Hollywood turned left the day the internet billionaire and the Hollywood star met at the luxury hotel.
It was the last day that Jeff Skoll, the former eBay whiz kid, would be in Dubai. George Clooney wanted to meet for breakfast. Both men were in the sheikdom for the shooting of the movie Syriana—Skoll as producer, Clooney as star.
But Clooney wanted to talk about a different movie at the opulent Shangri-La Hotel. He'd asked for the meeting because he wanted to change Skoll's mind about a project Clooney wanted to direct. Good Night, and Good Luck would chronicle broadcasting icon Edward R. Murrow's 1950s showdown with red-baiting U.S. senator Joe McCarthy. Every studio in Hollywood had turned it down, and novice producer Skoll was leaning the same way. He didn't see how the project could make money—especially when Clooney didn't want to play the lead. And the script was a mess.
Still, he listened. During two hours of talk about politics and film, Skoll realized how deeply Clooney cared about the project. As a boy, the star had been regaled with tales of Murrow's heroism by his father, a fellow anchorman. Anyone who questioned McCarthy's inquisition was painted by the senator as unpatriotic, if not communistic. Murrow, however, stared him down. In the here and now, Clooney was still smarting from the backlash he'd suffered for questioning the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. The allegory was obvious. "The American people need a reminder that we can't confuse dissent with disloyalty," Clooney said urgently, paraphrasing a famous line of Murrow's.
Not only did Clooney care, he'd done his homework: He could walk Skoll through each frame of the project, down to production details like era-appropriate cigarettes.
"It was un-freaking believable," says Skoll. "Four or five months before a single frame was shot, or the script was finalized, [Clooney] had such a vision for the project. And on the spot I said, 'Okay, we'll do it.' "
Good call. Thanks largely to Good Night, and Good Luck, this year's Oscars ceremony on March 5 stands to seal Skoll's status as a player in Hollywood. And not just any player. Skoll's Participant Productions is at the crest of a new wave of independently produced, politically engaged dramas, the sort of meaningful movies that haven't been seen since the 1970s. His picture North Country appears on two Oscar short lists, it's true, as does Syriana. But Good Night scored no less than six nominations in major categories, not to mention buzz to kill for. That gut response to Clooney's pitch ended up creating the perfect project to launch a Hollywood revolution.
For a nerdy kid from Canada, it's a pretty good second act.
Born in Montreal and raised in Toronto by a schoolteacher mom and an entrepreneur father, young Skoll read voraciously. He was particularly inspired by the dystopian novels of George Orwell (1984) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), and the historical epics of James Clavell and James Michener. Skoll loved the way these stories showed how an individual could change the world.
"All these books made the world seem a very small place, very interconnected," he says. "Around the same time, I became conscious of all these scary things happening in the world—overpopulation, nuclear war and global warming—and that the future may not be a very pleasant place. And I thought, Wouldn't it be great to write stories that made people see these problems that were coming, and got people involved before they actually happened."
But how could one afford to be an aspiring writer? Skoll realized he needed to make enough money to take time off. So after high school, he enrolled in electrical engineering at the University of Toronto. After graduating in 1987, he launched an engineering consultancy that landed him a long-term contract at Ontario Hydro; as well, he ran a computer leasing company, Micros on the Move. One customer who became a friend, Richard Klagsbrun, introduced Skoll to the movies of David Lean and Stanley Kramer, the American producer/director who made memorable entertainment out of such meaty issues as creationism (Inherit the Wind), racism (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and nuclear armageddon (On the Beach). These films thrilled Skoll just as much as his favourite books.
