Joe Biden most ‘selfless’ President since George Washington, George Clooney argues

For the first time since writing a July 10 op-ed in the New York Times titled, “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee,” George Clooney has spoken out about the impact the article may have had.

“I’ve never had to answer this question, so I might as well here,” said Clooney, when a reporter asked him about the op-ed during a news conference for Wolfs, his new buddy comedy with Brad Pitt, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday night.

Clooney’s public stance, as one of President Joe Biden’s biggest supporters and fundraisers in Hollywood, was seen as a major influence on the President leaving the race in July and endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris.

“The person who should be applauded is the President who did the most selfless thing that anyone’s done since George Washington,” Clooney began.

The machinations leading Biden to drop out were not important and would not be remembered, Clooney said: “What should be remembered is the selfless act of someone who - you know, it’s very hard to let go of power. We know that. We’ve seen it all around the world. And for someone to say, ‘I think there’s a better way forward.’ All the credit goes to him … And all the rest of it will be long gone and forgotten.”

The actor, who has endorsed Harris, did not mention her in a news conference meant to be focused on the film. “I’m just very proud of where we are in the state of the world, which many people are surprised by, and I think we’re all very excited for the future,” he said.

Clooney was widely seen as the most prominent Biden supporter to publicly ask the President to step out of the race. In the op-ed, he wrote that he’d become concerned seeing a weakened, shaky Biden at a June 15 fundraiser that Clooney had hosted that raised a record US$30 million.

Then, on June 27, Biden had his disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump. Clooney’s op-ed came amid an avalanche of diminishing celebrity support for the President, with the likes of Stephen Colbert, Michael Moore and Stephen King calling for him to leave the race. Eleven days after Clooney’s op-ed, Biden dropped out.

Clooney also took a moment at the news conference to address the recent news that Apple, which won a bidding war for the rights to distribute Wolfs, had greatly reduced the number of theatres where people will be able to see the movie.

In the film, written and directed by Jon Watts, Pitt and Clooney play fixers in New York who both think they’re the best at what they do (getting rid of bodies, hiding messes for their prominent clientele). That is until they realise the existence of each other when they get assigned to the same job. In a previous Hollywood, the film would have printed money.

But last month, Apple announced that instead of a worldwide release, including thousands of theatres across the United States, the film will have a limited US release on September 20 and play for just one week before it iss made available on the company’s streaming platform on September 27. It will not play internationally in theatres beyond its screenings in Venice.

“It is a bummer,” Clooney said. As Clooney said in a December 2023 interview with Deadline, they had struck the deal with Apple on the promise of a wide theatrical release and both stars had even given back part of their salaries to make that a reality.

“We would like [a wide release]. We wanted it,” Clooney said during the news conference. “That’s why Brad and I gave back some of our salary.”

He also wanted to correct the record about how big those salaries actually were - noting it was “millions and millions and millions of dollars less” than the US$35 million apiece figure reported by the New York Times. “I think it’s bad for our industry if that’s what people think is the standard-bearer for salaries,” he said. “I think it’s terrible. It’ll make it impossible to make films.”

Both actors run production companies - Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures and Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment (which has several films at Venice) - and they both have to work with streamers from now until forever. So, they were quick to frame their disappointment in the fate of Wolfs as an isolated incident, although Clooney experienced the same thing last year, when his Amazon MGM film The Boys in the Boat didn’t get an international theatrical release. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.)

“I think we’ll always be romantic about the theatrical experience,” Pitt said. “At the same time, I love the existence of the streamers because we get to see more story, we get to see more talent. It gets more eyes. It’s a delicate balance right now, but it’ll right itself.”

Clooney pointed out that, as a young actor, he was competing for a shot on one of dozens of narrative TV shows. Now, he said, there were hundreds.

“There’s a lot of work for actors,” he said. “They also benefit from having films released. We need Apple and Amazon and they actually need distributors. They need to have Sony or Warner Bros. who actually have been doing this for 100 years. We’re figuring it out.”