George Clooney's AFI Win is Too Soon

Yesterday, the American Film Institute announced that George Clooney will be receiving its Life Achievement Award.  This is considered one of the highest honors in the world of cinema, a landmark achievement that puts Clooney alongside such luminaries as Bette Davis, John Ford, and Fred Astaire.  It also makes him the sixth youngest person to ever win the award, tying Harrison Ford who won the honor in 2000.  This struck me, however, as a bit pandering and as one of those life achievement awards that feels far too soon, and perhaps a little undeserved.  I figured I'd explore that line-of-thinking here today by looking at Clooney's career in comparison to some of the legends that he now joins by being on this list.

The first thing I want to discuss is Clooney's age itself.  In an era where people are living considerably longer, (provided you have access to quality health insurance) winning a life achievement award before at least 65 feels far too premature (he'll be 57 when he picks it up).  This isn't the first time that the AFI has jumped the gun on honoring someone.  Tom Hanks won in 2002 at the ridiculously early age of 45, which meant that some of his lauded recent work in pictures like Captain Phillips and Bridge of Spies wasn't among his clips at the time, and Steven Spielberg picked up the award in 1995, probably deservedly but still without Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, or his most ambitious work-to-date, AI: Artificial Intelligence, being part of that conversation.  Clooney's winning at such an early age means that we don't really get to see where his career goes.  One could argue, for example, that Hanks ended up being less consequential to the landscape of film than he was specifically at the age of 2002, though still a major actor in his own right, and others who won young it seems silly that we honored them before they hit a new renaissance in their careers.  Martin Scorsese, for example, picked up the trophy at the age of 54 in 1997, meaning that his wave of five Best Picture nominees that came after it, including The Departed which won him the Oscar, weren't amongst the reasons that he took the AFI Award.

Honoring too early in itself is not a problem, of course.  One could argue that Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, both of whom won the honor when they were younger than Clooney, more than deserved the trophy at that point in their careers (2004 and 1994, respectively), as they'd been omnipresent figures in film for decades at that point, though it's worth noting both would go on to give an Oscar-winning performance later on in their career.  And there's always the risk that you run into great work happening after the AFI Life Achievement Award-it's not a retirement party.  Perhaps the most glaring example of this would be Clint Eastwood, whose career as an actor and a burgeoning director in 1996 likely warranted this trophy, but who would go on to have a HUGE second career as a filmmaker of pictures like Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper; Eastwood would quite frankly win for a filmography that has largely been overtaken by what his actual legacy as an artist will entail.  Henry Fonda and Robert de Niro both were Oscar-nominated after their wins, and it seems likely that John Williams will be this year as well.  Since some artists work until their final curtain closes, you do have to pick an age that they win it.

But 57 is too early, and certainly too early for Clooney.  This is where I might come off as unkind, so I do want to point out that Clooney is a very good filmmaker.  He has four times been nominated as an actor by the Academy Awards (winning for Syriana), and is also an Oscar-nominated director, writer, and producer.  Two of those performances were amongst the best of the year and more than exhibited his big-screen talent (Michael Clayton and Up in the Air), and he has directed one additional brilliant movie in Good Night, and Good Luck.  It's a career literally any artist would envy, but George Clooney is hardly as prolific or as consistent of a filmmaker as almost any other recipient of this award.

Let's examine the evidence, but point out a caveat first.  The American Film Institute, while it doesn't expressly exclude specific people who are important to the craft categories in moviemaking, tends to highlight either acting or directing.  There are exceptions (Williams being the biggest one), and one could argue that someone like Steven Spielberg might have in-part made it based on some of the work that he produced, but by-and-large this is for acting or directing (Spielberg would have won without The Goonies).  It also tends to favor headliners.  Great character actors tend to not win, even ones who ended up being leading players at the peaks of their fame (look at someone like Robert Duvall, who has never picked up this trophy).  The first film that George Clooney got above-the-title billing was From Dusk til Dawn in 1996 and the first movie he received top billing on was The Peacemaker the following year (interestingly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger got top billing on Batman & Robin despite not playing one of the title characters).  That means that Clooney will have been a headlining movie star for about 22 years when he wins the trophy next year.

There are few actors you could find who have had shorter careers as marquee stars than Clooney in this regard.  For comparison sake, let's look at Diane Keaton, who won this year.  Keaton got star billing for the first time in 1973's Play It Again, Sam, and would get top billing for the first time four years later for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, at which point she'd already been a co-lead for most of that time.  That means that Keaton had 40 years of leading lady moviemaking under-her-belt, and really we should up it to 45 as we're discounting the first two Godfather movies in that equation (Clooney never had such a significant supporting role before he became a leading man).  One could argue that Keaton was more deserving at 57 (which would have been in 2003, during her big comeback year), than Clooney is now.

There's also the question of Clooney's actual filmography.  Since From Dusk til Dawn (not really his breakthrough, which was ER, but that's television), Clooney has made about 25 major movies, including a couple of cameos.  That's not a lot for someone who is being ranked alongside people like John Ford or Lillian Gish, and it's not like all that many of them were that significant.  Really, outside Clooney's most successful artistic period from 2005-2011, where he won four Oscar acting nominations and directed a Best Picture nominee, there's not much to distinguish Clooney's career.  Yes, he's had a few hits in the Ocean's Trilogy and O Brother Where Art Thou, but nothing approaching the likes of someone who has a comparatively thin filmography like George Lucas (whose Star Wars so redefined moviemaking that it's hard to argue with his victory even if it seems to have only been for Star Wars...and even then the AFI made him wait longer than Clooney).  Clooney post-The Descendants has kind of been a bust.  He's produced some decent movies (Argo, August Osage County), and been in one good movie that he had a supporting part (Gravity), but he seems relatively post-peak as an actor, even if he's still very in-demand as a philanthropist and celebrity.

All this wouldn't be a problem if there weren't other people who deserved this honor who haven't won it yet, but unfortunately that's still a very long list.  Sally Field, Faye Dunaway, Francis Ford Coppola, Jessica Lange, Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Ridley Scott, Robert Redford, Woody Allen, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, Liza Minnelli, Norman Jewison, Vanessa Redgrave, Gena Rowlands, Sissy Spacek, Goldie Hawn, Burt Reynolds, Ellen Burstyn, and Sylvester Stallone are all over seventy and have been working in major movies longer than Clooney.  You can quibble maybe with 1-2 names on this list, and admittedly rumor has it some don't want the honor even though it's been offered to them (Redford, Allen, and Hackman being toward the top of that list), but taken as a collective it's hard to justify Clooney besting all of them.  Which makes his honor feel more like a nod to his celebrity more than anything else, as he's certainly going to get more clicks than any of those people.  That's a pity, because if Clooney could rebound a bit artistically as an actor and/or director, in ten years he may have earned this award.  But for now, it feels like he's winning too early, too soon, and perhaps most unfortunately, without earning the trophy.