Although released in black and white, it was filmed on color film stock, but on a grayscale set, and was color-corrected to black and white during post-production. It focuses on the theme of media responsibility, and also addresses what occurs when U.S. journalism offer voices of dissent from government policy. The movie takes its title (which ends with a period or full stop) from the line with which Murrow routinely signed off his broadcasts.
The film was a box office success and received critical acclaim for Clooney's direction, the writing, cinematography, production design and performances (particularly Strathairn's). It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Strathairn.
Plot
On 25 Oct 1958, at a gathering entitled 'A Salute to Edward R Murrow', Ed Murrow delivers a speech where he mentions Senator McCarthy among others. The film then reverts to October 14, 1953, in the CBS Studios, with on-screen titles explaining that McCarthy has claimed that there are over 200 Communists in the US government.
Fred Friendly and the news team discuss the latest news stories for the forthcoming episodes, and Murrow declares that he wants to go after the American military, who have tried and convicted a member of the Air Force, Milo Radulovich, because his sister and father have been accused of being communist sympathizers. Murrow mentions that the charges against Radulovich were in a sealed envelope and that nobody saw them, suggesting that they investigate the story to see if it is worth covering.
Five days later Friendly, Murrow, and Mickelson, CBS director, watch footage of Wershba interviewing Milo Radulovich; Mickelson criticizes the report as being unbalanced and accuses the reporter of editorializing. Military men come to Friendly's office, attempting to persuade him not to broadcast the story, but CBS goes ahead and the segment features on Murrow's show See It Now. The focus of the news team shifts to going after McCarthy himself. In one clip, McCarthy accuses a man who was provided with an attorney by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1932 of being a communist.
During the segment on McCarthy, Murrow personally invites the Senator on the show to defend the claims made about his corrupt influence. As the story continues, Murrow challenges McCarthy's questioning techniques, and the untruths he espouses in his hearings. Murrow notes that the ACLU is not on the list that McCarthy claims it to be, and that it has in fact been commended by several US presidents.
Shirley reads out mostly favorable reports from the newspaper, but one journalist, O'Brien, accuses Hollenbeck, a CBS journalist, of being a "pinko", meaning a communist sympathizer. The team is informed that the Air Force has reinstated the wrongfully terminated Radulovich.
McCarthy appears on the show on April 6, 1954, and addresses the camera directly without interruption, accusing Murrow of being a communist, something that Murrow suspected would happen. In the proceeding show, Murrow gives his response, where he unequivocally denies the accusation that he was a member of the Communist party and highlights that anyone who criticizes or opposes Senator McCarthy's methods is accused of being a communist. From this point on, the tide turns on McCarthy and he himself is investigated, due to charges the Army has made against him and his Operation. John Aaron later announces this in the newsroom, but the celebration is cut short when a phone call to Friendly informs the news team that Hollenbeck has committed suicide by gassing himself.
We see footage of the Army-McCarthy hearings, where a lawyer questions McCarthy's sense of decency. Shortly after, CBS chief executive Paley speaks with Murrow and Friendly in his office and tells them they have lost one of their major sponsors, and as a result, he will only give them five more one-hour episodes, and also move their slot from Tuesday night to Sunday afternoon. Paley speaks to Friendly privately and informs him that he needs to fire some people.
The film ends with Murrow finishing his speech from the opening scene, extolling the importance of ideas and information. Murrow concludes his speech with his iconic catchphrase "Good night, and good luck."
In September 2005, Clooney explained his interest in the story to an audience at the New York Film Festival: "I thought it was a good time to raise the idea of using fear to stifle political debate."[2] Having majored in journalism in college, Clooney was well-versed in the subject matter. His father, Nick Clooney, was a television journalist for many years, appearing as an anchorman in Cincinnati, Ohio; Salt Lake City, Utah; Los Angeles, California; and Buffalo, New York. The elder Clooney also ran for Congress in 2004.
George Clooney was paid $1 each for writing, directing, and acting in Good Night, and Good Luck, which cost $7.5 million to make. Due to an injury he received on the set of Syriana a few months earlier, Clooney could not pass the tests to be insured. He then mortgaged his own house in Los Angeles in order to make the film.[3]Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former eBay president Jeffrey Skoll invested money in the project as executive producers. The film ultimately grossed more than $54 million worldwide.[4]
The CBS offices and studios seen in the movie were all sets on a sound stage. To accomplish a pair of scenes showing characters going up an elevator, different "floors" of the building were laid out on the same level. The "elevator" was actually built on a large turntable at the intersection of the two floor sets and rotated once the doors were closed. When the doors reopened, the actors appeared to be in a different location. In doing so, the movie exercised a bit of dramatic license—the CBS executive offices at the time were located at 485 Madison Avenue.[5]CBS News was located in an office building just north of Grand Central Terminal (demolished and now the site of the MetLife Building);[6] and the See It Now studio was located in Grand Central Terminal itself, above the waiting room.[7] For dramatic effect, all three areas were depicted as being in the same building.
Clooney and producer Grant Heslov decided to use only archival footage of Joseph McCarthy in his depiction. As all of that footage was black-and-white, that determined the color scheme of the film.[2] A young Robert F. Kennedy is also shown in the movie during McCarthy's hearing sessions. He was then a staff member on the Senate subcommittee chaired by McCarthy.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 226 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critics consensus states: "A passionate and concise cinematic civics lesson, Good Night, and Good Luck has plenty to say about today's political and cultural climate, and its ensemble cast is stellar."[9] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[10]
Roger Ebert, in his Chicago Sun-Times review, contends that "the movie is not really about the abuses of McCarthy, but about the process by which Murrow and his team eventually brought about his downfall (some would say his self-destruction). It is like a morality play, from which we learn how journalists should behave. It shows Murrow as fearless, but not flawless."[11]Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's film review show At the Movies each gave the film five stars, making Good Night, and Good Luck the only other film besides Brokeback Mountain to receive such a score from the hosts in 2005.[12][13] Both described the film as "beautiful", but also praised Clooney for the film's importance. Pomeranz commented that, "[The film] is so important, because it's about things that are really vital today, like the responsibility of the press and examining the press' role in forming opinion." David noted: "Though [the film] is in black-and-white, there's nothing monochromatic about Clooney's passion for his subject or the importance of his message."[13]
Jack Shafer, at the time a libertarian-leaning columnist for the online magazine Slate, accused the film of continuing what he characterizes as the hagiography of Murrow. Clooney's film gives the impression that Murrow brought down McCarthy single-handedly, while Shafer notes that in reality much of the mainstream media, many Democrats and some Republicans were condemning him before Murrow. Furthermore, Shafer writes, evidence obtained via the declassified Venona espionage program confirmed that many Soviet agents and sympathizers were in fact in positions of influence in the U.S. government, a disclosure the film entirely overlooks: "Clooney and company ignore the material that might argue against their simple-minded thesis about Murrow, the era, and the press to produce an after school special".[14]
One complaint about the film among test audiences was their belief that the actor playing McCarthy was too over the top, not realizing that the film used actual archive footage of McCarthy himself.[15]
As of November 2022, AMC is developing a television series adaptation of the film with Jonathan Glatzer as showrunner and Clooney as executive producer.[17]
Edward Roscoe Murrow was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe for the news division of CBS. During the war he recruited and worked closely with a team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys.
See It Now was an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, with Murrow as the host of the show. From 1952 to 1957, See It Now won four Emmy Awards, and was nominated three other times. It also won a 1952 Peabody Award.
Milo John Radulovich was an American reserve Air Force lieutenant who was accused of being a security risk for maintaining a "close and continuing relationship" with his father and sister, in violation of Air Force regulation 35-62 as his family members were accused of Communist sympathies. His case was publicized nationally by Edward Murrow on October 20, 1953, on Murrow's program, See It Now:
David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. Known for his leading roles on stage and screen, he has often portrayed historical figures such as Edward R. Murrow, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William H. Seward, and John Dos Passos. He has received various accolades including an Independent Spirit Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Volpi Cup, and has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
2929 Entertainment, LLC. is an American integrated media and entertainment company co-founded by billionaire entrepreneurs Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban. 2929 maintains companies and interests across several industries including entertainment development and packaging, film and television production and distribution, digital and broadcast syndication, theatrical exhibition, and home entertainment.
Fred W. Friendly was a president of CBS News and the creator, along with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program See It Now. He originated the concept of public-access television cable TV channels.
Don Hollenbeck was a CBS newscaster, commentator, and associate of Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly. He died from fuel gas inhalation as it was discovered that his stove and oven had been turned on but not lit. Consequently, Hollenbeck's death was ruled a suicide. Reasons that it might have been suicide included health problems, depression, a broken marriage, and frequent published attacks by Jack O'Brian, a Hearst columnist and supporter of Joseph McCarthy.
Person to Person is a popular television program in the United States that originally ran from 1953 to 1961, with two episodes of an attempted revival airing in 2012. Edward R. Murrow hosted the original series from its inception in 1953 until 1959, interviewing celebrities in their homes from a comfortable chair in his New York studio. In the last two years of its original run, Charles Collingwood was the host.
John Dennis Patrick O'Brian was an American entertainment journalist best known for his longtime role as a television critic for New York Journal American.
The 18th Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, given by the CFCA on January 9, 2006, honored the best in film for 2005.
The 9th Online Film Critics Society Awards, honoring the best in film for 2005, were given on 16 January 2006.
Joseph Wershba was a professional journalist who joined the CBS News team in 1944, where he served as a writer, editor and correspondent. He was one of the six original producers of CBS's 60 Minutes from 1968 to 1988.
The 4th Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 2005, were given on December 12, 2005.
Grant Heslov is an American actor and filmmaker known for his producing and writing collaborations with George Clooney, which have earned him four Oscar nominations. As a co-producer of Argo (2012), he received the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2013. As an actor, he has appeared in films including True Lies (1994), Black Sheep (1996), Enemy of the State (1998) and The Scorpion King (2002), as well as performing supporting roles in several films made with Clooney.
Section Eight Productions, or just Section Eight, was an American film production company founded in 2000 by film director Steven Soderbergh and actor/director George Clooney.
Palmer Williams was an American broadcast journalist and documentary film maker. He worked closely with Edward R. Murrow.
The 2nd St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards were given on January 8, 2006.
Michael W. (“Mike”) Ranville is an American political lobbyist and author.
Murrow is a 1986 biographical drama television film directed by Jack Gold, written by Ernest Kinoy, and originally broadcast by HBO. Daniel J. Travanti played the title role of American broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, and Robert Vaughn co-starred in the supporting role of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The cast also featured Dabney Coleman as CBS President William Paley.
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