George Clooney has a new interview with London’s Telegraph in which he indirectly bemoans the lack of high quality films coming out of Hollywood today. He says that in the past there was a strong focus on quality films with compelling plots, and that Hollywood was at its best between 1964 and 1976 when he said there were “ten films a year that were masterpieces.” While he doesn’t directly say it, Clooney clearly implies that they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. The Telegraph calls it a “thinly disguised attack,” so don’t go saying I’m putting words in his mouth:

In a thinly-disguised attack on the modern-day values of Hollywood, the 46-year-old makes clear his belief that computer-generated imagery and visual pyrotechnics are no substitute for a good story.

Clooney places the glory years of cinema firmly between 1964 and 1976 when he says studios produced almost a masterpiece a month and directors like Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Alan J. Pakula and Sidney Lumet pushed new boundaries.

“It’s 12 years and you could find ten films a year that are masterpieces,” the actor told the Radio Times. “They don’t make those films anymore. You couldn’t come near making those films.”

Clooney’s conviction is such that a few years ago he gave each of his friends a gift of 100 DVDs from his favourite 12-year golden period.

They included Cold War classics like Fail-Safe, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Dr Strangelove as well as Bound for Glory, a biographical film about the folk singer Woody Guthrie.

He also loves Network, Lumet’s satire about a television network’s struggle for ratings and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver with its standout performance by Robert De Niro.

[From The Telegraph]

Clooney also lauds the 1960s and 70s as a golden era in which celebrities were “leading the charge in the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement and the Vietnam War movement,” and says that it then “got to this place where it probably wasn’t a good idea.” As for the upcoming election, Clooney says that he supports democratic candidate Barack Obama and would do fundraisers for him, but that it’s up to the candidate how involved Clooney gets in the campaign.

Commentor Walt O’Brien on the Telegraph article notes that great films might have longevity, but they aren’t big money-makers at the box office, and that the studios were nearly broke after they created all those masterpieces:

Erm, people tend to forget that all the major studios, while rendering superb product to an ungrateful public, were going completely broke by the end of the 1970’s. Some already had, starting with MGM in 1969 or so. Paramount uses the “Star Wars” theme as its trademark because that potboiling, low-budget canful of wasted plastic, replete with drug-propelled cast, improbable script, idiotic premises, and impossible events (how can you hear cannon and Death Stars going off and exploding in the complete vacuum which is space, please?) saved the studio from shutting its doors altogether.

People don’t BUY masterpieces, they buy trash. They don’t want insight into their lives or a higher vision of metaphysical wonderfulness, they don’t want to be editifed, they want to laugh until they pee themselves or have a good weep, and above all, look up the female lead’s skirt.

Cinema’s trash. It’s instantaneous media. A script is 100 pages, max 120, and about 2,500 words of dialogue at the most. It’s supposed to be.

[Comment found on Telegraph.co.uk]

Clooney has a valid point that the current films suck compared to what used to come out of Hollywood, but if he’s so concerned about it he should put his money where his mouth is instead of investing in risky casino ventures that never get off the ground. He may be doing just that - he co-produced, helped write and starred in the comedy Leatherheads, which is out on April 4. We’ll see if Clooney surpassed the generally low standards for modern films, and if it makes money at the box office. It’s got to be a challenge to create a decent, smart film that also draws crowds and it looks like Clooney made a comedy for that reason.

While Clooney can be mildly chastised for complaining about an industry that made him rich, at least he’s working to change it. He tried to set up a “Mediation Panel” to help resolve the strike amicably between the writers and studios.

Clooney has been keeping himself busy with more pressing issues, and spent two weeks last month touring war-torn nations in Africa with the UN at his own expense. When he tried to speak in a UN meeting about it, some countries’ representatives objected and he ended up giving a statement to reporters gathered outside. He said that the nation of Chad is worse than when he visited it two years ago, that Sudan is not much better and that “the world is watching, and that at this point we cannot afford to fail.”

So if anyone wants to talk some well-deserved crap about the never-ending sequels that Hollywood churns out, it seems like Clooney is more than credible. We found this story on Fark.com, though, where the title read “Star of ‘Ocean’s 11 through 19′ says modern films are rubbish.”

Image below of Clooney at the UN from News.com.au. Header image is of Clooney at the Critics’ Choice Awards, thanks to PRPhotos.