Oscars, Murrow, Gaghan... Nothing fazes George Clooney (Pictured here with [L-R] Marcia Rock, Grant Heslov and David Strathairn) (Photo: STV)

Talk about a coup: George Clooney, David Strathairn and Grant Heslov crashed my alma mater New York University yesterday, analyzing Good Night, and Good Luck's journalistic implications for a few hundred young aspiring reporters. It seemed like kind of a sweet justice that The Reeler was able to sneak in, considering how school obligations kept me from Clooney's GN, GL press conference at this year's New York Film Festival.

And although we did not quite get around to discussing the film's flexible historical record or its contextual shortcomings (GN, GL is probably the only fall film whose length is targeted as too short), Clooney was nevertheless a forthcoming guest. "It depends on what the cause is," he said when asked how carefully actors should balance their professional and social consciences. "If you're conservative, you're perfectly welcome to have any cause you want. ... But the more important issue is that we are not very good, I think, now, at telling people what to think. We're pretty good at telling people what they should be asking. Hollywood's pretty good at that. We can stand up and say, 'Listen.' This film and Syriana are two films in particular where I made a very specific choice going in, saying, 'Look: I'm not telling you what we should do. I'm not going to supply the answers.' I think the most important thing is that we must never be told we're not allowed to ask a question. That's when we get into a very dangerous area."

Ironically or not, that was the last question of the pool interview. I really would have liked to ask if he knew there was an NYU graduate assistant strike going on and that we were all shattering a picket line to celebrate Murrow, but hey--it is awards season! And you do not see Warner Independent taking out Oscar ads in The Daily Worker, do you?

I trailed Clooney into the auditorium and asked if he thought the Oscar hype machine was spinning out of control. "It hasn't started yet," he told me. "It probably will. I've never been through one of these before. I don't know anything about it. I've never been to the Oscars, so..."

OK, well there is some preliminary buzz--Golden Globes, etc. What's your feeling?

"Honestly, I don't know," he said. "We just got nominated two days ago, so we'll see."

I did badger him one last time during the event's Q&A session, following up on where he and writing/producing partner Heslov were at on their proposed live-TV remake of Network. "We're having some rights issues with it," Heslov said. "So we're working on that." I asked who they thought about casting as Howard Beale, and Clooney suggested Michael Caine. And then Abe Vigoda, whom he then impersonated saying, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Sigh. Is this guy charming, or is he charming? Anyway, kudos to NYU journalism professors Marcia Rock and William Serrin for sending their students into the break on an up note. The pleasure was indeed ours.

Drinking it in: Match Point's Emily Mortimer and Matthew Goode (Photo: STV)

In case you thought Woody Allen's upcoming Match Point would lurk comfortably this week in King Kong's and Brokeback Mountain's hyperbolic shadows, the director and his cast hit the tabloids today with just about everything they have. I mean, it would probably be enough that Match Point had Roger Friedman's dick busting his zipper, but a little Liz Smith-Cindy Adams tag-team hagiography goes an extra long way. Lloyd Grove has some Woody action as well, plus an insight on how Scarlett Johansson's father handles viewing her love scenes.

Meanwhile, The Reeler ran into co-stars Emily Mortimer and Matthew Goode at last night's Visit Britain preview screening of Match Point at the Tribeca Grand. Mortimer recalled running into director Alfonso Cuaron in London the day before she was to start shooting with Allen. "(Cuaron) said, 'Oh, that's brilliant.' He really admired him. And then he said, 'Don't ask him any questions.' And I was like, 'Oh, fucking hell.' It was terrifying. And in some ways, he was right. No one got fired, and it wasn't that sort of horrible atmosphere where people were living in fear of that happening, but what you've heard from the other movies--there's not very much rehearsal, there's not very much dialogue about the job in hand, that sort of thing--that's entirely true. And so that meets your expectations. It's quite the adjustment at first, but once you get into it, it's really exciting working like that. We all really enjoyed it. The thing that was surprising--despite that being true--he was generally completely un-neurotic. The least neurotic director I've ever worked with. Very happy, very twinkly, very jokey, always in a good mood. Completely relaxed and affable."

Goode agreed. "He's very approachable if you have any queries," he said. "I always thought, 'I won't bother him. I'll let him do his thing.' He's only a little fellow, but there's some sort of deep power that comes out of those big glasses. So he still scares me a bit, even though he's totally lovely. I always feel I shouldn't take up too much of his time. You really start trying to trust your instincts a bit more, and working with him actually gave me more confidence."

"At the beginning," Mortimer said, "I was thinking, 'I don't know how I can be doing well. I don't know how this can result in good acting.' Whatever you think of the guy--most people think he's a genius, some people have other opinions--he's always gotten really good performances out of hs actors, I think. And it is from trusting them. He has great respect for them. He only gets in the way if he starts to direct them. He starts interfering with what they're doing and making it less good than it would have been."

"I think that all that goes to the same sort of thing," Goode added. "There's this sort of uncomfortable nervousness about it. That's the reason he's continued getting good performances. Because it's a general fear."

"You don't have anything to sort of hold back on," Mortimer said. "You just have to listen and be in the scene, otherwise you're completely fucked."

"Oh," Goode said, nodding vigorously. "You're fucked. Yeah."

Well, they seem to have survived, and their characters' aloof brand of class conflict help make Match Point the chilly, splendid little film it is. But now that they have had their fun with Allen, they need to face reality and give him back to New York; they must know, after all, we press parasites cannot survive on Harvey Weinstein alone.

Hail the conquering hero: Pixar's John Lasseter at MoMA (Photos: STV)

When it comes to animated films, I actually tend to side with Armond White, who told the Meet the Critics crowd the other day at Makor that he likes "films with people in them." Oversimplification? Absolutely. But if I HAD to watch animation, and you cruelly took South Park away from me, I guess I would go with a Pixar flick.

Not that the billionaire geniuses at Pixar need my default-favorite-animation status as some validation or anything, but that type of go-to, household-name appeal is arguably the studio's most resonant qualification for MoMA's "Pixar: 20 Years of Animation" exhibit. And I guess they have some fairly amazing output, as well: Opening today, the show features more than 500 sketches, maquettes, paintings and storyboards associated with the making of Pixar's seven features and 11 short films (the short One Man Band will have its North American premiere at MoMA January 27). Pixar is also donating new prints of its work to MoMA's permanent collection.

As such, museumgoers greeted Pixar mastermind John Lasseter like a folk hero yesterday as he introduced a preview of the exhibition. "I hope that as people come through this exhibit in the next few months, they are amazed by the traditional art needed to make our films," he told a crowd gathered around Barnet Newman's Broken Obelisk. "Everybody assumes that the computer does a lot more than it really does at Pixar. One of the foundations of Pixar is the collaboration between art and technology. We do have the most cutting edge technology, and we have more Ph.D's working on our films than anybody else in Hollywood. We've invented much of the computer animation, but art is at the foundation of it."

The sort-of multimedia Artscape--which traces the conventional art roots of Pixar's films--and Toy Story Zoetrope are probably the exhibit's highlights, although I brought back a few other samples of the various work on display (click below). If animation IS your thing, you have until Feb. 6 to check it out.

Lynn Whitfield, NYWIFT M.C. ASAP (Photo: STV)

The Reeler paid a visit Tuesday to the 25th annual Muse Awards, the New York Women in Film & Television event that this year honored the lives and works of Julianne Moore, Tina Fey, BET president Debra Lee and editor Susan Morse. It was a hard gig to cover; whether or not you believe I am capable of even the slightest social consciousness, I always try to be on my best behavior and leave the hormone gags to people like Fey. You might call it good taste--I call it strategy.

The brilliant Fey did not disappoint, by the way, but I somehow still managed to piss off Moore. She foretold an immediate future in which outside investors would revive authentic independent film--the medium whose '90s renaissance Moore helped define with her breakthrough performance in Todd Haynes's Safe. So, I asked, is there more opportunity now for women to join this latest revival behind the camera?

It seemed like a fair follow-up. Alas, an incredulous laugh. "Listen, here's the thing, you know," Moore said. "I really think that your sex has very little to do with what you do in the working world. I think the more we talk about the differences between men and women, the more divisive we are. The more we create a division. In a sense, it's about opportunities for everybody."

Great, thanks--congrats on your Muse Award. I had an even more troubling exchange with actress Lynn Whitfield, but for a totally different reason. Whitfield appeared as the emergency replacement for M.C. Kathy Griffin, who literally called in sick yesterday morning. Imagine! But in talking with Whitfield about opportunities for African-American women in film, the conversation turned to the unbelievably tragic story of Stanley "Tookie" Williams--the Crips founder, convicted murderer and Nobel Prize-nominated case study in rehabilitation whom California put to death early Tuesday.

Whitfield talked about portraying advocate Barbara Becnel in the 2004 film Redemption, co-produced by Becnel and starring Jamie Foxx as Williams. "She's a very, very strong woman who I think today needs to be honored for ther efforts behind the scenes to save a real life, and actually to make a movie that I'm very very proud of," Whitfield said.

It was indeed awful news coming out of the West Tuesday--as a native Californian, it had knocked the wind out of me. I asked Whitfield if she was doing OK. "Today is to celebrate so many wonderful people who really don't have anything to do with Stanley's life," Whitfield said, betraying a hint of tears. "So I don’t want to confuse the two issues. But it's a very, very sad day for our country, I think, when redemption doesn't matter and a decision was made that was built not upon facts but upon votes."

I will have a lot more about the honorees, NYWIFT and the 2005 Muse Awards in next March's issue of The Independent, published by the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. When I have the appropriate date for you to camp out at the newsstand for your copy, believe me--I will pass it along.

"This isn't E, for Christ's sake": IFC TV boss Evan Shapiro (Photo: IFC)

The last week has seen some controversy surrounding This Film is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's upcoming documentary investigating the MPAA ratings system. The film is slated to premiere next month at Sundance, but executive producer IFC issued a press release Dec. 7 explaining that the MPAA had already tarred it with an NC-17. "How convenient," the thinking goes, "that the MPAA would deflate the commercial chances of a documentary about itself."

Well, yes and no. Not too long afterward on his blog, indieWIRE editor Eugene Hernandez echoed at least my own first impression:

While I am by no means a proponent of the current MPAA given its checkered past, I am rather bored with people using the MPAA ratings systems as a stunt for PR purposes. ... I immediately asked the film's PR rep if I could see the movie since its been submitted to the MPAA only to be told that the film is still being shot. After pressing the matter further, this morning the PR rep said the film was submitted to the MPAA as research ("they felt they needed to see the process first hand if they were going to do a documentary about the process"), and the rep later clarified that the film is now being edited.

Over the weekend I talked to another film insider who disagreed, saying that the fine print behind Dick's NC-17 was less a "stunt" than just an example of what the film was up against as it prepared to seek distribution. Still conflicted, I realized I would just have to take this matter straight to the top.

"I just don't think it's right," said IFC executive vice president Evan Shapiro, "to call a serious documentary from a serious documentarian on the Independent Film Channel a stunt. It needs to be called on face value what it is. It's a film which, by the way, got into Sundance. We are doing what companies do when they get into Sundance. We are getting a little press attention, and we thought that the NC-17 would be of a little interest to people."

Well, I am writing this almost a week later, so mission accomplished, I guess. Nevertheless, nobody called the film a stunt--although now that I think about it, that is not such an unfair conclusion to draw if we believe Dick submitted an unfinished film to the MPAA just to see what would happen. According to an MPAA spokeswoman, This Film is Not Yet Rated comprises sequences that other films had to cut to obtain R ratings. (The Reeler has been waiting since last Friday for a list of the offending scenes that the MPAA promised but never delivered.) At best, the press release calls attention to the "irony" that the ratings board gave the kiss of death to a film about itself. At worst, it misrepresents Dick's ratings board submission as some moment of truth from which IFC and its filmmaker emerged moral champions. I mean, what the did the filmmakers expect? Love it or hate it, what was the ratings board supposed to do?

I guess at the very, very best (for IFC, anyway), some impressionable distributor will pick up on the controversy and make IFC an offer. Shapiro says the network (which will air the film uncut, as per its tagline, next fall) has been in touch with a few buyers so far, not all of whom would even have to release This Film with a rating. "Ultimately, do you want to build anticipation for a film? Of course you do," Shapiro told me. "King Kong wanted to do that, The Aristocrats wanted to do that. Every film wants to do that. Are we only working on a film? No. You know there is a business to this as well."

Oh dear. Shapiro added: "The more buzz we get on the film the better off it will be. I think (Hernandez) has a fair assessment of our desire to get buzz for the film, but I also think he should take a little bit of faith that Kirby Dick is an Oscar nominee and he did get into Sundance. We are the Independent Film Channel. This isn't E, for Christ's sake. And just assume we're taking a serious look at a serious film. The release was kind of designed to keep the press informed about what was going on, and it worked."

Of course, you have to wait until Sundance to check out the finished product. Ah, marketers. You have got to love them.

Everyone is a critic. No, seriously--(L-R) Armond White, Thelma Adams, Stephen Holden and Glenn Kenny bring their keen eyes to the Upper West Side (Photo: STV)

I should not have to write too much to convey the general experience of yesterday's "The Votes Are In" film critics panel at Makor. It seemed like kind of a can't-miss proposition to turn four high-profile critics loose on each other at the end of a crappy year for movies, especially when you can fly planes between their publications' general interests. Yet The Times's Stephen Holden, Us Weekly's Thelma Adams, Premiere's Glenn Kenny and NY Press's Armond White not only survived, but also flourished in many respects, leaving the 150 or so spectators wondering what kind of rules had to be set down beforehand to assure Adams that White would not eat her in one gulp, chair and all.

Of course, they are friends, which I guess is great for them but did nothing at all for me. On the other hand, I felt relieved to have seen most of the films the quartet discussed; the group invested a lot of time climbing Brokeback Mountain in particular, which was only released Friday and had not made the top-weekend-things-to-do list of most of those in attendance. The film endured a battery of comparisons to Gregg Araki's outlandishly awful Mysterious Skin (another picture that had not found much of an audience among Makor's Jewish mother constituency), and provoked one of the afternoon's more interesting dialogues about 2005's surge of gay-themed films.

"Well, these other films didn't have the benefit of a multimillion dollar promotional campaign from Universal and General Electric," White argued, referring to the parental hierarchy of Brokeback's distributor Focus Features. "There are good films that go for want of praise and want of attendance simply because they're not promoted well enough. When it comes to something like Brokeback Mountain, where I see the media I guess congratulating (themselves) for being tolerant--'Rah rah for gay marriage'--I think of all the better films about gay issues that opened this year that no critics paid attention to."

White had in mind films like Cote D'Azur and Garçon Stupide, which he argued dealt with gay issues more honestly than Brokeback (and Mysterious Skin, for that matter). The chat got better from there, with White literally laughing off Holden's claim that Brokeback was as good as The Last Picture Show. I cannot say I felt sorry for Holden; I was laughing on the inside, natch, but more at his stunned reaction than at his outrageous statement.

And really, if you were dropping by for a steel-cage match, you had to know White would be your go-to guy. For whatever reason, the brittle, contrarian bitchiness that stifles his columns resurfaced Sunday as optimism--and you cannot say that it was there in the Press the whole time. Remember, this is the guy who only three weeks ago eviscerated these same colleagues for their smugness and intellectual dishonesty.

King Kong is no rival for Slipper Kong (Photo: STV)

After all the hype and hearsay, it is with a heavy heart that I admit not being able to cover last night's King Kong premiere in Times Square. It is not all bad, however: I did manage to go check out the scaaaaaary plaster replica Universal plunked onto Military Island (just one notch above the fuzzy gorilla slippers that I am privileged to wear to work each day--but I digress), and I arranged for a top-flight reporter to send back a dispatch from the event:

Ladies and gentlemen, Reeler Correspondent Becks Bean:

"Nothing too crazy or as noteworthy as the Nathan Lane incident happened at the King Kong premiere last night. The premiere was humongous though - the red carpet was like half a block long and there was press from all over the world. Although the PR people weren't too helpful at getting us access to all the stars, they did make the time go by faster by passing out giant King Kong gloves, which, when punched against one's chest (or just shook), make a gorilla roaring sound. Fun at the premiere but embarassing when they started going off out of nowhere on my subway ride home."

Noise-making gloves? Jesus--the PR apparatus just gets sophisticateder and sophisticateder. Follow the jump for the rest of Becks's report.

He swears by nothing: Nathan Lane at Sunday's Producers premiere Photo: (STV)

I used to think I was the only person in New York who has never seen The Producers in either its Broadway incarnation or the form of Mel Brooks's original 1968 movie. But you learn something new everyday--especially while camping on the cold fringe of a red carpet, which is exactly where The Reeler found itself during Sunday night's premiere of The Producers latest, movie musical adaptation.

In this case, my lesson came in the form of another intrepid reporter, bundled up in the chilly tent with her leopard-print scarf and a sheaf of trenchant inquiries for the stars--no research required, as poor Nathan Lane soon discovered.

"Diet secrets you swear by," she said, her breath trailing the question through the freezing air.

"What?" Lane asked.

"Diet secrets you swear by," she repeated.

"Diet secrets I swear by? What do you mean?"

"Just really quickly."

"I don't... I have no idea."

Not like the guy needed my help, but I intervened anyway: "Is this the coldest premiere you've ever been to in your life?"

He turned to leave. "It's starting to be."

On that basis alone, I now have Brooks's film at the top of my Netflix queue and I'm stocking up on pre-sale tickets for Lane's new one. Fan. For. Life.