George Clooney, in Venice to accept the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, backed Mark Ruffalo's right to attack the proposed $111 billion Paramount takeover of Warner Bros Discovery. [1] "I support Mark Ruffalo's ability to speak freely," he said. "I think that that's ridiculous. We're not going to ban speech. I believe in free speech even when I completely disagree with it." [1] "I will always support Mark Ruffalo's ability to speak freely. I like him. He's a good man." [1] He also named the business. "I worry when a big company swallows up another company. I always worry whenever big companies are consolidating because it means a lot of people are going to lose their jobs." [1]

Studio copy has treated Ruffalo's criticism as an antisemitism file. More than 170 Jewish artists and academics — Todd Haynes, Joel Coen, Miranda July, Hannah Einbinder, Wallace Shawn, Naomi Klein among them — signed a letter Tuesday calling that charge a smear. [2] "Calling Mark Ruffalo antisemitic because he is questioning a massive corporate merger is not only absurd — it's a dangerous way to shut down legitimate criticism," Ilana Glazer said. [2] Clooney's Wednesday remarks put a lifetime prize on the same side of that line. They did not make the merger smaller.

Ruffalo had named the family behind Paramount. David Ellison is chief executive. His father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, agreed to personally backstop $40.4 billion in equity financing for the Warner deal. [2] Ruffalo shared a clip of Safra Catz, Oracle's executive vice-chair and a Paramount board member, discussing technologies the company provided to Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack. [1] [2] He accused the Ellisons of complicity in what he called the "genocide" of Palestinians and argued the company was "built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle." [1] Paramount accused him of antisemitic tropes. [2] He answered that criticizing an Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it "is not the same as criticizing Jewish people." [2]

The letter behind him called the $111 billion combination more than a studio marriage. It would "destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods," further consolidate "oligarchic control of our media," and strangle competition, the signatories wrote, "as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination" that Larry Ellison and his partners "have explicitly linked to their support for" the assault on Palestinians. [2] The letter cited Oracle's role in the Trump-brokered TikTok sale, Ellison's reported $350 million in personal funding of the Tony Blair Institute amid an unsuccessful bid for a Gaza "board of peace" seat, and Oracle executives' public backing of Israel's strikes. [2] "Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism," the letter said. "It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty." [2] Ellison is worth an estimated $189 billion. [2]

Clooney, asked about journalism, pointed to Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post and Elon Musk at X. [1] He said he did not know how the Paramount-Warner deal "goes through. There are so many issues involved." [1] He also said the November midterms "should be a check and balance," and that in 2028, "with any luck, we'll have some restoration into normalcy." [1] He will accept the prize Wednesday evening. Laura Dern, his co-star in last year's Jay Kelly, presents it — a film in which Clooney played an aging star traveling to Italy for a lifetime honour. [1] He first came to Venice with Out of Sight in 1998. [1]

He also put posthumous likeness on the record. Artificial intelligence "will become a very big part of this industry" and will "hurt us in a lot of ways," he said. "I would like to avoid being in a tampon commercial 20 years after I'm dead." [1] A speech ban is a business tool if it takes merger math off the table. A Golden Lion is a velvet room. The $40.4 billion backstop is the money. Oracle's contracts are the other ledger. Clooney's sentence about jobs is the one studio X will not keep. "There are going to be people tonight in the room that are going to disagree with most everything I say or stand for," he said. "Fair enough. That's how it's supposed to be." [1]

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles