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Clooney, Rallying to a Cause (11/5/1996)
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By: Jeannie Williams
George Clooney is the son of a journalist and he is thinking big when it comes to the
boycott he has begun to stop the use of video paparazzi footage.
Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg and Madonna just joined his fight. But the ER star says:
``I don't even think of them in any way as joining me. I joined Madonna's cause. If
anything, we joined Alec Baldwin's (he punched a photographer seeking a photo of Baldwin's
new baby), we joined the families of TWA flight people from France who were getting
harassed in the airport.
``This isn't just about celebrities. It's about making people responsible for what they
print, what they show on camera.''
Clooney and company are refusing to give interviews to Entertainment Tonight until another
Paramount show, Hard Copy, stops using so-called stalker-azzi footage. But Clooney wants to
clear up a misconception about why he chose this time for the boycott. ``I haven't been a
terrorized victim.''
He labels ``innocuous'' Hard Copy's September video of girlfriend Celine Balitran's visit
to the Batman and Robin set, which many thought had set him off. But he says it was his
dismay that Paramount TV president Frank Kelly made a deal (and later broke it) to keep
Clooney off Hard Copy so that Clooney would appear on ET.
Clooney bided his time and felt the Batman video wasn't sensational enough to detract from
his goal. ``If there was a video of me having sex with my pet pig (Max) . . . that would
cloud the main issue.
``I have a real healthy respect, even a great love of journalists and journalism,''
Clooney adds. ``This is what I grew up with.'' Clooney's father, Nick, is a former TV
anchor, now a Cincinnati columnist.
The star says his battle is ``not by suing, by hitting or censoring . . . Hard Copy has a
right to do it. But I have the right not to talk to whoever I want.''
Copyright 1996, USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc.
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Source:USA Today |
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