Good Night, and Good Luck
Directed by	George Clooney
Produced by	Grant Heslov
Written by	George Clooney Grant Heslov
Starring	David Strathairn George Clooney Robert Downey, Jr. Patricia Clarkson Frank Langella Jeff Daniels Tate Donovan Ray Wise
Distributed by	Warner Independent Pictures TVA Films
Release date(s)	October 7, 2005 February 17, 2006
Running time	90 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Good Night, and Good Luck. is an Academy Award-nominated 2005 film directed by George Clooney and written by Clooney and Grant Heslov that portrays the conflict between veteran radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, especially relating to the anti-Communist Senator's actions with the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The movie, although released in black and white, was filmed on color film stock but on a grayscale set, and was later color corrected to black and white during post-production. It focuses on the theme of media responsibility, and also addresses what occurs when the media offer a voice of dissent against the government. The movie takes its title from the line with which Murrow routinely closed his broadcasts.

Taglines: They took on the government with nothing but the truth; We will not walk in fear of one another.

Principal Cast

Synopsis

Good Night, and Good Luck. takes place during the early days of broadcast journalism in the 1950s. Edward R. Murrow, and his dedicated staff—headed by his co-producer Fred Friendly and reporter Joseph Wershba in the CBS newsroom—defy corporate and sponsorship pressures, and discredit the tactics used by Joseph McCarthy during his crusade to root out communist elements within the government. Murrow first defends Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the U.S. Air Force because his father subscribed to a Serbian newspaper. A very public feud develops when the Senator responds by accusing the anchor of being a communist. Murrow is accused of having been a Wobbly. In this climate of fear and reprisal, the CBS crew carries on and their tenacity ultimately strikes a historic blow against McCarthy and his methods. Historical footage also shows the questioning of Annie Lee Moss, a Pentagon communication worker accused of being a communist based on her name appearing on a list seen by an FBI infiltrator of the American Communist Party. The film's subplots feature recently married staffers having to hide their marriage to save their jobs at CBS; and the suicide of Don Hollenbeck, who was accused of being a Communist. The film is framed by a speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, in which Murrow harshly admonishes his audience not to squander the potential of television to inform and educate the public.

Production

In September 2005, Clooney explained his interest in the story to an audience at the New York Film Festival: "I thought it was a good time to raise the idea of using fear to stifle political debate."^[1] Having majored in journalism in college, Clooney was well-versed in the subject matter. His father, Nick Clooney, was a television journalist for many years, appearing as an anchorman in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York. The elder Clooney also ran for congress in 2004.

George Clooney has been paid $1 for writing, directing, and acting in Good Night, and Good Luck, which cost $7.5 million to make. Due to the injury he got on the set of Syriana a few months earlier, Clooney couldn't pass the tests to be insured. He then proposed to mortgage his own home in order to make the film. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former eBay president Jeff Skoll invested money in the project as executive producers.^{[citation needed]}

The CBS offices and studios seen in the movie were all sets on a soundstage. To accomplish a pair of scenes showing characters going up an elevator, different "floors" of the building were laid out perpendicular to one another. The "elevator" was actually built on a large turntable at the intersection of the two floor sets, and rotated once the doors were closed. When the doors reopened, the actors appeared to be in a different location. Production designer James Bissell used the 3D computer graphics software program SketchUp to model the entire studio set including all sets and camera angles.^[2]

Clooney and producer Grant Heslov decided to use only archival footage of Joseph McCarthy in his depiction. As all of that footage was black-and-white, that determined the color scheme of the film.^[3] Young Robert Kennedy is also shown in the movie during McCarthy's hearing sessions. He was then a staff member on the Senate subcommittee chaired by McCarthy.

Music

A small jazz combo starring jazz singer Dianne Reeves was hired to record the soundtrack to the movie. This combo was featured in the movie in several scenes, for example, in one scene the newsmen pass a studio where she is recording with the rest of the band. The CD is Dianne Reeves's second featuring jazz standards, and it won the Grammy Award in 2005 for best jazz vocal performance.

Reception

David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck.

The film received generally glowing reviews. It was named "Best Reviewed Film of 2005 in Limited Release" by Rotten Tomatoes, where it achieved a 94% positive review rating. The movie received six Academy Award nominations, including ones for Best Picture, Director, and Actor.

Jack Shafer, a columnist for the online magazine Slate, accused the film of continuing what he characterizes as the hagiography of Murrow.^[4] Roger Ebert, in his Chicago Sun-Times review, contends that "[t]he movie is not really about the abuses of McCarthy, but about the process by which Murrow and his team eventually brought about his downfall (some would say his self-destruction). It is like a morality play, from which we learn how journalists should behave. It shows Murrow as fearless, but not flawless."^[5]

The "overacting" rumor

Rather than cast an actor to portray Joseph McCarthy, the film uses actual footage of the senator. It has been claimed, widely but without evidence, that test audiences, unaware that only archival footage was used in McCarthy's depiction, felt that the "performer" who "played" him was overacting. IMDb, for instance, states without attribution, "Clooney had said that when the movie had undergone test screenings, audience members felt that the McCarthy character was overacting a bit, not realizing that it was the actual McCarthy through archive footage."^[6] Pittsburgh Post-Gazette critic John Hayes begins his review of the film with a similar claim: "When director George Clooney held screenings of 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' audience members said they felt the guy who played Sen. Joseph McCarthy was overacting."^[7] In a 2005 interview, George Clooney said: "I read that when test audiences saw footage of McCarthy, they thought he was some bad ham actor."^[8]

In the film's official production notes, the movie's producer and cowriter, Grant Heslov, is quoted to somewhat different effect: "We realized that whomever we got to play McCarthy, no matter how good they were, nobody was going to believe it. They were going to think that the guy was over-acting, so we decided to use the real footage."^[9]

Awards and nominations

• American Film Institute (AFI) award:
  • Top Ten Movie of 2005

• 2006 Academy Awards nominations:
  • Best Motion Picture of the Year
  • Best Director, George Clooney
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, David Strathairn
  • Best Original Screenplay
  • Best Achievement in Art Direction
  • Best Achievement in Cinematography

• 2006 BAFTA nominations:
  • Best Film
  • Best Direction, George Clooney
  • Best Actor in a Leading Role, David Strathairn
  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role, George Clooney
  • Best Original Screenplay, George Clooney and Grant Heslov
  • Best Editing, Stephen Mirrione

• 2006 Golden Globe Awards nominations:
  • Best Motion Picture (Drama category)
  • Best Director (Motion Picture category), George Clooney
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama category), David Strathairn
  • Best Screenplay (Motion Picture category), George Clooney and Grant Heslov

• 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations:
  • Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Motion Picture category), David Strathairn
  • Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

Ratings

• All Movie Guide link
• Roger Ebert
• Empire link
• Filmcritic.com link
• Premiere
• Rolling Stone

References

See also

• Participant Productions

External links

• Official Site
• Good Night, and Good Luck. at the Internet Movie Database
• Good Night, and Good Luck. at Rotten Tomatoes
• McCarthyism and the Movies
• Good Night, And Good Luck. Script
• 2 Speeches from the Movie in Text and Audio from AmericanRhetoric.com
• Good Night, and Good Luck. at Box Office Mojo

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