Naturally, the Venice Film Festival was swiftly fawning over George Clooney on Wednesday, as the Oscar-winning star arrived (via boat, of course) to pick up his Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ahead of the glitzy, Jay Kelly-esque honorary ceremony, Clooney sat for a press conference with journalists on the Lido who immediately quizzed him on the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, the allegations of antisemitism faced by Hollywood peer Mark Ruffalo, and his love of Venice, having gotten married in the Italian city in 2014.
Clooney was also asked about the studio no-show at this year’s film festivals, as well as his directing aspirations.
The famed U.S. actor admitted that he hasn’t noticed the studio sit-out at Cannes, Berlin and Venice, which have concentrated their lineups on the best of international cinema. “In fairness, you could make the argument — and this has been going on for 25 or 30 years, this is some of the work that [Steven] Soderbergh and I were doing when we started doing [the 1998 film] Out of Sight and films like that — that studios are doing films that need a launchpad of a film festival less and less,” said Clooney, speaking amid an industry heavily reliant on IP, reboots and franchise projects.
