Actor and activist George Clooney was arrested Friday morning in Washington D.C. as he alongside other activists and members of Congress stood up against the atrocities and massacre of Sudanese citizens by their own government.

Clooney and 17 other people were arrested by the uniformed division of the U.S. Secret Service on misdemeanor charges of crossing a police line following a peaceful protest on the steps of the Sudanese Embassy, Secret Service spokesperson George Ogilvie said. He said the embassy is private property and security protection is provided by the Secret Service.

The civil disobedience act also led to the arrest of Clooney’s father Nick Clooney, Enough Project Co-Founder John Prendergast, Martin L. King III, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, President of United to End Genocide and former Congressman Tom Andrews, Jewish Council for Public Affairs President Rabbi Steve Gutow, Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism Director Rabbi David Saperstein, Jewish World Watch Executive Director Fred Kramer, American Jewish World Service Associate Director of Policy Ian Schwab, Congressmen Jim McGovern (D-MA), Al Green (D-TX), Jim Moran (D-VA) and John Olver (D-MA).

All were later released after paying a fine and waving their right to a hearing. The protest was organized by the Enough Project and United to End Genocide, two non-profit organizations working to end humanitarian crimes worldwide.

Prior to the arrests Clooney, among others, spoke to the hundreds of protesters demanding humanitarian aid immediately be available to the Sudanese people living in Nuba Mountains, the Sudanese government stop killing, raping and starving its own citizens.

“We are just trying to bring attention to a government attacking its own people – innocent women and children. It is not a war when you are bombing innocent women and children,” Clooney said. He told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he did not want to be arrested, but was proud to be standing on the right side of history.

The arrests came after police ordered the protesters to leave the premise and they did not. The protest continued as George Clooney and Prendergast formed a blockade about 10:45 a.m. in front of the embassy, symbolizing Sudan’s blockade of humanitarian organizations trying to provide support, food and medical supplies to the Sudanese people.

Six minutes later, Clooney and the other protesters were arrested.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s government began bombing and raiding villages in the Nuba Mountains last June. Enough Project spokesperson Matt Brown said the locals are targeted as part of an ethnic cleansing because they are Christian, dark-skinned Africans and are sympathetic to the South Sudanese government, which borders their region.

US-Aid projects a famine affecting 500,000 women, men and children could begin this month in the region as international food supplies are blocked and crops have been destroyed by al-Bashir’s military forces.

Al-Bashir is a war-criminal who has terrorized and killed millions of his own people during his 20 years in power. He killed millions of Sudanese living in Darfur from 2003 through 2009. A peace agreement, the Darfur Peace Agreement, was later reached.

“It is unacceptable and inexcusable that Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir—an internationally criminal wanted for war crimes and genocide—is getting away with bombing, starving and displacing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State,” says United to End Genocide President Tom Andrews.

Twitter exploded when Clooney’s arrest was announced. Several people applauded his efforts to bring attention to the humanitarian crisis.

Other people joked about his arrest. Some called it a publicity stunt.

Ambassador Susan E. Rice, the permanent Representative of the U.S. to the United Nations, said she stands with Clooney on the crisis occurring in Sudan.

“I share George Clooney’s outrage at continued bombings, missile attacks & impending famine in Southern Kordofan. It must stop,” Rice tweeted.

European media personalities quickly also tweeted showing support for Clooney. Showbiz journalist, commentator and broadcaster Dan Wootton based in London wrote:

“I think you have to salute George Clooney. Finally a celebrity who’s been arrested because of a cause that he believes in.”

Ordinary American citizens also chipped in. Ohio resident Joshua White tweeted, “Love or hate George Clooney or his politics, but at least he backs it up. Dude got arrested today =)”

People who want to get involved in forcing the arrest of al-Bashir and alleviate the horrors being afflicted on the Sudanese people are encouraged to put pressure on national and international leaders.

Brown said western governments need to “…enact policies that would force the hand of the Sudanese government… Deal with him as a war criminal. Not a sovereign head of state. We want sanctions.”

Image Courtesey of  United to End Genocide

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Some of the filming for Alexander Payne’s ‘The Descendants’ took place off terra firma – in swimming pools and the ocean. Legendary underwater photographer Don King came in to help with the scene where Shailene Woodley releases a primal scream while at the depths of the family swimming pool.

Recalls Woodley, “He waited for me underwater with this crazy-looking camera. I would submerge myself and swim towards him and he would swim backwards super quickly, timing it perfectly with me. It was a fantastic scene to shoot.

Note: The following may contain spoilers.

One of director of photography Phedon Papamichael‘s favorite experiences on ‘The Descendants’ was filming the climax of Matt‘s road trip as the Kings arrive at their ancestral land on Kauai and young Scottie makes Matt rethink the idea of selling it to strangers. “We designed the shot so the family drives up the mountain but you‘re not really aware of what‘s coming.

It almost feels like a normal tracking shot but then, as they come to the edge of the land, we boom up and reveal this spectacular view, and suddenly, the characters are overwhelmed by the beauty. That was one of my favorites,” sums up Papamichael.

Payne also reunited with production designer Jane Ann Stewart, who has worked on all of his films since the very beginning of his career. Stewart says that Payne‘s aesthetic instincts jibe with hers. “His sense of humor is very much like mine – absurd, a little macabre and where nothing in the human condition is above comedy,” she says.

She knew her work was cut out for her when Payne approached her for this film. “We both had to learn a lot about Hawaiian culture, and really immerse ourselves in it, so we could get to the history, the sense of place and the texture behind the story,” she explains.

In creating Matt King‘s house, Stewart consulted both with the novel and its author, Kaui Hart Hemmings. “Kaui‘s advice was invaluable,” says Stewart. “For example, she introduced me to the punee [the casual Hawaiian daybeds often used as sprawling sofas] and helped us to reflect the family‘s history in the details.”

When Stewart found a local house that had the right feel, it was missing one key element – the sprawling banyan tree that graced the front yard in the book. So Stewart had one transplanted. “It kind of reflects the idea of family because of the way each branch reaches in and plants itself,” she observes.

As with the cinematography, Stewart‘s challenge was to keep things in Payne‘s favored realm of stark reality, but with a tropical twist. “Alexander always wants the veneer to be authentic, even a little bit banal. But this film was a chance for me to stretch things a bit with the colors and exotic essence of the place. I just had to have a very good reason for putting anything, a piece of furniture or painting, in a room. It had to support the characters and stay true to the place.”

That authenticity to Hawaii deeply moved Hemmings when she visited the set — and she could see her story coming to life, reflecting the funny and fraught ways that families, on or off the islands, really interact and bond. “It was amazing for me to be back in Hanalei Bay, where my own descendants first landed,” she says, “and it meant a lot to see the cast and crew getting to know this special, special place.

It was a chance for me to reconnect with my own family and it brought the community together. Writing a book is such a solitary thing, but with a movie, the beauty is in sharing the experience.”

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Shailene Woodley says she‘s grateful to director Alexander Payne for giving her the trust and support to navigate the bumpy terrain of merging outrageous situations with intensely real feelings in the oscar-nominated ‘The Descendants’. “Alexander is up there with a few of the favorite people I‘ve ever met in my life.

He‘s got such heart and I‘ve learned from him as a director and as a person. When he gets excited, he doesn‘t hold it in. He literally jumps up and down and talks in this funky voice and goes up and hugs people. You can‘t help but feel excited about life when you‘re around him. He possesses a great energy and definitely shows it to other people. As a director, he helped me find things about myself that I never thought I could find.”

Woodley says Payne always pushed for one bottom line; naturalism. “He might say, ‘Oh, Shai, I don‘t think that‘s natural, you would never do that in real life,’” she recalls. “That‘s how he brings out the best in people.” That kind of naturalism turned out to be easier than expected when Woodley began performing alongside George Clooney, who obliterated the intimidation factor right away.

“He turned out to be completely down-to-earth,” she explains. “He‘s kind of a goofball, always doing something silly, which kept the set light. I felt privileged not only to work with him, but to get to know him.”

Even though Matt King is trying to re-establish a connection with his kids, he finds youngest daughter Scottie a complete mystery, almost an alien life form, with whom communication of any kind is an iffy prospect. To find a young actress who could handle the humor and heartache of playing a preadolescent eccentric, Payne saw more than 300 girls from around the country.

He still hadn‘t found the right candidate with shooting about to start. That‘s when he encountered Amara Miller, a promising nine year-old newcomer from Pacific Grove, California.

He received an e-mail with her videotaped audition and recalls that “about a minute into it I just said, ‘oh that‘s her.‘ I don‘t need to see her. I knew that she was the one. I just knew she would show up. And like many things in life, she did, but in the most unpredictable way.” Adds producer Jim Burke: “Amara walked on the set like an old pro. She‘s a natural.

She‘d never been in a movie before but she was amazing.” Although she had no previous acting experience (she was once in an elementary school play but she had no lines), Miller seemed to have an instinctual feel for Scottie‘s quirkiness and uniquely uninformed role in their family adventure.

“Scottie is the one who doesn‘t know what‘s happening in the family,” she describes. “She doesn‘t know her mom is dying or that she had an affair with another man. She thinks that when they go to Kauai to find the guy that they‘re going on vacation. She‘s just running around being herself, doing what she wants, in the middle of all this stuff.”

Without much guidance from her family, Scottie has developed an almost feral quality of independence. “She‘s a trouble-maker,” laughs Miller. “She‘s one of those little girls who doesn‘t really care if she gets in trouble. She‘s still going to do fun, wild things even if she does. She has a sassy attitude.

She goes after what she needs. What Scottie needs might be time and attention, but she‘ll do anything to get it, which led to some of Miller‘s most intriguing scenes.”

“I do get to flip off George Clooney,” she laughs. “He was like ‘what?‘ His facial expression was so funny.”

For Payne, working with Miller — his first time directing a child in a major role — was no different from the adult cast. “The great thing about working with Amara is that I didn‘t have to treat her like a little girl. I could just tell she was an instinctive actress. I could just say, ‘No, do it more like this.‘ Or, ‘Please put a small pause between these two lines.‘ The way to treat people in general, and actors in particular, is to tell them the truth,” he sums up. “I was always able to do that with Amara.”

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When author of The Descendants, Kaui Hart Hemmings, found out Alexander Payne was interested in adapting her book, she could hardly believe the news. “I just about died,” she laughs. “I mean he is my favorite director, I love the kind of movies he makes.”

After discussing the adaptation of Kaui Hemmings‘s book with many screenwriters, the producers at Ad Hominem selected the writing team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. Wonderful actors who continue to be fixtures at the Groundling Theater, Faxon and Rash had written a much admired screenplay, ‘The Way Back’, that suggested an ability to handle shifting tones of humor and pathos as would be required by ‘The Descendants’. All who read their elegant adaptation admired it. But when he decided to direct the film himself, Payne determined that the best way for him to forge a personal connection to the material was to adapt the book himself.

In his voice, Payne turned the focus in the screenplay on two dove-tailing journeys: the King family‘s trek to Kauai on the hunt for Elizabeth King‘s unwitting lover; and the pilgrimage of diverse friends and relatives to Elizabeth‘s bedside, where she becomes, in her comatose silence, a kind of grand confessor, bringing out secrets and suppressed emotions that might not otherwise see the light of day.

“One of the many things we learned in Hawaii is that people here know their genealogy like they do in no other place,” explains producer Jim Burke. “Everybody knows when their family first arrived on the island, and some go back six or seven generations and they feel a deep, deep connection to this place. We learned all this by meeting authentic descendants who have inherited land a lot like Matt.”

Hemmings was impressed with the adaptation. “I wasn‘t concerned about Alexander changing this or that, because he really got the tone of the book and that‘s all I cared about. He got that it‘s funny and it‘s sad at the same time. I also loved that he took the time to really get to know Hawaii.”

From the beginning, Payne and the production team felt it was essential to venture far from the well-beaten tourist paths to get to know the authentic Hawaii only locals ever see. As they did so, they developed a more nuanced understanding of what the term ‘descendants’ means on an island where ancestors have always been an important link in the chain of living history.

This helped to bring into focus Matt King‘s realization that he has become disconnected from his own feelings about the land he owns — and its past and future. Payne also relied on Hemmings to serve as an insightful guide into the alluring blend of American and Hawaiian cultures that imbues island life, from its politics to its traditions and relationships. “When we came over to the islands to start making the movie, Hemmings became a really big part of it, because this is her land. She knows these people.”

“She was able to give us a reality check and at the same time, Alexander was able to run all his ideas past Kaui to make sure they seemed right for the characters,” Burke continues. “We wanted to protect her story because we believed in it.”

“Alexander‘s voice is absolutely unique,” notes Burke, who reunites with producer Jim Taylor for their fifth collaboration with Payne. “You don‘t need to be told you‘re watching an Alexander Payne movie. And yet, each of his films is also quite different. I feel like The Descendants is the most different from his previous work.

It‘s a great story with great characters, but I think the thing that sets it apart is that it is very open to interpretation: none of the characters are entirely right and none of the characters are entirely wrong. It‘s not a movie everyone will view in the same way. It‘s a film that allows the viewer to participate and connect in their own way.”

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From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning ‘Sideways’, ‘The Descendants’ is set in Hawaii and follows the unpredictable journey of an American family at a crossroads.

Matt King (George Clooney), a husband and father of two girls, must re-examine his past and navigate his future when his wife is in a boating accident off Waikiki. He awkwardly attempts to repair his relationship with his daughters — 10 year-old precocious Scottie (Amara Miller) and rebellious 17 year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) — while wrestling with a decision to sell his family‘s land.

Handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries, the Kings own some of the last priceless virgin parcels of tropical beach in the islands. When Alexandra drops the bombshell that her mother was in the midst of a romantic fling at the time of the accident, Matt has to take a whole new look at his life, not to mention his legacy, during a week of momentous decisions.

With his girls in tow, he embarks on a haphazard search for his wife‘s lover. Along the way, in encounters alternately funny, troublesome and transcendent, he realizes he‘s finally on course toward rebuilding his life and family.

“My friends on the mainland think because I live in Hawaii, I live in paradise. Like a permanent vacation, we’re all just out here drinking Mai Tais, shaking our hips and catching waves. Are they nuts?” — Matt King.

George Clooney‘s Matt King joins the characters of Alexander Payne‘s previous films as a flawed individual finding his way through a world of lunacy, bittersweet emotion and surprises; he is neither a hero nor anti-hero. Like Matthew Broderick‘s envious teacher in ‘Election’, Jack Nicholson‘s glass-half-empty retiree in ‘About Schmidt’, and Paul Giamatti‘s muddling, middle-aged wine country tourist in Sideways, King is not the man he would like to be.

His mischievous daughters don‘t trust him, his imperiled wife has been cheating on him and his broke cousins see him and the land trust he controls as a piggy bank. To add insult to injury, he‘s surrounded by a lush, fertile, awe-inspiring landscape that defies his inner turmoil.

Yet all of this leads Matt to a tumultuous awakening that might be awkward, comical and sometimes absurd, but nevertheless changes his concept of love, fatherhood and what it truly takes to be a man. Alexander Payne has always been drawn to these peculiar situations in everyday life that can be experienced as comical, devastating and revealing all in the same breath.

When he read Kaui Hart Hemmings‘ acclaimed debut novel, The Descendants, he was immediately lured by its sharp contrasts. Here was a portrait of a man grappling with some of the worst news, most difficult people, and most impossible decisions of his life. “The novel appealed to me because it‘s an emotional story unfolding in an exotic locale,” Payne says. “It‘s a story that perhaps could be told anywhere, but what made the book for me was its completely unique setting among the landed upper-classes in Hawaii. It‘s very specific to this place, yet it is also universal.

“On a filmmaking level, it was very interesting to me because I‘ve never seen a filmic Honolulu. We see New York, Chicago, L.A., Miami and Seattle, but this is a region we never see in films. There‘s a whole distinctive social fabric to life in Hawaii and that intrigued me. I love films with a specific sense of place. I started making movies in Omaha, then I went to Santa Barbara and now I have ended up in Hawaii.”

Hemmings was able to entwine Hawaiian culture into her story of a bewildered man lurching towards redemption because she herself grew up in a not-so-conventional Hawaiian family, as the stepdaughter of well-known champion surfer and local politician Fred Hemmings, Jr.

When she started writing short stories, she began entwining themes of family, soil, history and inheritance. The Descendants began as a short story (published as The Minor Wars), which Hemmings started writing in the voice of youngest daughter Scottie, but decided to take a daring leap for a young, female writer into Matt King‘s middle-aged, male POV.

The risk changed everything. The story, and then the novel, were no longer just about a clan of fierce individualists doing their own thing but about a father learning to hang on to his family. “As soon as I switched into Matt‘s voice, the story found its rhythm,” Hemmings recalls. “There was so much at stake for him.” Those stakes gave the novel‘s title a double meaning, referring not only to King‘s comic descent but also to his discovery of what it really means to be a Hawaiian descendant and what his own descendants mean to him.

Hemmings created Matt to reflect a distinct subset of the Hawaiian populace, a generation who trace their births back to the intermarriages of white missionaries and landowners with native Hawaiian royalty and their wealth back to the spoils of the colonial Hawaiian plantation system. As Matt explains, his great-great-grandmother was Princess Margaret Ke‘alohilani, one of the last direct descendants of King Kamehameha, who fell in love with her haole (Hawaiian for white or foreign) banker, Edward King, leading to Matt‘s current life as a Honolulu lawyer with deep, tangled roots in the islands.

Like many Hawaiians, he is a hapa-haole, or half-white, who has never quite come to terms with his cultural identity. This gave Hemmings‘ novel another layer, because underneath Matt‘s worries not only about what his wife has been doing behind his back or how he‘s going to raise his daughters, but about how his life might be seen by his Hawaiian ancestors, or his own descendants.

The book, published in 2009, was an instant hit with critics, with the New Yorker praising the way — Hemmings channels the voice of her befuddled middle-aged hero with virtuosity, as he teeters between acerbic and sentimental, scoffing at himself even as he grasps for redemption.

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The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) and Broadway Impact have announced that Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney will star in the West Coast premiere of ‘8,’ a play chronicling the historic trial in the federal constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, written by AFER Founding Board Member and Academy Award-winning writer Dustin Lance Black and directed by AFER Founding Board Member and acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner.

The production is an unprecedented account of the Federal District Court trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the case filed by AFER to overturn Proposition 8, which stripped gay and lesbian Californians of the fundamental right to marry.

Black, who penned the Academy Award-winning feature film Milk and the new critically-acclaimed film J. Edgar, based ‘8’ on the actual words of the trial transcripts, first-hand observations of the courtroom drama and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families.

‘8’ is set to have its West Coast premiere at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Saturday, March 3, 2012, in Los Angeles, for an exclusive, one-night-only fundraiser to benefit AFER.

An Academy Award-winning actor, producer, screenwriter and director, Clooney is also a committed human rights activist. In January 2008, he was designated as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Clooney is the first of an all-star cast of high profile and award-winning actors to be announced.

He and others will play the roles of the legal team, plaintiffs and witnesses for both sides of the historic Proposition 8 case. Additional casting for the all-star benefit will be announced soon. ”It is astonishing that gay and lesbian Americans are still treated as second-class citizens,” Clooney said. “I am confident that, very soon, the laws of this nation will reflect the basic truth that gay and lesbian people – like all human beings – are born equal in dignity and rights.”

“This play will continue to show Americans – one by one – that prejudice and fear cannot stand up to truth and justice,” said AFER Board President Chad Griffin. “Our Constitution neither knows nor tolerates the treatment of gays and lesbians as second-class citizens. In its search for greater freedom, this generation has come to see that laws like Proposition 8 serve only to oppress.”

‘8’ had its much-heralded Broadway world premiere on September 19, 2011, at the sold-out Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York City. The production brought in over one million dollars to support AFER’s efforts to achieve full federal marriage equality. Proposition 8 was struck down by the U.S. District Court in August 2010.

That ruling was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by the anti-marriage proponents of Proposition 8. AFER’s legal team was at the Ninth Circuit last Thursday for a hearing to urge that court to unseal the trial video. The American public was not given a chance to witness the historic trial because the Proponents launched a desperate attempt to forever hide the video recording of the trial.

A ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 and the release of the trial video is expected soon. The Perry case is widely anticipated to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“People need to witness what happened in the Proposition 8 trial, if for no other reason than to see inequality and discrimination unequivocally rejected in a court of law where truth and facts matter,” said Black. “I’ve built my career around exposing and uncovering ‘the real story.’

The goal of ’8′ is to show the world that marriage equality is a basic constitutional right and that those who would deny this basic freedom from loving, committed couples have only vitriol and baseless hyperbole to fall back on. The facts are on our side and truth always finds the light. We are doing all we can to help speed that process along.”

In addition to its Broadway and Los Angeles productions, AFER and Broadway Impact are licensing ‘8’ to colleges and community theatres nationwide in order to spur action, dialogue and understanding. AFER and Broadway Impact are helping produce these staged readings across the country with a full slate set for 2012.

The story for’8’ is framed by the trial’s historic closing arguments in June 2010, and features the best arguments and testimony from both sides. Scenes include flashbacks to some of the more jaw-dropping moments of trial, such as the admission by the Proposition 8 supporters’ star witness, David Blankenhorn, that “we would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.”

“Because this case involves the constitutional rights of millions of people, it is especially important for the public to see what happened during the trial,” said AFER Senior Project Director Adam Umhoefer. “Both sides had an equal opportunity and ample resources to assemble their strongest teams and put forth their absolute best arguments in a fair setting.

Viewed side-by-side, there is simply no question that there was only one decision the court could have reached. The moment we knew the trial would not be publicly broadcast, we immediately began planning to find a way to show the world what happened in this historic case. This play and our partnership with Broadway Impact allow us to do exactly that.”

“I was lucky enough to watch the initial closing arguments of Perry v. Schwarzenegger in San Francisco,” said Broadway Impact co-founder Rory O’Malley (Tony Award-nominee for The Book of Mormon). “We knew then and there that audiences needed to see and hear this story live, as we had done.

’8′ builds on a successful tradition of documentary theatre—plays like The Laramie Project and The Vagina Monologues, which inspire us with their combination of art and activism. We are thrilled to partner with AFER to bring this story to a national audience.” Tickets for the play will be in high demand and are expected to sell out. The proceeds will go directly to the fight for full federal marriage equality and to support educational efforts on the freedom to marry nationwide.

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