against the current American regime. (Hot.)
Since his last Fame Audit, George Clooney has achieved the fame of Tom Hanks (just as we asked, which was thoughtful of him), the lefty social conscience of Paul Newman, and the stunning good looks of Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt rolled into one. So it would be so easy for him to get lazy, decide he's over being challenged artistically by Steven Soderbergh, and glide through middle age on a steady stream of Mission: Impossibles and Must Love Dogses, making us forget the bracing onscreen presence he used to have, and disgusting us with the puffy cinema filler he's become. But we have a feeling that won't happen. Whether he can act or not, Clooney is already one of the best movie stars we've got; if he'll just stay the course, he could become a legend.
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