USA TODAY International Edition
‘Suburbicon’ on horizon, Clooney has a lot to say
Actor/director’s ‘Suburbicon,’ about white privilege in the ’50s, is out Friday
George Clooney’s Suburbicon has critics torn. The dark satire tells the story of a picturesque, lily-white town in the 1950s, where everything chugs along like a Sunday picnic until the Meyerses, a black family, move in.
At the same time, their neighbors the Lodges (Matt Damon stars as the typical dad of the era and Julianne Moore as his wife), suffer a deadly breakthe in. With a wrench thrown into its perceived security, the community turns its suspicions on the Meyerses, forming a violent mob outside their home.
Clooney’s self-described “angry” movie vacillates between the perfect crime in the works at the Lodges’ home and rabid scapegoating growing a lawn away.
Anticipation for Suburbicon, in theaters Friday, had been high, but as the film traveled from its unveiling at the Venice International Film Festival last month, reviews rolled in, with critics both praising and slamming it. Some accused the director of tokenism, using the Meyerses as underdeveloped symbols of race in his story about white privilege.
The Kentucky-born director/ actor says he doesn’t read reviews, but theorizes that the racerelated violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August has played into perception of his latest work. “They want to compare it and they want to talk about it in terms of race and only in terms of race, and that’s probably because of Charlottesville,” he theorized to USA TODAY.
“That’s not what this movie was about,” he says. “This was a movie that said, ‘You’re looking in the wrong direction for your blame.’ ”
Clooney maintains that telling Meyerses’ story in Suburbicon was outside his purview. “There are people that should and could do the story of the black experience of suburbia in the 1950s. I shouldn’t be that person,” he says. “That would not be my expertise. My expertise would be understanding white privilege and the fear of losing it to any minority and blaming them for it.”
But, yes, Clooney uses his art to channel his political frustrations. “I would be horrified if 10 years from now, (people) didn’t know where I stood on Breitbart or Trump,” he says. “I would be horrified if they didn’t say I stood up against these people.”
ON TWINS ELLA AND ALEXANDER “Twins are tricky. Amal’s breastfeeding, so there’s no getting ahead. She’s just constantly feeding. So it’s work. It’s work for her. I’ve got the easiest part of it right now. They’ll get me later when they want a car.”
ON HARVEY WEINSTEIN “It’s indefensible. That’s the only word you can start with,” he told The Daily Beast. “I’ve known Harvey for 20 years . ... We’ve had dinners, we’ve been on location together, we’ve had arguments. But I can tell you that I’ve never seen any of this behavior — ever.”
ON PRESIDENT TRUMP “The most dangerous things to a president are obstruction of justice. It’s what happened to Clinton, it’s what happened to Nixon. We’ve seen a president on NBC say that he fired (FBI director James Comey) because he was investigating him. That’s obstruction of justice. And (the second most dangerous is) lying. And this president (even) lies about the size of his crowds.”
ON THE FUTURE “I’m skeptical of things, but always optimistic. I sort of have this look at our country like (Winston) Churchill did, when he used to say, ‘You can count on America to do the right thing after they’ve exhausted every other possibility.’ I believe that.”