David Strathairn's Edward R. Murrow at core of Good Night, And Good Luck
The Canadian Press
October 25, 2005
By John McKayActor David Strathairn jokes that an iron lung is coming, director and co-star George Clooney's gift to him after wrapping their new film Good Night, And Good Luck, which opens theatrically in major markets Friday.
Strathairn plays renowned broadcast journalist (and chain smoker) Edward R. Murrow in the film and, as with Murrow's own 1950s TV broadcasts, smoke curls constantly in the glare of the studio lights.
"He died in '57 with six bits of lung left," Strathairn says, switching from a light tone to sombre at recalling the grim irony of a media legend known for the ubiquitous cigarette and who ultimately perished from the cigarette.
Strathairn says he tried different herbal smokes as props during filming but eventually settled on pipe tobacco.
"It was a lot milder than any cigarette I smoked, and it smelled better."
Strathairn makes no bones about his admiration for Murrow, especially the courage he required to tangle with Senator Joseph McCarthy during those chilling days of the communist witch hunts in America. Good Night, And Good Luck (Murrow's signature sign-off phrase) focuses on the period when Murrow's CBS-TV newsmagazine show See It Now braved the senator's wrath at a time when he was hurling career-destroying accusations in all directions. In the end, McCarthy did go too far when he tried to smear Murrow as having red ties.
The upshot of the titanic media battle was something of a draw: McCarthy was eventually reined in by his fellow senators and relegated to the back benches. Murrow's show was bumped from Tuesday night prime time to a viewer wasteland on Sundays, ironically though, a spot where Don Hewitt (portrayed in the film as part of the Murrow team) and Mike Wallace found decades of success with their own still-successful current affairs show 60 Minutes.
"I think he was an extraordinary man," says Strathairn about Murrow. "There was something quite pure and simple about him.
"It was his instinct to be at the edge, to be included and to tell the story. He was, if anything, a reporter, a storyteller."
But Murrow was also an eloquent writer and Strathairn muses that Clooney and co-author, co-producer Grant Heslov had to write just half a script, that the best stuff was in Murrow's own words.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason," Murrow so famously declared during one of his on-air editorials against the scaremongering tactics of the once-powerful chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
To his credit, Strathairn does not attempt a Murrow impersonation.
While the cadence is distinctly Murrow's, it is Strathairn's voice. The physical resemblance is also accomplished with minimal makeup and primarily by lighting, camera angles and a special hairpiece.
"George said try to get as close as you can to his phrasing, how articulate he was, where he used the camera. Because whether it was conscious or not he was very clever when he looked at the camera for emphasis."
Good Night, And Good Luck was shot in black and white on a low budget and looks, in a way, not unlike an old-time live TV broadcast. In fact, Strathairn says, Clooney had wanted to do the script as a live TV show, as he did with his special telecast of the doomsday thriller Fail Safe and, before that, a live episode of ER.
For various reasons that didn't pan out. But at a mere 90 minutes the feature, which won acclaim at the recent Venice film festival, is brilliantly tight, says Strathairn who first lamented, then understood why many good scenes were cut.
"It was redundant, a little bit soft, the ground would become a little sandy and lose traction. So I was amazed at how beautifully crafted it was.
"It's like a piece of music in so many ways," he says. "It's very clean. It's like a song."
While Strathairn plays Murrow and Clooney plays Fred Friendly, his See It Now producer, Senator McCarthy plays himself, appearing only in period newsreel and kinescope clips that match remarkably well with the original cinematography. The two opponents never squared off face to face.
Although the film is a time capsule of the bygone infant days of TV political journalism, Strathairn agrees the issues dealt with do have relevance for us today, especially in the way some public figures indulge in scaremongering, perhaps now using terrorism instead of communism.
"Fear used by unchecked powers to maybe take away civil liberties and guilt by association and you don't have the right to face your accuser, you're just thrown into a prison camp because you are of a certain ethnicity."
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The imitable Mr. Murrow: Strathairn affects journalist's 'essence'
Denton RC
October 23, 2005
By Todd Jorgenson
Nearly a half-century after his broadcast career was at its peak, the late CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow continues to have an influence in the journalism world.
For veteran character actor David Strathairn, who portrays Murrow in the new film Good Night, and Good Luck, which deals with his on-air confrontations with Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s, playing a real-life icon was both intimidating and exhilarating.
"It was scary, and then it became very moving," Strathairn said during a recent promotional stop in Dallas. "I learned a lot more about him that was brought out in the film. It was a huge responsibility."
The black-and-white film presents an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the CBS newsroom during McCarthy's famed anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s, when many journalists wouldn't challenge McCarthy's assertions for fear of being "blacklisted" themselves.
Murrow, however, gains the reluctant support of the network to research McCarthy's findings and aggressively challenge them, first through investigative reports and eventually to the senator directly through interviews. The programs lead to McCarthy's censure, and today are viewed as pioneering investigative pieces.
To prepare for the part, Strathairn said he watched hours of archival footage, including episodes of Murrow's famed See It Now and Person to Person broadcasts. He also researched Murrow's writing in an attempt to capture his essence.
"We weren't making a bio-picture, and we didn't want an impersonation," Strathairn said. "I tried to at least affect a sense of him. A way to do that was to get the voice, at least the cadence and the pace of his phrasing, and his articulation. You sort of guess, based on fact, how he would have reacted at any given moment."
Strathairn, 56, accepted the role at the request of director George Clooney, who plays a supporting role as Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly. Clooney grew up in a newsroom himself, as the son of a journalist, and made the decision to shoot in black-and-white reflective of the period, as well as to incorporate actual news footage with his own.
One of the challenges for Strathairn was conveying the emotions of Murrow, a taciturn man who often internalized his biases and distanced himself from friends and colleagues, which symbolized the newsroom dynamics of the era.
"He was very poised. Inside, he was churning. I think if you opened up the top of his head and looked in there, you'd see this cauldron going on," he said. "People related differently to each other back then. You were together, but you were alone at the same time. There weren't going to be any high-fives or hugging on the set. You were demonstrable in a different way."
Several of the actors were able to meet either the people they played in the film or, in Strathairn's case, family members. While that added pressure to the performance, Strathairn said their support also became a source of comfort.
Strathairn said he used the role as an opportunity to personally learn more about a subject he was only marginally familiar with during his childhood. He said the story also has contemporary relevance.
"I learned so much about the time. I knew of McCarthyism and Murrow, but I learned about this piece of history--not only the man, but I learned much about how it actually came down," said Strathairn, whose performance earned an award at the recent Venice Film Festival.
Good Night, and Good Luck is now playing at a few regional theaters, with further expansion due in the coming weeks.
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Interview: The 'Good Luck' of David Strathairn
Hollywood Bitchslap
October 20, 2005
By Peter Sobczynski
David Strathairn, star of the acclaimed Good Night, and Good Luck talks about his award-winning performance as Edward R.Murrow, the responsibilities of playing such a well-known personality and his own favorite performances.
If you are a fan of American independent films, you most likely recognize David Strathairn from his long-running (seven films so far) with writer-director John Sayles. If you prefer big-studio enterprises, you probably recognize him from his work in such films as Sneakers, The River Wild and his scene-stealing bit in L.A. Confidential. Now, in his highest-profile performance to date, he is tackling the role of Edward R. Murrow in the brilliant new docudrama Good Night, and Good Luck. The film, directed by George Clooney, tells the story of the legendary battle played out over the airwaves between highly respected CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and Red-baiting Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy in 1953-54.
To play such a well-known public figure has to be a daunting task–-it can't simply be an imitation or the film just becomes an extended stunt–-and it is one that Strathairn is clearly up to. While he may not physically look exactly like Murrow, he has his sound and manner down pat and he finds a way of letting us know how the man feels about what is going on around him without ever having to express it verbally. (Watch him in the scene where he has to inform a beleaguered fellow newscaster, who is being crucified as a Communist in the Hearst newspapers, that he cannot help him on the sensible grounds that he can't battle McCarthy and Hearst at the same time.) This is a great performance from the generally underrated Strathairn and if enough people see the film, it is a virtual lock for an Oscar nomination. The jury at the Venice Film Festival, where the film had its premiere in early September, seemed to agree–-they presented him with their Best Actor award for his performance.
How did you become interested in acting?
I don't know. I found out, or discovered, that the world of theater, which is where I started, was a place where you could learn more than just your lines–-the history of the people, the art of the people and the issues of those people at a particular time in their history in one fell swoop if you wanted to. As an actor, I found that it was more exciting and I better understood my character if I knew from whence they came. If you are doing a Chekov play, you learn about that particular time in Russian history and how all of that impacts the character. I found that was a way in to getting an amazing education about things, especially when doing the Greeks or Shaw or Shakespeare.
Even with a David Mamet play, you have to be aware of certain regional dictates. Sam Shepard plays and even a Neil Simon comedy, they all have a particular world that they take place in and you immerse yourself in that world in order to be responsible to the piece and honor the playwright and what they are saying. Theater became this vast place of exploration and learning and I find that most projects that I am fortunate to be involved in do that. John Sayles's films are very respectful and respective of a particular community at a particular time–-you learn the history of the town and then extrapolate out to learn the history of your country and even mankind. Theater and film are becoming man's library about himself.
How does that work in the case of something like Good Night, and Good Luck where nearly all of the story is literally in the public record–-so much has been written about and several people involved with the actual proceedings are still alive? Does that make it easier for you or more difficult in a way?
That's a good question. You have a wall full of images and a shelf full of books and people telling you that Murrow was like this and like that. You can hear his voice and see how he dressed and all of that can be created artificially. You can read about the history and get a sense from films made at the time of how people behaved. There is so much stuff at your fingertips that it makes it easier but what is difficult is trying to get into the psychology. Barring huge cultural predicates, I think the psychology of people is basically the same when you put them in situations and that is the difficult thing–-trying to find that.
How much did you personally know about Murrow and the events chronicled in the film before signing on to the project and what did you learn about the subject while in preparation?
I knew who he was and what he had gone through and why he was so lauded for what he did–-his work during the London Blitz and See It Now and Person to Person-–so I had a vague understanding. In researching and learning about it, I came to realize that there was so much more about this man that could be plumbed. Even though this film is not a biopic about him, I came to learn about a pioneer and an explorer–-one of those people who were first to go off the edge and chart the wilderness, the wilderness being television and the uses of it. I became aware, in respect to today, of a simpler world that was smaller and not nearly as confusing as the one we live in today. It did become a very enlightening project from that point-of-view.
As you said, the film is not a standard-issue biopic and one of the things that is most intriguing about it, from a narrative point-of-view, that it doesn't contain a lot of the elements that one might expect in such a film. For example, there is no scene in which Murrow gives a speech in which he explains in excruciating detail about why he has chosen to take a stand against McCarthy and his tactics. None of that is there but you don't miss it because all of that comes through in the performance. How tricky is it to play a role like this where you don't have such scenes to fall back upon to help build your character?
That is a very good observation about the film. I think that one of the really compelling things about the film is the editing. There isn't indulged moments at home or moments with his son or where he is alone in a bar and has an epiphany which allows him to postulate on everything. You don't have that. You have the sense of a man at the edge of an event and the energy of the film has the kind of pace that makes you feel as if you are in it. It is almost like an action picture. In terms of what we had to do, we all had to be in the moment as much as we could and keep in our heads not only a sense of who these people might have been but also a sense of what was going on at that particular moment. George said, "Off you go and we'll catch it." and Robert Elswit, the cinematographer, caught it.
I think that approach gives so much information off the beat, so to speak. What you get is an accumulation of these very tense moments with the beautiful Greek chorus moments with the singing of Diana Reeves that allows the audience to have a moment to sit and turn the events over before they are off again. Our performances were tuned up to that kind of aesthetic knowing that we weren't going to have to stand and deliver the big moments. That was, I think, the brilliant and clever choice that George made in choosing to shoot it that way. He knows the inside of a news studio, having been brought up in that world, and he was very respectful in honoring it. It allowed us to go without having the onus of the big revelation moment and I think that it is a testament to how special this film really is.
In fact, the style of the film–-long, dialogue-driven scenes and relatively few locations–-reminded me a lot of a live television drama from the period chronicled in the film and I discovered later while reading the notes that George Clooney had originally planned the film as a live television production along the lines of his staging of Fail-Safe.
Do you know why they stopped that plan? I think that one of the reasons was the Janet Jackson Super Bowl gaffe–-they were afraid that one of the actors would do something. There were two cameras going most of the time and the shots were set up in such a way that the camera was with you all the time. They had these great old CBS cameras and they put video cameras in each of those so that they could record that and send it to the monitors and see that scene. When you see Murrow doing his See It Now broadcast and the technicians are looking up at the monitors, that was all being fed through those cameras. You were surrounded by cameras and it made you feel like part of that world.
The other interesting thing about the film is that it doesn't portray a completely black-and-white world of idealistic journalists and nasty money-grubbing executives–-people like William Paley are depicted in fair and complex terms as well. It also doesn't go for the simple and idealistic ending in which Murrow triumphs over McCarthy–instead, it goes on for a few more minutes and shows the price that Murrow wound up paying in the end for his efforts.
These were men at the edge of the wilderness and they were real people–-they didn't know if what they were doing was going to blow up in their faces or not. Everybody had their flaws and I thought that was another wonderful layer to the film–-how everyone was respected for being a person instead of being a stereotype.
What was it like working with George Clooney, both as an actor and as a director?
He says he isn't a very good actor–-that he was the worst actor there–-but he knows his way around a camera as well as anybody. He knew that the task of directing himself was kind of ridiculous because what do you do? "Hey George, that sucked–-do it again!" It is an absurd situation but his understanding of the story and Fred Friendly's role in all of it was uncanny. He took himself out of a lot of the film in order to keep it as lean as possible. I never felt that he was either one or the other and, curiously enough, Fred Friendly was exactly that kind of guy. He was out there micro-managing and letting Murrow know what to do–-he was a man who had his fingers in so many things while in the studio and George was doing the exact same thing. He did that with such ease while at the same time being just like one of us. Also, after seeing the first few days of dailies, I realized that his eye and preparation and vision for the film was very intact and it was our job to go out and serve that.
Of course, you are probably best known to a lot of moviegoers for your longtime association with John Sayles. Can you talk a little about that actor-director relationship and how that has evolved over the years?
John, as George and other great directors do, casts really well. I can say that objectively because the parts that he has put me in are those that he thinks that I understand something inherently about those characters. Playing Murrow was a risk on George's part because he had no idea whether or not I could do this. He was like Wile E Coyote out on the edge and about to crash to the bottom of the canyon. With John, over the course of the six or seven films that we've done, you do develop a kind of shorthand–-I know how he likes to move through the day and through a scene and that the script is sacred. He gives a lot of trust to the actors because he cast them and is confident that they can do what he needs them to do. You grow and sometimes you grow out of roles that you could have done but I was lucky with John to have those films with John where the roles that he gave me were in synch with who I was. If they are using you over and over, there is confidence and trust and it releases you from your anxieties and allows you to deliver on something that you are asked to do.
Leaving Good Night, and Good Luck out of the equation, which of the performances that you have done to date stand out the most for you, regardless of their financial or artistic success, as the ones where you came closest to saying and doing what you wanted with the character you were playing?
City of Hope was one where I came close to what I was hoping to achieve. Sneakers was one where, for the most part, I covered the bases that I had set out for myself. Blue Car-–I feel pretty good about the outcome of that. The creation of the character was in sync with the film and that is always a main concern–-that the character can stand on its own but still disappear into the fabric of the film and serve as a indication of what the film is about. Those three...Eight Man Out was close. There is always Monday-morning quarterbacking going on with this stuff. It is an imperfect situation because you can only refine up until they say cut–-they think they've got it but your wheels are still turning.
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Next challenge for Strathairn--fame
Orlando Sentinel
October 20, 2005
By Roger Moore
You know the face even if the name evades you.
He was in L.A. Confidential, Sneakers, Dolores Claiborne, Silkwood, Memphis Belle, and virtually every film made by indie-movie maverick John Sayles.
Now 25 years and 70 or so movies into his career, David Strathairn, at 56, is braced for something altogether new--fame.
"Awww, whatever," and you can hear him blush over the phone.
Don't bring up the possible Oscar nomination for his work in Good Night, and Good Luck, which opens Friday and has him playing Edward R. Murrow during Murrow's epic struggle against Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy.
Don't read him his reviews.
"The actor's innate air of gravitas and concern helps him appear more like Murrow than Murrow himself," raved Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.
Because, really, Strathairn's still that very shy, modest guy we've come to know in too many movies to number.
Question: The movie is being called a cinematic civics lesson. Why is now an appropriate time for Good Night, and Good Luck to come out?
Strathairn: It has relevance to a lot of things that are crucial to our democracy. Then, it was one guy who was using false accusations, guilt by association and our fear of communism to erode our civil liberties. Now we're rounding people up because of their ethnicity, their relatives, more guilt by association, that's not much different from the McCarthy era.
George [Clooney] wanted to make a film that wasn't polarizing, that doesn't preach. He didn't want to indict any particular person. He just wanted to bring these issues up, and show that in one period of our history, we fixed them. And it was on the back of just a handful of men to fight this very damaging destructive force.
On Edward R. Murrow
Q: Had anyone ever pointed out to you your physical resemblance to Murrow?
Strathairn: Ha ha! Yeah, a friend of mine, years ago, told me that if anybody ever did a Murrow movie, 'You should try to get an audition for it.'
Q: The face Murrow presented to the world is of a man who played everything very close to the vest. Was that your take?
Strathairn: He had his fun, social side, being welcomed into high society, as he was in London during the war. He was a celebrity.
But he was always distilling, amassing information and editing it in his head. If he was going to say something or report something, he wanted to do it right. He wasn't about to shoot from the hip.
He seems like a man who was cautious, and in the case of the McCarthy programs, with so much at stake, he was even more so. If he hadn't stemmed McCarthy's tide, if he'd fired and missed, he could have saddled the country with McCarthy. Those were dangerous times.
Q: How did Murrow's no-smiles, no-nonsense style fit his era?
Strathairn: Oh, he didn't smile because he was a very nervous man. He was self-critical, a perfectionist.
And TV was a new instrument to deal with. He used it and didn't let it use him. So his seeming stoic and tightly wound meant to me that he was on his toes. Constantly.
Q: Mastering Murrow-speak had to be tricky.
Strathairn: I listened a lot. A lot. Tried to get as close to the cadences, his articulation, his emphasis.
Q: What's the secret to his syntax?
Strathairn: I never really broke it down into syntax, but he mixed a very poetic sense of image into what he did. His report back from Buchenwald, 'There is a man, in front of me, crawling to a latrine for a drink of water,' or the way he described incendiary bombs striking Germany as 'puffs of white rice on black velvet,' he had this wonderful poetic imagery.
He was a great storyteller. He could infuse things with his own passion without spinning it.
Q: He was also an actor, with that theatrical profile, the cigarette-and-trenchcoat image that he seemed to hang onto.
Strathairn: Oh, he was very aware of how he came off. He learned that stage presence somewhere, maybe in speech and drama classes with Ida Lou Anderson at Washington State University. With his last few breaths, he said, 'Everything decent about me, everything that makes me a good human, I owe to her.'
On acting and stardom
Q: You've often played characters who were shy or introverted. Is Murrow an extension of your own personality?
Strathairn: Oh, I don't know. Murrow was a brave man. He may have been shy. He had a certain grace about him that was shy. He definitely wasn't bombastic.
Q: Believing you to be a pretty shy guy, and with this movie putting your face, in extreme close-up, and getting you all this attention, what's that been like?
Strathairn: It's been pretty quiet. People want to talk about the issues of the film, I think, more than they do about me. Save for a couple of paparazzi moments in Venice and New York [film festivals], I don't see any sea change.
Q: Do you seek these smaller, meatier films by design because they give you bigger roles?
Strathairn: I pick out stories. And if the story has room in it for me, then I do it.
Q: Last question: How did your time at Sarasota's Clown College, and working for Ringling Bros. [as a circus clown, briefly, in his 20s], prepare you for this role?
Strathairn: Ha ha! Oh, I don't know. Help me out here.
Q: Well, you were registering behind a mask. And Murrow was good at hiding his emotions behind his mask.
Strathairn: OK, yeah. I can see that. And clowns scare people, and Murrow scared some people. But Clown College kind of prepared me for life.
'Always look out for that next banana peel.'
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Weekender Interview: David Strathairn - A chat with screen's own Edward Murrow
The Tufts Daily
October 20, 2005
By Kristin Gorman
In this age of tumultuous politics, George Clooney's film Good Night and Good Luck, which pays tribute to 1950s broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow (whose connections to Tufts are many), leaves modern America asking, "Why don't we have one of those?" Murrow's courage in exposing the bogus "communist" accusations and false fear inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy greatly altered the realm of post-World War II politics. The new millennium should only be so lucky. The Daily spoke with actor David Strathairn, who plays Murrow in the film, to discuss the challenges and rewards associated with portraying such a pivotal character in American history.
Question: Did you watch a lot of Murrow to prepare for this role?
David Strathairn: Yeah, a lot of Murrow, read a lot of stuff in the kinescopes and the actual broadcasts. I had to learn the script like a piece of music.
Q: Was there a challenge in putting him across, because you don't really see a lot of him outside of the job?
DS: Sort of. We couldn't really indulge in what he was like at home and off the job, but that was George [Clooney]'s intention for me. It's not really a biopic; it's mostly about the event, that piece of history. Murrow was one of the greatest broadcast journalists there ever was other than [Walter] Kronkite... But his story was the main thing, so we didn't really want to investigate his life outside of that.
Q: What would you say Murrow's main characteristics were that you tried to weave into the character?
DS: I think how he listened so intently to everything, about everything. Especially this issue; the intensity he applied to making the decisions to go with the story. His sense of purpose, his sense of objectivity, and his sense of how, in the broadcast, clear and articulate and poetic his writing is, or was. To stay within that very clean, objective presentation and, at the same time, try to indicate that underneath that was this driving force or driving desire to do the right thing.
Q: What was it like seeing yourself in black and white? It's not really done that much.
DS: I love black and white. I think it's much more evocative to me than color; we respond emotionally to color differently than in black and white, we receive the information differently.
Q: Was there ever any thought of hiring an actor [to play McCarthy]?
DS: I don't think so, no. It would have been sort of irresponsible, not only to McCarthy but to the intention to make the film as a journalist would make a film: present it truthfully and plausibly. Everything in the film was double-sourced, so every action, every scene, every event, everything that happened was double-sourced--sometimes triple-sourced--by Joe Wershba [a colleague of Murrow's], who is alive and helped George and Grant [Heslov, the film's writer].
Q: So the movie takes place, obviously, in 1953, but it's not hard to see the application to the present day. Have you gotten a lot of reaction to that? Are people branding this a political movie?
DS: They [want] to make it a platform for political discussion. George didn't want to make a political movie; he just wanted to tell the story about a great American... But people are responding to it; they're making direct parallels. You can't help it; [the connection] is pretty obvious.
Q: Was that something you were aware of when you were preparing for the role and when you were acting?
DS: Yeah, we all thought about it; it was in the air... It's the things that Murrow says [that] apply directly to today: "We shall not confuse dissent with disloyalty," and "You can't defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home," and "Whether you're guilty or not, you have a right to face your accuser." Things like that.
Q: What about Murrow's successors? Do you watch a lot of cable news? Where do you think this industry has gone since?
DS: Well, [it has] exploded... Murrow was this crystal ball who just dropped, and [it has] shattered over the last 50 years. So there are pieces of it everywhere, but they're catching different light now. It's fascinating, because the film offers that insight; it's sort of that perspective from now to back then.
Q: When [Murrow] had the fight with Paley, that was a very important part of the film. What do you think about how he [Paley] had to deal with the whole corporate structure?
DS: That confrontation, that's where it first happened. Because I Love Lucy and Jack Benny and all those entertainment shows were getting lots and lots of ratings--people were watching those more than anything else. Fred Friendly resigned from CBS because the station refused to show the Senate sub-committee hearings when, instead, they showed I Love Lucy. The collision of those two things was then, was right then.
Q: Did you ever think you'd be interviewing Liberace in your lifetime? [Laughter]
DS: That was a great interview! [More laughter] There's another thing that Murrow sort of started the ball rolling: he was the first Barbara Walters. As well as an amazing journalist, he was this celebrity at the same time. It's been said and been written that he really didn't like doing those... but he realized he had to make the money to keep See It Now [Murrow's weekly investigative news show] going. He would have much rather interviewed people like Oppenheimer, scientists, college presidents--that was more his inclination.
Q: That was one of the best things about [the film], that it was very serious subject matter, but there was still that sort of light, in-the-office-type atmosphere.
DS: That was George and the camera work. The energy of the camera doesn't make it feel so ponderous all the time; it's clipping along and catching candid things from people. And yeah, these guys were at the edge of a wilderness of television: what to do with it and how to use it. And the issue at hand was crucial--one of the most important moments in our history--but they didn't really know that; they were just doing their jobs.
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Time of conscience: When CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow took on Sen. Joseph McCarthy
SacTicket
October 16, 2005
By Dixie Reid
Set during the Cold War years of 1953-54, the political drama Good Night, and Good Luck relates in period black-and-white the true story of a legendary television newsman who helped bring down a U.S. senator.
When director George Clooney called him in for a screen test, actor David Strathairn slicked down his hair, which he dyed black for the occasion, and with furrowed brow and a burning cigarette, he became, in essence, Edward R. Murrow.
"There probably is somewhat of a likeness to him, but I don't profess to know what it was like to be Ed Murrow," said Strathairn, who was in town to talk about Good Night, and Good Luck--the title taken from Murrow's trademark sign-off. (The movie opens Friday in Sacramento.)
In addition to Strathairn, the ensemble cast includes Clooney as Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly, along with Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Ray Wise, Frank Langella, Jeff Daniels, Tate Donovan and Grant Heslov. (Clooney and Heslov's screenplay, and Strathairn's performance, won awards at last month's Venice Film Festival.)
For five years during the 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., terrorized thousands of Americans by claiming they had Communist ties. McCarthy never proved a single charge of disloyalty, and his misplaced zeal shattered a lot of lives and careers.
"I don't think he did it alone. One man cannot terrorize an entire nation," said Strathairn, a veteran character actor who has appeared in Matewan, Eight Men Out and Passion Fish, all directed by his college pal John Sayles, as well as L.A. Confidential, The Firm, A League of Their Own and the TV sitcom The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.
During the so-called McCarthy era, Murrow hosted the CBS-TV news program See It Now. He and Friendly decided to confront McCarthy, something not even President Eisenhower had been willing to do.
They were motivated by McCarthy's inexplicable censure of 27-year-old Milo Radulovich, a married father of two, a Michigan college student and a first lieutenant in the Air Force Reserves.
McCarthy had made speeches attacking the Army for having Communists in its ranks and was making young Radulovich his Exhibit A.
"Ed Murrow heard that the Air Force was serving me with papers, that I was going to be discharged as a security risk," Radulovich, 78, said from his home in Lodi, where he retired after working for the National Weather Service in Sacramento. "They said, 'You're a good guy, but you have the wrong father and wrong sister.' The charge was that I had a 'close and continuing relationship' with my father and sister."
His father had immigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia, and his sister was active in civil rights causes.
The Air Force told Radulovich he must denounce his relatives to save his military career. He defended himself as a patriotic American and would not condemn his family. A See It Now producer named Joe Wershba (played by Downey in the movie) went to Michigan to interview Radulovich for the program. Archival footage of that interview appears in Good Night, and Good Luck.
"Milo was the guy who started it," Strathairn said. "It was Radulovich who was the first one to speak out, really, on camera, and Murrow took it from there."
After the Radulovich interview aired, McCarthy retaliated by accusing Murrow of having Communist sympathies. Undaunted, Murrow and Friendly proceeded to trap McCarthy with his own words by airing film clips of the senator on March 9, 1954.
Strathairn recalled some of Murrow's editorial comments from that night's program: "We will not walk in fear of one another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. ...He (McCarthy) didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it--and rather successfully."
Clooney used the same footage of McCarthy in Good Night, and Good Luck, rather than an actor portraying him. And he was careful to accurately re-create every aspect of the story.
"I felt that I had to be very, very careful with the facts, because someone would marginalize it otherwise," Clooney told the Los Angeles Daily News. "That seems to be the thing to do now: You find one thing that isn't accurate and just go, 'The whole thing's hogwash.' So I treated it like my journalist father (Nick Clooney, a veteran TV anchorman) would. I just double-sourced everything, between various books and having people on the set who were actually there at the time. Each of these scenes had at least two people who said this is, basically, what happened."
After the March 9 broadcast, followed by McCarthy's rebuttal, which also aired on See It Now, the senator was essentially finished. The U.S. Senate censured him the following December, and he died of an alcohol-related illness in 1957.
"I think that even if Ed Murrow had not given that broadcast, McCarthy would have destroyed himself. His reputation was sinking fast," said Haynes Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the newly published The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (Harcourt Books, 609 pages, $26).
"Murrow contributed to the impression people had and showed Americans a portrait of the McCarthy demagogue in their living rooms," Johnson said by phone from his home in Washington, D.C.
"I knew Murrow when he worked for Jack Kennedy (at the U.S. Information Agency from 1961-64), and that was a sad ending, because after a great career he was bumped out of CBS because they didn't want his brand of journalism.
"He was a hero to me, and I'm glad Clooney made the movie," said Johnson, who hadn't seen Good Night at the time of this interview.
Had Murrow not taken on McCarthy, Strathairn said, it would have been an even darker time in this country.
"A lot more people would have been falsely accused. Their lives would have been destroyed, and the demagoguery that existed then would have been rampant. McCarthy was ruining lives.
"People were wondering when Murrow was going to take this man on," he said. "They were waiting and waiting, because Murrow was the most trusted man in America. He was the most famous man in the public eye, in terms of news."
Murrow had endeared himself to Americans with his World War II radio broadcasts, reporting live from the front lines and flying two dozen combat missions over Europe to relay the situation to folks back home. He loved radio and went somewhat reluctantly into television after the war, hosting not only See It Now but his celebrity-interview program Person to Person.
Strathairn is, at age 56, a year younger than Murrow was when he died in 1965 of cancer and a brain tumor. Strathairn isn't a smoker but became one temporarily for the movie.
"The smoking was difficult," he said, "until I found that pipe tobacco was much easier to smoke than anything I tried. The props guy must have rolled 3,000 cigarettes, because everybody started smoking pipe-tobacco cigarettes.
"No one ever saw Murrow without a cigarette. His son never saw him without a cigarette. It was always there, so I affected that posture. I found it indicative of something about him."
Strathairn, who was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin County, had no time this day to explore old haunts, because he was here for only a few hours, all of which were given over to journalists.
He said he met Radulovich at an script read-through in Los Angeles and saw him again at a screening of Good Night, and Good Luck in New York.
"Milo was so proud, so happy, to see that film and see himself," Strathairn remembered. "I was beside myself, and we walked out of there together and sort of danced around each other."
"I loved it," Radulovich said of the movie. "I thought it was timely and important for today. I see a connection between the McCarthy era and today, but with different enemies. It was Communism then, and now it's terrorism and the Patriot Act. People are afraid to speak up these days because they'll be called unpatriotic."
Radulovich never met Murrow but has watched himself on the 1953 See It Now show many times. He believes that Strathairn was the perfect man to play Murrow.
"What I said to David when I met him was, 'I now believe in resurrection.' Murrow died a long time ago and yet there he was on the screen. If David doesn't get an Oscar," Radulovich said, "I'll never watch another Oscar program in my life. He is incredibly skilled. He's not an imitation; he is Murrow."
[ Link to article ]
Murrow in black and white
Chicago Sun-Times
October 16, 2005
By Miriam Di Nunzio
It was one of the darkest moments in American politics, and one in which television network news would shine ever so brightly. The infamous Communist witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the mid-1950s might have turned out differently had it not been for the unflinching persistence of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, who called the junior senator from Wisconsin to the mat on live television.
Good Night, and Good Luck, opening Friday in Chicago, is not a documentary about the early days of CBS News and the men who shaped a network news dynasty, but it could be. In 87 minutes, the drama--directed and co-written by George Clooney, who also stars as news producer Fred Friendly, and David Strathairn as Murrow--reveals everything that was at one time good and powerful and inspiring about network news.
The film is not a biopic of Murrow, the greatest broadcast journalist in history, but it could be. In those same 87 minutes, we are given keen insight into the reporter whose World War II radio broadcasts from the battlefield trenches as well as the rooftops of London during Germany's blitzkrieg, became America's unflinching nightly entree to the overseas conflict, and who would take on and bring down a sanctimonious, hate-mongering senator.
The film, whose title comes from the sign-off Murrow used to end his broadcasts, begins in 1958, with Murrow's famous speech at the Radio and Television News Directors Convention, in which he revealed his growing disillusionment with the direction that television news was taking as networks increasingly put entertainment ahead of news programming. The movie then flashes back to the McCarthy debacle throughout 1953 and 1954. McCarthy's famous "blacklist" of celebrities unwilling to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (and those who refused to fink on their colleagues, friends and relatives) destroyed many a Hollywood career and became one of the most dangerous attacks on American civil liberties.
Most of the film's action occurs within the news studio, where Murrow conducts live interviews with newsmakers, supplemented by closing remarks he often read (with bowed head) for three, four or five minutes directly from his self-penned script. At his feet, literally, is Friendly, scribbling directions to his anchor (this was before the advent of those high-fallutin' IFB earphones, folks). There are no fancy graphics, no gimmicks to entertain. To paraphrase Murrow, news was never supposed to be entertainment.
Sitting in the Ritz-Carlton Chicago on a crisp fall morning, Strathairn is dressed casually, his hair loosely coiffed--a far cry from the meticulous suit-wearing Murrow with his close-cropped, slicked-back hair, who the actor so brilliantly portrays on the big screen. Strike that. Strathairn doesn't so much portray Murrow as much as he channels him, right down to the newsman's penchant for an omnipresent, smoldering cigarette just off-camera, to Murrow's deep, unmistakable voice, not too unlike Strathairn's, truth be told.
Strathairn is almost embarrassed when he's praised for his portrayal (a role which won him the Best Actor Award at the 2005 Venice Film Festival), which is already garnering Oscar buzz.
"I think George just nailed the whole thing, the whole time period, the whole look and feel of what that newsroom was like," Strathairn says, trying to divert the spotlight for a bit. "I did a lot of research for the role and believe me, it's all pretty genuine, down to the very last cigarette butt."
That research included weeks spent poring over archival news and magazine articles, biographies, and viewing hundreds of hours of film footage, and talking to people who worked with the real deal all those decades ago.
"I was quite fortunate in that we had Murrow's own words in his own voice, his image preserved on film, so that I could study every nuance about him," Strathairn says.
"Add to that, we got to the first read-through of the script, and there were Milo Radulovich [a Navy pilot targeted by McCarthy, and the genesis for Murrow's battle with the senator], Joe and Shirley Wershba [colleagues of Murrow's at CBS], Fred Friendly's sons and his first wife, and Casey Murrow [Murrow's son]. They were great about telling us when we got it right--and when we got it wrong. Having them endorse the project was pretty special."
According to Strathairn, that wasn't the only "special" tactic Clooney used to get his ensemble cast, which includes Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella, Grant Heslov, Tate Donovan and Reed Diamond, into a genuine '50s mindset.
"Talk about putting your actors in the moment," Strathairn says. "George had copies of the old corresponding newspapers--mostly the New York Times--[editions] that corresponded to the script's day, delivered to us while we were in hair and makeup so that we'd have the actual headlines and articles about what was going on on that particular day in 1954. So when you see Fred [Clooney] in the news meeting scene, a scene that was entirely improvised, telling the guys, 'You give me an obit,' 'You give me something on sports,' the guys respond with actual newspaper items. So it's 1954 and we're talking about the news of the day. That was an amazing thing for a director to do."
Strathairn's film credits include Silkwood (1983), Eight Men Out (1988), The Firm (1993), L.A. Confidential (1997) and Blue Car (2002). Born in San Francisco in 1949, he studied acting at Williams College, becoming fast friends with classmate John Sayles, who would go on to direct Strathairn in Return of the Secaucus Seven in 1980.
But this film is the one that could put Strathairn on the leading man map. Filmed entirely in velvety black and white, Good Night, and Good Luck often features Strathairn in partial shadow, or tight closeup, showcasing the actor's ability at painting an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life icon.
"After a little while, I forgot I was watching black and white film," Strathairn says softly. "There's something luscious about all the gradations of gray that adds so much texture to film. It's good they didn't shoot this one in color; they would have lost all those subtleties, all those layers."
The only "controversy" surrounding the film has been Clooney's (and co-writer Grant Heslov's) decision to use Murrow's speeches verbatim as part of the script, and the actual television footage of McCarthy's Senate committee hearings.
"There's no way we could have had an actor portray McCarthy," Heslov has gone on record to say. "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. In regard to Murrow's speeches, here was all this great writing, so why not use it? We just felt very strongly that his speeches were so beautiful."
Strathairn concurs. "In a way, they did just what Murrow did--they let McCarthy speak for himself."
And what about that Murrow voice, the voice of news for an entire generation of Americans?
"His voice was amazing," Strathairn says. "Just think about it. He came from Polecat, N.C., in the heart of Appalachia. Where did he learn to speak so beautifully? He went from North Carolina to Washington state to London and then to New York. What an amazing evolution his voice went through. There was just something unique and very compelling about his rhythm, his cadence."
Good Night, and Good Luck is a riveting study of broadcast journalism, Strathairn adds. "People will either get the importance of that, or they won't.
"The greatest thing about this film is that it offers a real glimpse into the beginnings of the use of television, when it was just this brand new [force] that hadn't really been applied to news until Murrow and Friendly and Don Hewitt and these guys came together in once place at CBS. Back then, there were what, three or four stations on the air?
"He was the first one out there charting new waters, about the power of information vs. the power of entertainment. In a lot of the readings I did, he was said to be sometimes the 'prince of doom' around the studio because he seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, always deep in thought, very serious about his purpose and what he saw as the real purpose of television news." Then he adds with a laugh, "Of course, those same readings revealed that he warmed up after a good drink and a great cigarette."
[ Link to article ]
The passionate pursuit: Murrow and Capote went after the big story
Dallas-Fort Worth
October 15, 2005
By Chris Vognar
[ Excerpt from article: ]
Journalists pursue their subjects for any number of reasons, from professional duty to personal glory to public service. Some stories bring honor to their authors, others shame and self-destruction. But the dance between power, responsibility and motive is a constant.
These matters don't just get writers thinking; they also get filmmakers excited. And so we have the Edward R. Murrow movie Good Night, and Good Luck, which opened in Dallas on Friday, and the Truman Capote chronicle Capote, which opens this Friday. The films shine a spotlight on vastly different journalists pursuing the stories of their lives. Together, they raise ever-relevant questions about why storytellers tell stories and what they risk in the process.
These are essentially "white whale" movies, in which journalists make like Captain Ahab in their passionate pursuit of Moby Dick-size stories.
Murrow's whale was McCarthyism, particularly the persecution by association that went along with the Communist witch hunts of the '50s. As portrayed by David Strathairn in Good Night, the straight-shooting Murrow, already a national icon after his radio broadcasts from London during World War II, could not abide anyone or any movement that would "confuse dissent with disloyalty." And he used his CBS news series, See it Now, to voice his disapproval.
"He was a very compassionate man," said Mr. Strathairn during a recent stop in Dallas. "He believed in the Constitution as a bedrock of this democracy, and he felt that it was being assailed. He believed in the right to face your accuser whether you're guilty or not. He believed you could not be accused under false pretenses. He saw all those things being attacked by McCarthy, and he saw that people weren't standing up for it while other people were being victimized by it."
He first took on McCarthy over the case of Lt. Milo Radulovich, who was kicked out of the Air Force because of allegedly radical views held by his father and his sister. A later broadcast issued a more sweeping attack on McCarthy. Both broadcasts served as a precursor to the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the Wisconsin senator's bullying, lies and innuendo were exposed for 37 days in front of 20 million national viewers.
"There was a fear across the land that he sort of took by the horns and wrestled down," says Mr. Strathairn. "He accomplished so much in his life, but this was one of the great moments in the history of broadcast journalism and also a huge moment in our history as a nation."
[ Link to full article ]
David Strathairn: "Film is Our Literature"
GreenCine
October 14, 2005
By Sean Axmaker
"I must be doing something right."
With a 25-year career in some 70 films and TV shows, the prolific David Strathairn is one of the finest contemporary actors who remains largely unknown to most viewers. He's an actor, not a star, most comfortable as an ensemble player in low key dramas and indie productions (including many by longtime friend John Sayles), but equally adept in big budget productions (The River Wild and L.A. Confidential, both by Curtis Hanson), comedies (Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers) and even TV sitcoms (The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd).
His performance as the legendary journalist and TV news pioneer Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck. could change that. So often cast as nervous, tremulous figures who either overcome their physical trepidation by force of moral will--as in so many Sayles films--or slink away in the absence of such strength, or conversely as slimy, hypocritical powerbrokers and small time crooks, Goodnight gifts him with a role of moral integrity and unflinching courage, and he inhabits it with a performance of quiet strength. Strathairn carves out a figure of decency whose dedication to truth and sense of responsibility to the public--and to his own morality--drives him to put his career on the line for a greater good, and he does so in a performance that matches Murrow's sure, succinct screen persona and Clooney's austere, precise direction.
It was only 10 am when David Strathairn strode in for the interview (in a TV studio appropriately enough, where I was squeezed in just minutes before he went on air), and he was hoarse from his barnstorming press tour. He flew in to Seattle the night before to introduce a screening of Goodnight, And Good Luck and host an audience Q&A, and he had come directly from a morning radio interview when I met him. "I was in San Francisco yesterday, in Los Angeles the day before. I need an atlas to figure out everywhere I've been in the last week," he joked.
He insisted that he wasn't tired, just his voice, which rumbled and caught like he'd just chain-smoked an entire pack before breakfast. It's something Edward R. Murrow might have done, but not Strathairn. "It sounds like I just stopped yesterday," he smiled after clearing his throat, and we began.
Let's start with a question I'm sure you've been asked many times before. In your own words, what is the legacy of Edward R. Murrow, and what was the challenge in bringing that to the screen?
His legacy is the highest standards of journalism. Well, that's putting it too simply. Actually, I haven't been asked this question, not in so many words. He set the standards of integrity and objectivity and inclusiveness and truth in journalism. That is probably being taught in all the journalism schools right now. But I think this film shows the gauntlet he laid down as to the bravery it requires, the willfulness and the awareness of how difficult it is to keep the ideals and the practices that he was so exemplary in displaying, how to keep those present and always in play in what a journalist does. If anything, it was his courage that he leaves out there for people to tap into. His standards of excellence and his professionalism are unassailable and they always will be, but what he had--evidenced by this film at this particular moment in history, a very dangerous, very risky, very crucial time--was a courage to stand up despite the potential crushing blow of McCarthyism. He could have been like every other one of those journalists, who were as ethical and as professional as he was, but no one had the courage to do it. They were all waiting for him to do it. That might be one of the more important things that he passes down. The inspiration. Be brave, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.
Good Night, And Good Luck stays very specifically in the period and focused on the historical events, but it also puts a mirror up to news media of today just by the presentation of the courage of Murrow and his team and his philosophy of the responsibility of the news media. And while the film shows Murrow's clashes with CBS President William S. Paley, it also shows how Paley supported Murrow's ideals, something you simply don't see in the television news media of today. So I think that the film is very political in the way that it, by example, serves as a critique to the news media of today.
It was not George's intention to make a political film, because if it polarizes, if it makes things even more divisive than they already are, then it doesn't honor Murrow. There are those out there who will say that this is a bully pulpit for a liberal, feel good, leftist populist movie. It gives insight to political phenomenon, yeah, that was going on at that time. But it's just a picture, it's a story about a political issue, it's not a film that is politicizing anything. It was a different time. There were three networks and Paley and Murrow were the two people at the peak of the industry. That could never exist today. No one man could be able to make the decisions that Paley did. Now the world is infinitely more diverse and diffused. There are so many pressures and it's so fractured. What's great about the film is that it sees these two men--highly principled, ethical, brilliant and willful men--right at a pivot point where television news and entertainment collided and, after that collision happened, what became of it. But I don't think it's a political film. It's a picture of a political situation. It's a platform for a discussion about our politics today for sure. If it achieves that and gets a discussion going, pro or con, it's what Murrow ultimately wanted to teach people.
It's an astoundingly austere film for an American production. Clooney directs with a stripped down precision, cutting to the heart of every scene and cutting away everything extraneous to the story. Your performance is in the same mode. You have to convey a lot outside of your lines. Can you talk about that acting challenge?
It's a huge challenge to represent this man, and it's only six months out of his life. It's by no means a bio-pic. And so the challenge was to find the moments in the film and in that particular six months--that was George's and [co-screenwriter] Grant [Heslov]'s creation--to find which particular moments we need to put together to tell the story and to show who this man was, by dint of his actions, when he's on the front lines, fighting the fight. You're right, it's a very lean story. It's like a piece of music; you never lose sight of the theme. Each scene pushes off to the next like music builds and you can almost hear the next chord progression, so it has a strict structure, which is very compelling.
So it was our task, as musicians, so to speak, to play that theme constantly and to always be in key with the intentions of the film and not indulge in moments of extraneous thought or behavior or anything like that, because it's really an event-driven picture. It's beautiful in that way. I find it stunning to look at. Black and white just pulls you in a different way than color does and the script is so well-structured and there is so much interesting stuff to hear and listen to, the way they talk and what they said and, at the same time, it's very soothing. It pulls you along like a piece of music. You release yourself to it and then you have this cumulative effect at the end of having been awash in this thing. You don't have to do much work except to sit and just listen. Look and listen. It does it all for you.
In the movie, Murrow is very of the people on his team, he's very responsible toward them and responsible toward the news. But there's a camaraderie in the newsroom and Murrow is removed from that. Is that something you discovered in your research about Murrow or is that a dramatic device, and is it more difficult to portray a character when you're really...
Just sort of backing off? No, he was like that. They say he was very slow to jump in. He was always assessing and editing. He knew that the water was running downhill to his desk and that he was going to be the one to write the story and pick and choose what to do. He knew he was the filter through which it all drained and they said he was very quiet, very poised like that. And the camera does a lot of that, the choreography of the camera and the blocking. I think it's beautiful. [Cinematographer] Robert Elswit's work allows Murrow to be seen as a presence, the presence he was, and follow the energy of the room to him. I didn't really have to do very much, I just had to sit there and smoke cigarettes and do my line. [laughs]
You're not a smoker, are you? Smoking all those cigarettes must have been hard to do.
Yeah, it was hard to do, but you had to do it. You never saw him without a cigarette. It was crazy, we were all smoking. People say, "Come on, did they really smoke that much in the 50s?," but they did. We had Joe and Shirley Wershba [the real life Murrow co-workers played by Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson] right there and they said, "Yeah, that's how much smoking was going on."
How did the role find you? Did George Clooney seek you out or did you find the script and seek him out?
They just called. He and Grant just called up and said, "Do you want to do this?" "Yeah. Of course." "Well, we're gonna do it. We'll see you." It was almost as direct as that. It was really amazing; it came out of the blue.
How do you prepare for a role?
If it's a role like this one, an actual live person, a legend, there's lots of material laid out. There are biographies; I looked at a lot of photographs of him, I heard his voice over and over and over again. You get in there and get to know the man by all of those pieces of information. Since there were times when we were sitting with him alone, and we were trying to figure out what his psyche was doing, I felt responsible to the right posture and the cigarette thing and the cadence in his voice, so it's reminiscent and also a little respectful of him. When you're creating a character out of nothing, you have to make all the guesses as to how they walk, how they talk, how they think. It was all there on the table for us to pick and choose for Murrow. And the cinematographer was right there. He could put me in the right position, replicate what we saw in the kinescopes, study those and try to get how he would relate to the camera, and obviously how he looked, the hair and everything. The task was to stay in key, stay in tune with the story.
Over the course of your career, your roles tend to be either supporting parts or one of an ensemble in films without a central lead character. Good Night is also an ensemble picture with a strong ensemble cast, but essentially you are the lead, the central axis of the film. Is it different making a film as the lead?
You're there pretty much every day, which is great. But if you're truly the lead person, it's going to be a one man show. I think this one is truly an ensemble, this group of men and people. It just so happens that Murrow is the anchorman, so to speak, the big news guy. That's putting it kind of tritely, but he was the man. But I find it's usually a collaboration. Very rarely does a lead exist without someone else holding on to the leash, so to speak.
I'd like to ask about John Sayles. Your very first screen appearance was in his first film, The Return of the Secaucas 7, and you've continued to work with him throughout his career. Can you tell me about your working relationship?
That's how I cut my teeth. In The Return of the Secaucas 7, none of us knew what even hitting your mark meant, so John was really my guide and teacher. He's a brilliant writer when it comes to stories about little pockets of our culture and telescoping out to pressures applied on those people, from Lianna to the coal mines to single mothers with children dealing with problems on the road. He's a cartographer of our culture in film. You work enough with someone and you develop a shorthand. You know how he likes to work through the day and he knows where you're vulnerable and where your weaknesses and strengths are, so it makes for a good team, a team that knows who's over there behind your back. It's rare in this business to work with a director as many times as I've worked with John and it's a real privilege to be included over and over and over again. I must be doing something right.
What's your favorite film role?
Right now, Murrow ranks pretty high up there, although I loved playing baseball in Eight Men Out. Being in West Virginia in coal mine country in Matewan, that was a lot of fun. And being on the set with Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix and Ben Kingsley was pretty great in Sneakers. River Wild was maybe not the funnest role but close to everyday being out in the wilderness, rafting and hiking around in Montana and Idaho and Oregon, that was a lot of fun. But Murrow was the most challenging and, at the moment, I don't know if I'd call it my favorite, but it's one that continues to obsess me.
When you consider a role, what is it you look for? A challenging character, compelling subject matter, the director, the cast...?
Mostly the subject matter, the story, what it's about. That's where I start. I read it and if it's a story that appeals to me, then, yeah.
What appeals to you in a story?
I like stories like John [Sayles] tells, things that are sincere and real and have something to them that people can take away from that applies to their life. Insights and examinations of things that are important to us. A film like this has such a resonance to today. If you can believe in the story, if there's no arbitrary violence or gratuitous stuff that's put in there for the sake of "entertainment" or whatever... I don't want to spend my time doing something that I'm going to walk away from and feel like: "Why did I do that movie? What was the point of doing that?" So much money and energy is expended making a film that I think it should be used for positive ends. Film is our literature, so we should tell stories that are apropos of our culture, in that we can learn something about ourselves.
One last question: Is it true that you spent time working as a circus clown in a traveling circus and what did that experience bring to you as a screen actor?
[chuckles] Yeah, I was with a circus for a while. More like cannon fodder than a clown, changing costumes 16 times a show. In order to crash the party and be a clown with your own skit, you had to be there for quite a while. It was quite a hierarchy. How did it help me in film? I don't know. Always be aware of the physicality of a character, because you are in a picture, you are in a painting, you are in a choreographic sort of frame, so physicality can say as much and sometimes more than what words can. I don't consciously think about what I took away from that time. That's probably it, the sense of the physicality characterization. And maybe always try to fall down to show that there's a banana peel out there for all of us.
[ Link to article ]
Doing right by legendary E.R. Murrow
The Denver Post
October 14, 2005
By Michael Booth
Watching David Strathairn suck down cigarette after cigarette as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, you worry that his convincing portrait of the heroic journalist might come complete with a rasping cough.
Apparently, it does. On the phone from New York, Strathairn chokes on the ends of a few sentences, and excuses himself for a rattling hack.
"Maybe this is a delayed reaction," says a laughing Strathairn, who won the best-acting award at the Venice Film Festival for his role as Murrow, and is earning rave reviews heading into Oscar season. "But once the last cigarette was put out, I didn't look back to them."
Strathairn filled his lungs with smoke after filling his head with Murrow studies. Born in 1949, Strathairn was too young to have seen live the seminal moments of Murrow's confrontation with communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954. So when writer, director and co-star George Clooney tapped Strathairn for the role, he delved into biography, photo archives and the extensive film record on the deep-voiced CBS newsman from Polecat Creek, N.C.
Strathairn had talked to Clooney about wanting a representation, not an imitation, of the iconic Murrow. Some actors might have avoided watching Murrow on film, but Strath-airn wanted to capture the inimitable cadence, posture, and yes, the "look of the cigarette."
"It was so important to be responsible to the man, to his legacy," Strathairn said. "A lot of people do remember him. We wanted to get as close to the music of that as possible."
Strathairn's natural gravitas, lent memorably to roles in Eight Men Out, Silkwood, A League of Their Own and Bob Roberts, fit the Murrow style and the political age. Other journalists had already begun attacking McCarthy's un-American tactics, Strathairn said. Murrow understood the growing power of television, and knew people were waiting for the day's leading journalist to make his move.
"He didn't want to saddle the country with McCarthy if they didn't do it right," Strathairn said. Murrow was well aware of the danger of the TV personality becoming bigger than the story, having already made the devil's bargain of hosting a celebrity show, Person to Person, to pay for the See It Now news broadcasts, Strathairn added.
"That made him feel very responsible."
Clooney and crew worked hard to re-create the claustrophobic, messy and buzzing atmosphere of early TV newsrooms. Clooney as producer Fred Friendly sits hunched at Murrow's feet during broadcasts, tapping him on the leg with a pen for his cues.
"It was daunting to have three cameras on you all the time," said Strathairn. In addition to the usual two-camera set, cinematographers placed another camera inside the old, boxy CBS TV cameras to get close-ups that imitated the stilted broadcasts of the time.
"It was a little in-your-face," Strathairn said.
He was not picked for the role because of any particular closeness to Clooney. "It was just a phone call, would I be interested," Strathairn said. He has since grown to admire Clooney's unique mix of movie-star charm, managerial energy and political outspokenness.
Clooney has a "fondness" for the 1950s, Strathairn said. (Clooney once produced a live, black-and-white teleplay of the Cold War classic Fail Safe.) The Murrow film, with its example of what TV news can be in the hands of greatness, is a tribute to Clooney's father, Nick, who was a TV anchorman in Cincinnati and Lexington, Ky.
Clooney "created a wonderful playground" for everyone involved in Good Night, and Good Luck, Strathairn said.
Strathairn is about to start work on an independent production from a first-time director, a "Chekhovian" piece about an ensemble of characters in a small town.
Despite the buzz from Venice and early U.S. screenings of the movie, Strathairn said he has not yet seen a change in the scripts that come to him. He has long been a serious character actor rather than the first choice for leading man.
The Venice award or any other potential kudos are "just kind of noise," Strathairn said, "bells and whistles. The film on many levels is worthy of great recognition--editing, cinematography, the script. I'm glad they're responding to it, because it means Murrow was represented in a way that is being objectively appreciated."
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