Clooney's BO Bomb: Why George Flunks the Smell Test

Great little rant (of several) from Deadline Hollywood's story on this weekend's George Clooney BO bomb:

1. George Clooney is Hollywood’s movie star, he’s not the audience’s movie star. He’s spent the past ten years cultivating the media while doing nothing really for the audience outside of the Ocean’s # movies.

   Plus there are the incidents of smugness and arrogance, that the media let’s slip, but audience doesn’t forget, like his Princess Di press conference, or his rather nasty joke about Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s. And then saying that Heston deserved it for being president of the NRA, forgetting Heston’s often overlooked civil rights work. The media quickly forgave him, because it was the politically correct thing to do, but the audience saw Clooney cruelly picking on an old man with a distinguished career dying of a terminal illness.

   Hollywood has forgotten that in order to be a good box office draw a “star” needs the goodwill of the audience. Clooney’s career is built on the goodwill of the media, and hoping that they could spin success for him. But the media’s power to spin just isn’t what it used to be.

   Comment by Furious D — April 5, 2008 @ 5:05 am