Clooney Buys Movie Rights to bin Laden's Driver's Story
By Rizzuto

Tue Aug 12, 2008 - Hollywood once again show's where its sympathies lie. From the LA Times:
George Clooney, one of Hollywood's most prominent backers of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president, has bought the movie rights to tell the story of Osama bin Laden's driver.

It may be a controversial project.

Clooney's movie production company, Smokehouse, bought the book rights from journalist Jonathan Mahler, who in "The Challenge" tells the story of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni resident of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in recent years after his capture for being the driver of Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
I've posted about Hollywoods propensity for films canonizing a-holes in the past, like Tom Cruises soon-to-be bomb Valkyrie, about Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. This time though, it's especially concerning considering that Clooney is advising Obama on Middle East policy. With stories flooding out of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hollywood can't find any domestic heroes?

Wilkow points out to me the irony of the fact that Obama is complaining about McCain's attacks calling him a vapid "celebrity", while he's receiving advice from a guy whose Iraq experience is limited to being in the movie Three Kings.

Keep Hollywood out of Washington!




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Comments : 1 Comment

bear commented, on August 12, 2008 at 10:14 p.m.:

There seems to be a melding of journalism and hollywood fantasy, when exactly the opposite is proper. As hollywood applies artistic license to the truth, journalism is following suit, to the point where news consumers can no longer discern any difference. The demise of the concept of actual truth is a dangerous threat to the possibility of spreading freedom throughout the world.