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- [00:00]
Unknown Host
There was Barbenheimer Summer, then Bratz Summer. What will this season bring? Maybe it's the season of actual good superhero movies like the Fantastic Four, Superman. For a guide to the movies and tv, we're most excited about this summer, listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from npr.
- [00:18]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. This is my first show back in about two and a half weeks. Today's show is all about why my husband, my partner of 47 years, Francis Davis, died after a long illness on Monday, April 14. You may know about Francis from his writing about jazz and popular culture or from the time he was a jazz critic on Fresh Air, when it was a local show and in the early days when we went national. Often when I introduce a guest, I quote from reviews and profiles that sum up their contributions better than I think I could. To sum up my husband's place as a writer, I'm going to quote from a couple of the obits in the New York Times, Adam Nosseter wrote his specialty was teasing meaning from the sounds he heard, situating them in America's history, culture and society. That approach and the fluency of his writing made him one of the most influential writers on jazz in the 1980s and beyond. The headline of the NPR obit by Nate Chenen described him as a giant of jazz criticism. In addition to jazz, Francis also wrote essays about other forms of music, as well as movies, TV and books. For me, reading him is now my best way of feeling like I'm spending time with him. I've been reading him a lot lately. Before I get back to doing interviews and immersing myself in the lives of my guests, I want to share some of Francis with you on today's show. I'm going to read you excerpts of a few of his essays and play recordings he praised in those pieces. Along the way, I'll also tell a few stories about him, including the story of how we met and became a couple. Fresh AIR played a big part in that. Francis wrote for the Atlantic magazine, the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and various music magazines. He had seven books and received a Guggenheim fellowship. He founded and ran the Village Voice Annual Jazz Critics Poll, which after several years moved to NPR Music and is now on artsfuse.org where it's run by Tom Ho, who will be continuing the poll, which he renamed the annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll. Francis also won a Grammy for his liner notes to The Miles Davis 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Kind of Blue it's been surreal to have that famous trophy in our home. In his liner notes, Francis wrote quote, in terms of where it falls in jazz history, Kind of Blue is celebrated for being the album that popularized improvising on modes, that is, improvising on the sparest and starkest of scales as an alternative to bebop's dense thickets of chord changes. But this hardly explains the album's hold on three successive generations of listeners. The pieces on Kind of Blue were meant to serve as springboards to improvisation, and did they ever. Francis went on to describe John Coltrane's solo on the track Flamenco Sketches. Coltrane worries the notes of each scale as prayerfully as beads on a rosary. I'm going to play an excerpt of that Coltrane solo because it's beautiful and because Francis had a contract to write a book about Coltrane. Although he never finished the book, he was steeped in Coltrane music and research and wrote about him in shorter essays. In this solo on Flamenco Sketches, he you'll hear Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans, piano, Paul Chambers, bass, Jimmy Cobb, drum. That was an excerpt of John Coltrane's solo on the track Flamenco Sketches from the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue. A piece that was a turning point for Francis was his profile of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, titled Blue An Improviser Prepares. After it was rejected by the magazine that greenlighted it, Francis sent it to the attention of Bill Whitworth, the revered editor of the Atlantic magazine. And although Bill didn't publish it, he wanted to see more. The Atlantic became Francis longest professional affiliation. He became a contributing editor, and Bill became a treasured friend. Here's how Francis described Sonny Rollins in that 1984 profile quote, when conjuring up an image of the quintessential jazzman. Heroic, inspired, mystical, obsessed. As often as not, it is Rollins we picture, because no other jazz instrumentalist better epitomizes the lonely tightrope walk between spontaneity and organization implicit in taking an improvised solo. Everyone who listens to jazz can tell a story of a night when Rollins could do no wrong, when ideas poured out of him so effortlessly. The irony is that the nights when Rollins is at wit's end can be just as thrilling for illuminating the perils endemic to improvisation. Rollins is the greatest living jazz improviser. No arguments, please. And if we redefine virtuosity to include improvisational cunning as well as instrumental finesse, he may be the greatest virtuoso that jazz has ever produced. Here's Sonny Rollins unaccompanied opening on his 1972 recording of Skyl. That was the opening to Sonny Rollins recording of Skylark. The song was co written by Hoagie Carmichael. Francis once wrote that Carmichael, who was from the Midwest, looked like a corn belt. Samuel Beckett. Francis and I met through music. He was managing the record store on the University of Pennsylvania campus, which was just a few blocks away from where Whyy was in the 1970s. I'd go to that store to pick up records I needed for the show. A close friend of mine who also worked there introduced me to Francis and told me that Francis had a huge record collection that included a lot of out of print recordings. This was decades before you could find nearly anything on the Internet at the time. 1978 Fresh Air was a local three hour show five days a week, which was way too much time to fill. So I was on the lookout for good features. I thought why not try a feature in which Francis would play and talk about great but hard to find jazz recordings. I asked him to write a script and record an audition. This was before he'd started his writing career, and I was astonished by the quality of his writing. That's how he started his weekly FRESH AIR feature called Interval. I fell in love with his writing and with him. Music, movies, books. These were passions we shared and loved talking about with each other. I need to take a short break here. I'll continue this remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis, after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
- [10:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral Clari. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from npr.
- [10:33]
Unknown Host
Do you think you have adhd? You're not alone. After the pandemic hit, there was a huge jump in ADHD diagnoses among adults. And at the same time, the Internet is more and more obsessed with saying everything is a sign of it. You might have ADHD to identify the red flags when a diagnosis goes viral. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast today.
- [10:57]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH air. There's more I want to tell you about my husband, Francis Davis. He died Monday, April 14, after eight months in home hospice. Doing his best to maintain his strength despite his enemies, COPD and Parkinson's, Francis wrote about jazz and other forms of music and popular culture. In this remembrance, I'm reading passages from his essays and playing Related recordings that he praised. When PBS was planning to broadcast a three part series on the History of the Blues, Francis was asked to write the companion book. He wrote the book, but the series was never completed and never broadcast. The status of the series and how it would affect the book was very stress inducing. And that was in addition to the pressure of writing the book. As he was finishing it, he started to not feel well. And after it was done, he ended up in the hospital with a serious, possibly life threatening infection that took days to diagnose. It was terrifying. After he was sent home, he still needed IV antibiotics. I was taught briefly how to administer the drugs through the IV line and, and was warned that if there are air bubbles in the tubing that could be dangerous. And I was told that anything that touches the opening of the tubing or the medication could contaminate it. I thought, are you out of your mind? Giving me the responsibility of doing what trained nurses do? I'm proud to say Frances survived my nursing, but I almost didn't. Here's a passage from the 1995 book the History of the Blues, the book that Francis handed in before the hospital. The passage is about Blind Willie Johnson. He had few equals. As a slide guitarist, he used a pocket knife in lieu of a bottleneck. Johnson's music was charred with purgatorial fire. More than 60 years later, you can still smell the smoke on it. He was a man of God, perhaps even a religious fanatic. But he ranted like a man possessed by demons. His life was tragic even by the cruel standards of the day. He died in 1947, long after his brief recording career had come to an end. He made his living by playing on Texas street corners, a blind man with a guitar and a tin cup, shaking the faith of passersby with the absolute certainty of his. Were Johnson alive today, he might be livid to find his name in so many books on the blues. He performed mostly traditional hymns, hardly any secular material. Yet his style had more in common with those of the blues performers of his day than that of any of his fellow guitar evangelists. And no one was more original in terms of its intensity alone, its spiritual ache. There's nothing else from the period to Compare with Johnson's 1927 recording of Dark Was the Night, Cold was the Ground on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation. Here's blind Willie Johnson's 1927 recording of Dark Was the Night, Cold was the Ground.
- [15:09]
Unknown Guest
O.
- [15:35]
Terry Gross
That was Blind Willie Johnson. After Francis Blues book was published, he received a confounding invitation to sell the book live on TV on the cable home shopping network qvc. Apparently, one of the hosts was a fan. As I recall, Francis was sandwiched between fake emerald costume jewelry and the Road Whiz, an early kind of GPS that told you where the closest restaurants, gas stations and bathrooms were. Let's just say the book did okay, but the Road Whiz did a whole lot better. As I mentioned, Francis was hospitalized after handing in the manuscript for the History of the Blues. The essay he wrote after he got out of the hospital was titled Infection. It was a review of the original cast recording of the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical Passion. The musical tells the story of an Italian soldier, Giorgio, who's forced to leave his beautiful, vibrant mistress Clara, with whom he's deeply in love. After he receives orders that he's being transferred to a faraway garrison, his new commanding officer's sickly cousin Fasca, falls in love with Giorgio and becomes obsessed with him. She lives in the world of the sick and marginalized, and he's healthy and strong and wants to get away from her. Frances and I love the show. Here's an excerpt of his essay. A few days after seeing passion for the second time, I was hospitalized with 104 degree temperature, a symptom of what was ultimately diagnosed as a serious bacterial infection. In a situation in which part of my role as a good patient was to monitor my moods and bodily functions and dutifully report even the slightest change, I no longer serve Fasca's morbid self absorption. But as quite so absurd, Fasca's love for Giorgio is supposed to be superior to Clara's by virtue of not being carnal. At least that was what Sondheim and Lapine said in interviews. Regardless of Sondheim and Lapine's original intentions, the dichotomy represented on stage wasn't between body love and soul love, but between health and infirmity, the pang of happiness and the unaccountable lure of death. Unquote. Here's the song Frances singled out. It's sung by the character Fosca. On what may be her deathbed, she tells Giorgio she wants to dictate a letter for him to write, but to write it as if he were writing it to her, confessing his deep feelings for her. The song is I wish I could forget you, sung by Donna Murphy.
- [18:13]
Unknown Performer
My dearest Foska, I wish I could forget you, erase you from my mind. But ever Since I met you I find I cannot leave the thought of you behind that doesn't mean I love.
- [18:39]
Unknown Guest
You that doesn't mean I love you.
- [18:42]
Unknown Performer
I wish that I could love you I know that I've upset you I know I've been unkind I wanted you to vanish from sight but narcissist you in a different light and though I cannot love you I wish that I could love you for now I'm seeing.
- [19:24]
Terry Gross
Love.
- [19:27]
Unknown Performer
Like none I've ever known I love a spirit pure as breath as permanent as death Implacable as stone A loved like a knife has cut into a life I wanted left alone A love I may regret.
- [19:58]
Terry Gross
That was Donna Murphy from the original cast recording of Passion. Francis essay about passion was included in his book Bebop and Jazz and Pop at the End of the Century. The title is a play on Jean Paul Sartre's book Being and Nothingness. Francis was great at coming up with titles. That book showed up in a confounding place. A Brooks Brothers ad, maybe a page from the catalog. The photo was of a 20something guy with his hands folded around the back of his head and on his lap a copy of Francis book Bebop and Nothingness. The model was supposed to look dreamy, but I doubt he'd ever dream of reading that book. My theory is the book was chosen as a prop because the book jacket's eye catching color scheme of blue, red and yellow matched the model's sweater and plaid pants. We framed the ad and it still hangs on our wall, baffling anyone who sees it. One of Frances coinages also showed up in a surprising place. In a 1992 essay about the show Seinfeld, Frances described Kramer as a hipster doofus. Someone from the show must have read that because the following year hipster doofus showed up in a couple of Seinfeld episodes. Here's Kramer.
- [21:12]
Unknown Character
She dumped me. She dumped you? She dumped me. She rolled right over me. Said I was a hipster doofus. Am I a hipster doofus?
- [21:25]
George Clooney
No. No.
- [21:26]
Unknown Character
Said I'm not good looking enough for her. Not good looking. Jerry, look at me.
- [21:30]
Terry Gross
Look at me. After we take a short break, I'll conclude my tribute to Frances and will feature my interview with George Clooney, who was just nominated for a Tony. He's on Broadway starring as journalist Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of Clooney's 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. Francis loved and was influenced by film noir and he loved Charlie Hayden's ensemble quartet west and how it often evoked film noir like on this track there in a dream. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air. Putting together a remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis has been a very helpful way to transition back to FRESH AIR after his death nearly three weeks ago. We knew it was coming. He was in home hospice, but it's nothing you can really be prepared for if you're just tuning in. Francis was a jazz critic who wrote about all aspects of popular culture. He was a contributing editor at the Atlantic magazine, wrote for the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and various music magazines, had seven books, received a Guggenheim Fellowship and won a Grammy for his liner notes for the 50th anniversary edition of the classic Miles Davis recording Kind of Blue. We were together 47 years. There's more of his writing I want to read you and more related music I want to play. I've mostly been quoting essays about people who are recognized as groundbreaking figures, but Francis also wrote extensively about emerging musicians and composers and the avant garde. He helped launch the careers of newcomers and rediscover musicians who disappeared or been forgotten. He titled one of his books Outcats, a word coined by the pianist Paul Knopf and revived by Francis. Knopf described an outcat as an outcast and a far outcat combined. Francis wrote about many outcats. Here's how Francis used the by popular stereotype all jazz musicians are outcats. But those of us within music recognize the outcat as a specific type too self absorbed to be part of any movement and too idiosyncratic to spearhead one, and too self reliant to seek audience or peer approval, and too marginal in the larger scheme of things to elicit much. The word conveys undertones of exile, rootlessness, alienation, and despair, unquote. One of my favorite Francis essays was written after Johnny Cash's death and was published in the Atlantic in March 2004. Here's how it In 1956, when he recorded I Walk the Line for Sun Records, Johnny Cash became an overnight sensation. But it was as many years of singing as if he knew from personal experience all of humankind's strengths and failings, as if he had both committed murder and been accepted into God's light. That made him a favorite of liberals and conservatives, MTV and the Grand Ole Opry, Gary Gilmore and Billy Graham. From song to song, he was a cowboy or a white outcast who rode with Indians, a family man or a drifter, a believer in eternal life or a condemned murderer with no tomorrows anywhere. His credibility owed as much to the moral effort involved in endlessly putting himself in others shoes as it did to his professional savvy in putting a song across. Unquote. In another part of the essay, Francis describes Cash like he was in his late 30s and already had plenty of mileage on him when he was discovered by television. Longer hair and the shadows and dents of middle age brought out the character in his face. The shadows and dents of middle age. That's an image that has always stuck with me. One of Francis favorite Johnny Cash songs is from John Frankenheimer's 1970 film I Walk the Line, for which Cash wrote the score. The songs reflect what's going on in the main character's mind, francis wrote, quote the movie was a flop at the box office, but the film's song Flesh and Blood, perhaps the single most beautiful song Cash ever wrote and one whose lyrics could stand alone as inspired nature poetry, reached number one on the country charts. Unquote. Here's the song Flesh and Blood Beside.
- [25:54]
Unknown Guest
A singing mountain stream where the willow grew where the silver leaf of maple sparkled in the morning dew I braided twigs of willow made a string of buckeye beads but flesh and blood needs flesh and blood and you're the one I need Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood and you're the one I need I leaned against the bark of birch and I breathed the honeydew I saw a northbound flock of geese Against a sky of baby blue Beside the lily pads I carved a whistle from a reed Mother Nature's quite a lady but you're the one I need Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood and you're the one I need.
- [26:56]
Terry Gross
Thank you for listening to this remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis. This has been different from anything I've ever done on Fresh Air, but that's because the last two and a half weeks since Frances died have been unlike anything I've ever experienced. Thank you for all the emails, posts and letters I've received. Francis, my husband, my best friend. Thank you for our 47 years together. You will live on in your writing and always in my heart.
- [27:25]
Unknown Guest
So when the day was ended, I was still not satisfied, for I knew everything, everything I touched would wither and would die. And love is all that will remain and grow from all these seed Mother Nature's quite a lady but you're the one I need Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood and you're the one I need.
- [28:04]
Terry Gross
After we take a short break, we'll hear my interview with George Clooney, who's on Broadway starring as journalist Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of Clooney's 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. He was just nominated for a Tony. This is Fresh Air. George Clooney was just nominated for a Tony. He's making his Broadway debut in Good Night and Good Luck. It's Adapted from the 2005 film of the same name which he directed, co wrote and co starred in. In the Broadway production, he stars as journalist Edward R. Murrow, a different role than the one he played in the film. The story is about how Murrow challenged Senator Joe McCarthy's tactic of smearing people by accusing them of being Communists or associating with Communists. At the time, Murrow was hosting the CBS TV news program See It Now. Murrow and his crew decided to do a program about Lt. Milo Radulovich, a U.S. air Force reservist who was kicked out for being a security risk without being told what the charges were after he refused to denounce his father and sister who were accused of being Communists. In the scene from the movie, two Air Force colonels are pressuring Murrow's producer Fred Friendly to cancel the broadcast. Friendly is played by George Clooney.
- [29:22]
George Clooney
We are going with a story that says that the US Air Force tried Milo Radulovich without one shred of evidence and found him guilty of being a security risk without his constitutional right.
- [29:32]
Unknown Character
We also have not seen the evidence are claiming he's not a security risk. Wouldn't you guess that the people who have seen the contents of that envelope might have a better idea of what makes someone a danger to his country? Or do you think it should just be you that decides?
- [29:48]
George Clooney
Who are the people? Are they elected? Are they appointed? Do they have an axe to grind? Is it you, sir?
- [29:54]
Terry Gross
George Clooney in a scene from his 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for David Strathern, who played Murrow, the role now played by Clooney on Broadway. Clooney has starred in such films as Ocean's Eleven, Syriana, Michael Clayton, the Descendants, O Brother, Where Art Thou? And Hail Caesar. He first became famous for his role on the medical series er. His father is the broadcast journalist Nick Clooney, who who's also a former movie host on the cable channel AMC. Here's the interview I recorded with Clooney in 2005 when the film Good Night and Good Luck was released.
- [30:36]
Unknown Interviewer
George Clooney welcome to FRESH air. What did Edward R. Murrow mean to you when you were growing up?
- [30:42]
George Clooney
My father was an anchorman and broadcast journalism was a big part of our lives growing up. I spent most of my life as a small child on the floor of WKRC newsroom watching my father put news shows together. He was the news director, he wrote the news. And Murrow and Cronkite were heroes of his because of the two probably great moments in broadcast journalism, which was Cronkite coming back from Vietnam and saying it doesn't work and Murrow taking on McCarthy because they changed policy overnight. And for that alone, he was a hero of my father's and therefore a hero of mine.
- [31:23]
Unknown Interviewer
Now, in the movie, you don't have an actor playing McCarthy. The only time we see McCarthy is through his actual videotapes, through his television appearances, such as, you know, the hearings and the videotape that was made for the Edward R. Morrow See it now broadcast. Why did you choose to have him play himself instead of having an actor.
- [31:44]
George Clooney
Portray him in the actual story? And we researched everything I had to treat this like a journalist. I talked to my father about this and he said, look, if you get anything wrong, you'll be marginalized now. So we did it the old fashioned way, which is every scene we double sourced, either through books or through the real people, Joe and Shirley Wirschburg, Milo Radulovich or Don Hewitt, so that we were very careful with the facts. Then we decided to do exactly what Moreau did in his show, which is use McCarthy in his own words so that again, you couldn't have someone say, oh, we were making him look too much like a buffoon or too arch. We thought best to let him hang himself.
- [32:24]
Unknown Interviewer
Now, as an actor and director, talk.
- [32:27]
Terry Gross
A little bit about how morrow looks.
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Unknown Interviewer
On TV compared to how McCarthy looks on TV.
- [32:32]
George Clooney
Well, that's sort of the beauty of it. It's, in a way, the other one of those versions would be Kennedy, Nixon debate, you know, where the simple truth was, McCarthy was pretty good at a 30 second soundbite where he could yell and scare people and talk about death and bombs and things like that. But he wasn't handsome and he certainly wasn't proficient at the new art of television and Murrow was the best. So that when he demanded equal time, which was 28 minutes and 28 seconds to do his rebuttal, he holds up for about a minute and then he's also pretty drunk. He slurs and drags on and is it's one of if you see the whole half an hour of rebuttal. Oh yeah, very drunk. When you see the rebuttal, it's embarrassing. I mean, it's the most unprofessional thing you've ever seen. So it was an interesting. The moment that that happened was when they first knew they had him. Because the simple truth is, and the funniest thing is Murrow going after McCarthy is not what hurt McCarthy. McCarthy turning around and accusing Murrow of being a traitor is what hurt McCarthy. Because everyone knew that Murrow was the guy at the top of those buildings during the London Blitz. We knew he was a hero. And so the minute you saw those methods, when he turns around and calls Murrow the cleverest of the jackal pack of communists, everybody knew that wasn't true.
- [33:58]
Unknown Interviewer
The film is so much about faces. You know, the film is shot in pretty high contrast, black and white and there's so many close ups of faces because it all takes place basically in the office and in the studio. And the faces are so interesting to look at. They're mostly, you know, mostly middle aged and slightly younger than that and slightly older than that. Men who are kind of creased and who've lived and who haven't had plastic surgery. And it's just really wonderful to see these faces.
- [34:26]
George Clooney
Well, I think the interesting thing to me was even in the film, the score I wanted to be silence. Silence was how I would score the film. And the way you do that is by spending time on people's faces because that's how you can understand suspense. I know when you'd see films like fail safe or 12 angry men, there would be tension came out of these close ups of people's faces and watching person putting them in a difficult situation and watching them deal with it and watching it play on their face as opposed to hearing them talk about it. Now we talk about everything. Then guys didn't talk about anything. So when. So there was that sort of bravery of, you know, lighting a cigarette and looking at each other and going, all right, Butch, see you later, Sundance kind of feeling. And I love that it's a very masculine, probably not great thing to do, but it is very romantic in a way, you know, to watch a couple of people watching Patty Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. Just looking at each other when they know they've got McCarthy. There's something beautiful about that. It's simple.
- [35:32]
Unknown Interviewer
You are one of the, quote Hollywood liberals who is sometimes attacked by the right. Do you find it amusing when you.
- [35:38]
Terry Gross
Are targeted by the riot and Singled.
- [35:40]
Unknown Interviewer
Out for criticism because you're a, quote, Hollywood liberal, or is it disturbing to you?
- [35:45]
George Clooney
Well, no. You know, look, if you're going to stick your head out and stick your neck out, you're going to have to take some hits. I don't think anybody in their life has ever accomplished anything that they would be proud of later if they didn't take some criticism for it. Sometimes that criticism is right. I would be disturbed if I wasn't 20 years from now able to point back at a point in time and say, this is where I stood and what I believed in, which I think will end up proving to be pretty correct. You know, the strangest thing to me is that the word liberal is a bad word. I'm gonna keep saying it and saying it and saying it as often as I can. I don't know where we've stood on the wrong side of social issues. Now. I have many friends who are conservatives, so I'm not knocking conservatives. I have a lot of very good friends who are conservatives. But to have us losing the moral argument when we were the ones who said that women should be allowed to vote and that, you know, blacks should be allowed to vote and sit in the front of the bus, were the ones who said Vietnam was a mistake. You go down the list of the social issues over a long period of time, we haven't stood on the wrong side of those issues. So I don't understand how we lose the moral argument. I think we're bad at it, us liberals. I think we're pretty weak at it right now.
- [36:58]
Unknown Interviewer
When you were growing up, your father was on tv. He had his own show. He was a news anchor. Did your father seem like a different person on camera and off?
- [37:07]
George Clooney
No, no, no, not really my father's. I think one of his great qualities is that integrity has been sort of the thing that has always lasted and has lasted well into his 70s. He's been the same guy. It's an interesting thing. It's more difficult being the child of someone with that kind of integrity than I'm now thrilled. But, you know, when you're a kid and you're in a. In a state that's still dealing with its own problems with bigotry. We'd be out at dinner and you'd hear someone say, you know, well, that's about those people knowing that they were talking about blacks, you know, and my sister and I knew that my dad was going to make a scene and walk out. So we would eat as fast as we could. We'd Start to eat, because my father was going to make a scene. And I remember as a kid always wishing that maybe there was just one time he just pretended not to hear it.
- [38:02]
Unknown Interviewer
What would he do when he made a scene?
- [38:03]
George Clooney
Oh, he'd get up and say, you know, you're an idiot. And how could you say something like that? And, you know, are you from the 1500s? And, you know, he would make a big scene. And I at times wished that he hadn't. Now, I couldn't be more proud that he did. And he taught me those same lessons, which are that every time you let that go, every time you don't hear that or you purposefully ignore it just to make things easier for yourself, you are doing a disservice. And so that's why you have to fight those fights.
- [38:37]
Unknown Interviewer
You grew up on a well. Your grandparents had a tobacco farm.
- [38:40]
George Clooney
Sure.
- [38:41]
Unknown Interviewer
So were you near that?
- [38:43]
George Clooney
I worked it for years. That's how you made your money in the summer when you were a kid. You know, you start by topping it, and then you're chopping it and cutting it and housing it and stripping it later. You could make three and a half bucks an hour. So you can make some pretty decent money. But you don't think of those consequences of tobacco at that point. I had nine great aunts and uncles, all brothers and sisters. Six of them died of lung cancer or emphysema. Both my grandparents died of it. I'm not a smoker. I was concerned with how romantic we made smoking look in the film. And so I put that commercial in just to show how some of the lies that were perpetrated back then about how smoking was actually good for you.
- [39:27]
Unknown Interviewer
There's a lot of cigarette smoke in your movie. And Edward EL Morrow died of lung cancer. He was quite a smoker. It's just amazing to see him smoking on camera or even smoking in the hallway of the office. You just can't. You can't do that anymore.
- [39:39]
George Clooney
We were the only set that had people outside the soundstage not smoking.
- [39:44]
Terry Gross
Did you have to work hard to.
- [39:45]
Unknown Interviewer
Get the actors to inhale?
- [39:47]
George Clooney
No. Every actor that we hired, I talked to, and literally, we brought him in and said, smoke, because if you can't smoke, you can't smoke. It doesn't look right if you're faking it. And we needed people who could smoke because all these guys died of lung cancer. You know, most of them did. It was a pretty brutal time.
- [40:08]
Unknown Interviewer
One of the many things I really like about your film is the performance by Diane Reeves, the Singer in it. And the music director for your film is Alan Spheridoff, who had been the music director for your aunt Rosemary Clooney, who I'm an enormous fan of. I love her recordings. What did her music mean to you when you were growing up? It was not your generation.
- [40:30]
George Clooney
No, but I was one of those weird kids, you know, I was listening to.
- [40:33]
Unknown Interviewer
It wasn't my generation either.
- [40:35]
George Clooney
No, that's right. Well, I was listening to Led Zeppelin and I was listening to Nat Cole. You know, I had a very varied growing up because I was on the road with, you know, with them a lot, or I was always exposed.
- [40:48]
Unknown Interviewer
Were you on the road with Rosemary Clooney?
- [40:49]
George Clooney
When I was 20, I was Rosemary's driver.
- [40:51]
Unknown Interviewer
Oh, you were.
- [40:52]
Terry Gross
Oh, right.
- [40:52]
Unknown Interviewer
I see. Yeah.
- [40:53]
George Clooney
So I spent. I was around that kind of music a lot, so I got to appreciate Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer, and I had a real appreciation of those guys, Sinatra and, you know, Nat Kinkole especially, and Rosemary. And Rosemary was having. She was having her comeback at that point, and her comeback was something rather spectacular because she became the singer's singer. Singers adored her and would show up. So there was a great pride in being around her. So I was really exposed to that kind of music. The fun part for me was in putting this band together. Peter Martin, the pianist, is Diane's works with Diane. But the rest of the guys all played on Rosemary's albums, you know, and it was fun because I got to pick the music, and we wrote one of the scenes around How High the Moon. But the rest of the stuff, you know, the rest of the music was fun because I got to sit down with Alan and go, let's talk about music that we really loved and how to play it and how to do it. And so it was. It was about simplifying things, because now everybody likes to show off. I remember asking Rosemary why she's a better singer at 70 than she was at 21. Because she couldn't hold the notes the way she could. She couldn't hit the notes. And she said, because I don't have to prove I can sing anymore. And I thought that was a good acting lesson, you know, was not having to show off anymore.
- [42:20]
Unknown Interviewer
And I know exactly what she was talking about, too, because her voice was basically shot in the last couple of recordings she made. But her phrasing was so beautiful and the emotion was so beautifully conveyed.
- [42:33]
George Clooney
When you see her taking songs that are normally sort of uptempoed, like Don't Fence Me in or. And bringing it down to, like a quarter of the speed and singing, you know, straighten up and fly right.
- [42:48]
Unknown Interviewer
It's amazing you stayed with your aunt. When you first got to Hollywood, did you think you were talented? When you started working, did you think you actually had something?
- [42:59]
George Clooney
I didn't really know whether I had any talent or not. I knew that I was, for the first time in my life, engaged, and I hadn't been. I was one of those guys who was pretty good at almost anything I tried right away. You know, anything I wanted to do, I could pick it up pretty quickly. Sports, almost any sport, but never great at anything. And then I found acting. And I thought, well, this is something that at the very least I'm not gonna be bored by. And I know that there is no moment that you go, wow, I've finally done it. You know, you're never gonna be satisfied by it because it's a constant growing process. And I got into an acting class pretty quickly and I started working with working actors. And what you realized was you'd be doing a scene and you'd be holding your own with someone who's making a very good living acting. You'd realize that there's a possibility that you can actually do this for a living.
- [43:51]
Unknown Interviewer
Well, er, when you got er, that certainly must have changed your life a lot. I mean, suddenly you were a star and people become so close to you. When you're on TV every week, there's this kind of bonding that I think people go through.
- [44:04]
George Clooney
It's an unusual experience because it's not like being a movie star. You haven't paid 10 bucks and you're 30ft high and you've made it a date. You know, you've been in their homes every Thursday. So, you know, the truth is, I am a product of a great amount of luck. I create some of that luck because, you know, I did 13 pilots and I did eight television series before that. But the simple truth is, had I done that exact same show in that exact same role, and we were on Friday night instead of Thursday night at 10. I don't have a film career, and I'm not sitting here with you. It requires that kind of luck. The show would never have been as popular on a Friday night as it was on a Saturday.
- [44:42]
Unknown Interviewer
You knew something about fame. You know, your father was on tv. Rosemary Clooney, your aunt was incredibly famous. But what surprised you most when it happened to you? What were you unprepared for?
- [44:52]
George Clooney
Well, it's a funny thing. There isn't a real fame school that you can go to and learn. You know, I had probably there's you haven't met many people better prepared for it because I had the great vision of watching, especially with Rosemary, how big you can get and how quickly it can be taken away. And it's not like Rosemary became less of a singer in that period of time, which showed me that it has very little to do with you. And that was an important thing to learn and important thing to understand, which I did. But the things that you aren't prepared for are the, the trade offs. No one wants to hear you complain about them, so you don't complain about them. But I would say that the significant loss of privacy is interesting.
- [45:37]
Unknown Interviewer
I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
- [45:39]
George Clooney
That was fun.
- [45:40]
Terry Gross
My interview with George Clooney was recorded in 2005 after the release of his movie Good Night and Good Luck. He's now on Broadway in the stage adaptation of the film. He co wrote it and stars as Edward R. Morrow. His performance has just been nominated for a Tony. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to. Subscribe to our free newsletter@whyy.org Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Bodonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivi Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co host is Tanya Moseley. I'm Terry Gross.