Dapper Hollywood heavyweights Brad Pitt (left), Matt Damon and George Clooney hit the red carpet prior to the screening of Ocean's Thirteen at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday. (AP photo) CANNES, France -- George Clooney played and pranced and provoked and goofed off on his pals Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Co. at the 60th Cannes Film Festival yesterday.
Then he got serious when it really counted. The charismatic Clooney, the most amusing and self-amused movie star in modern Hollywood, led the parade for the out-of-competition screening of Ocean's Thirteen last night. It is the third and (supposedly) last instalment in the Steven Soderbergh's modern re-make series based on the old Frank Sinatra movie.
Before it unspooled at a red-carpet affair, the sly Soderbergh and his cast held an often-unfettered news conference. With Pitt sitting there all pretty and mouth agape, with Damon enduring a good-natured ribbing from Don Cheadle, with Andy Garcia cracking wise about sleeping with Oprah Winfrey (he was kidding) to get her to shoot a fake Oprah episode, and with cadaverous Elliott Gould wondering what these young punks were doing, Clooney ran the show. Giggling and mugging as he went along.
"This script may go down in the history books as one of the great screenplays of all time," he said sarcastically of Ocean's Thirteen, knowing full well it is a breezy entertainment. "So I think we've raised the bar back to the Golden Age. This film was basically a cry for peace.
" He grinned and turned to his pals, "Don't you think, guys?" But as much as he clowned, he got down to business when Sun Media asked him about using Cannes as a platform to raise money for AIDS research -- he was part of host Sharon Stone's annual rich-and-famous AMFAR auction that generated $7 million US for the AIDS cause (with Clooney adding a passionate kiss to enrich one prize). And to raise money for relief programs in war-torn Darfur, a separate Clooney-led effort generated $9 million for the refugees, including a reported $1-million cheque cut by Steven Spielberg.
"It is an entertainment, a romp," Clooney said of Ocean's Thirteen. "Romp. I always liked that word.
We romp right through it. But the truth is that we knew we were coming here, we knew this was a great international platform "We were going to come here to promote the film and we thought, 'Well, if we're going to be here, it would be a chance to raise some money and help some people immediately and to raise some awareness.' We thought it was a great opportunity to do both.
"Specifically about Darfur, Don, Matt, Brad and I have all, in the last year, been in that region. It is something that has been an important part of our lives for the past few years. And we thought it was time to get up (and focus attention).
"We find that there is a lot more attention in the United States than there is internationally at times about this issue and we thought it was important to talk about it. It's not going to go away until the rest of the world is outraged enough to put a stop to it." Damon put in his two cents, part of the effort that raised those millions.
"There were just so many resources being brought to bear to get this film opened that it seemed like we would be remiss if we didn't try to redirect some of those resources towards something that is a life-and-death struggle." Otherwise, the news conference was mostly off-beat and funny, except when producer Jerry Weintraub tried to turn it into a promo for Ocean's (as an old-school Hollywood man, Weintraub could not go down without a hype). "Ocean's Fourteen?
" Clooney asked rhetorically when pressed on another sequel. "I think we've sort of sapped that tree." Answering a personal question tossed into the same reporter's query, Clooney also announced (big surprise) he has no plans to get married.
But he would like to change his style. "I would like to do musicals, more than anything!" He grinned and then answered properly.
"I think all of us up here are fans of films. We work on different kinds of films all the time. There is a great place for big entertainment.
And I think there is a great place for smaller films. Every one of these actors up here works on smaller, passionate films of theirs that they want to get done -- except for Matt. He doesn't care!
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