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My dinner with George Clooney
Bob Thompson
TORONTO - I've been ignored by more famous people than George Clooney, if you think Madonna and Mick Jagger qualify.
Still, I was invited to have dinner with Clooney Saturday night after the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Up In The Air. And, he actually showed up. I know. This hardly ever happens - the invitation or the showing up.
OK, this Clooney thing is A-list hobnobbing. It's sort of like entering the arrival's gate of fame writing. This hardly ever happens either.
But first, a confession; it wasn't like a getting-to-know-you evening. Clooney was only using me and a handful of other reporters. He wants us to write about Up In The Air, which opens in December.
And you know how hard it is for Clooney to get publicity.
Anyway, besides showing up and proving that he does have above-average table manners, Clooney seems like a decent dude for a very rich, multi-talented Oscar-winning, Lake Como villa-owning gad-about-town movie star.
He's appreciated for more than just that, though. How do I know? Up In The Air writer-director Jason Reitman and the actors in the cast, who were milling about the fancy joint, couldn't stop the Clooney gushing, even when he wasn't around. Which is rare in Hollywood. Or in Toronto when Hollywood moves in for the weekend.
Isn't that a little hard to take, though? George is all this. George is all that. Really.
Reitman was almost apologetic the next day. "But there's no great dirt to give," said the director of Up In The Air.
Then we discussed the movie Up In The Air.
It's based on the 2002 Walter Kirn satirical novel, and features Clooney who plays a corporate downsizer. Clooney's character avoids having a personal life by constantly travelling and obsessing about his frequent-flyer miles. When he meets another compulsive traveller (Vera Farmiga), his life starts to change.
Although the film may seem like a product of these depressed economic times, Clooney said Reitman started preparing the screenplay long before the current downturn. But timing is everything - and Clooney has timing.
He proved it previously and at two news conferences during the festival Friday and Saturday afternoon - one for Clooney's The Men Who Stares At Goats and another for Up in the Air. Both affairs were the same. They were like a two-drink minimum Clooney night club act.
So I wondered if he was a frustrated standup comic?
Farmiga thinks he might be. When she first met Clooney on set, he was gracious and friendly, and suggested this about playing opposite him.
"He said, 'You know this is going to be a career ender for you,'" she remembers fondly. "But he said it with that twinkle in his eyes."
But of course.
