I won’t fill this post with spoilers other than to say that the “romantic” subplot doesn’t really make sense. I will say that it’s a gorgeous film that makes me wish I did the kind of work where I got to sit in a newsroom with a typewriter while George Clooney slouches on a beat up leather sofa nearby, tumbler of scotch in hand. Okay, okay, all the smoking? I would hate that.
Here are the questions I asked myself walking away from Good Night and Good Luck:
1. Are the times we’re in now as paranoid as the McCarthy era?
2. Was it a gradual shift, or is there a specific historial moment when TV news became useless twaddle?
3. What would happen if a news anchor or a reporter all of a sudden got a backbone? Does anyone remember seeing that happen in the last 10 years?
4. When is the last time I saw something truly controversial on the evening newsfotainment?
5. Now that Bill Moyers is off the air, who’s doing real news? The News Hour is still on, but increasingly, that seems to be going to the talk show format. You get one pundit on the left, one on the right, and they duke it out. There’s no real reporting. Now is a shadow of its former self. And if I see the trailers for one more Dateline about some marrying guy with 9 wives, well, where’s the news, already?
There were more.
I vote yes for a thought provoking movie. Plus, George Clooney appears to be entering his Robert Redford years – I’m an actor and a producer and a screenplay writer! – and that just makes him hotter.