By now you've heard that The New Yorker devoted 10 pages of its current issue to a profile on George Clooney. And that the piece includes an anecdote about an anonymous man leaving a message on Clooney's voicemail demanding that he break up with his 29-year-old girlfriend. (Well, someone had to say it.) It's an enjoyable read, if only for the revelation that Clooney dresses his salad "with something sprayable called Balsamic Breeze."
But as the media intelligentsia inevitably recoils and bitches about the last bastion of journalism writing a fawning profile about a movie star, our question is, rather: Why did Clooney submit to a New Yorker profile? Why now? After all, Clooney has put out some great think pieces over the years like Syriana, which drew more attention to big oil, Good Night and Good Luck, which took right-wing censorship to task. Now we have Leatherheads, which centers on the plight of...white dudes playing football and a seriously Botoxed out Renée Zellweger?
We have a point, and it is this: New Yorker readers aren't big movie-goers anyway and they're certainly not going to see Leatherheads. Shit, we're not going to see Leatherheads. And you can only do one New Yorker profile every few years. So why didn't Clooney save it for more serious Oscar-worthy fare instead of a movie that seems to consist of two hours of punching John Krasinski in the face?
By the way, writer Ian Parker's main critique of the film is that "it's sometimes hard to see where his face ends and his beautifully thin brown leather jacket begins." Oh, mama.
