GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK To Air On CNN 6/7 — Page 3

re: The most surprising thing to me in the broadcast was the audience reaction to the video montage—when I saw this in March the audience was stunned and appalled; you could hear the gasps....

I agree. The gasps were very real when I saw it last month, in fact one month ago precisely. The last image had such punch. It didn't come across the same way on TV. Hard to gauge how different the atmosphere may have felt in the theater tonight. They may have been extra-focused on responding with applause?

Whatever the case, I LOVED this show. I'm thrilled that it aired tonight. And I so hope it will be available to stream later. Or at the very least be available to educators.

What a theater lover's weekend this is!

I’ll catch this later tonight as I taped it.

This feels like a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence, a Broadway show being live broadcast, and I’m probably delusional when I say I hope more productions do this in the future.

I didn't see the production on Broadway and doubt I would have had a chance to do so, so this was really a gift. I think watching this it in the comfort of my own couch on my own TV with clear sound (didn't miss a word) helped disguise any flaws the production may have. And you can't beat the cost of the ticket! So appreciated the opportunity to experience this.

Idiot said: "After a poorly paced start, I liked it more than I thought I would. I felt the ending montage combined with the monologue actually confused the message, but it didn't ruin the show. I like how many households got to spend a remoteevening in the Winter Garden in front of a quality Broadway production. My favorite moment (other than some outbursts of applause from the audience) came during the post show talkback. The anchor from Univision followed a couple of others and just cut straight to it: "We're here tonight because of Trump." Somebody buy that man a beer."

His name's Jorges Ramos, one of the most beloved journalists in history, especially in LatAm.

So glad I watched this for free on CNN instead of paying $400 or whatever.

Well, I guess I’ll be a contrarian here.

It’s not the worst thing you’ll ever see, but I didn’t really take to this play despite the timely and eerily resonant message. It felt too sleepy.

I will say there was some good camera work throughout, though the audio may have been a split-second behind the actors when speaking. (I was watching on CNN.) Also liked Clooney and the set, both well-earned Tony noms.

The TV format also masks one of the play’s most inexcusable flaws: the decision not to have a real actor play McCarthy. All the archival footage and black-and-white work felt additive, not distractive as it seems to be live.

Meh. I’m glad I didn’t spend money on this.

GiantsInTheSky2 said:
I’m very curious as to the poster who said they thought the message was muddled by the montage and monologue, as for me it really hit a home run."

Hey Giants. Let me see if I can dissect my reaction a bit. I was all in on the struggle of a journalist to keep true to the purpose of journalism in the face of corrupt opposition. The montage spiraled out into the larger 'mediasphere', which isn't really the same thing as journalism. Tying Musk's Hitler salute, as one example, to the central theme requires such a large jump that I felt it diluted the message. The last 10 minutes of the movie Network kept the culpability 'in house' with journalism - and it soars. Here, I felt like they used too large a brush.

The merits of the play aside, I found the direction for cameras to be absolutely stunning. And how is it that even in the extreme close-ups, I could not see one single body mic?? Compared to the recent London productions where most actors looked like they had two hand mics duct taped to their foreheads, this was beautifully done.

FLarnhill said: "...it's pretty hypocritical to air this on CNN when one of their main anchors literally committed a breach of trust by withholding relevant info for years just to publish a stupid book about it. As much as that round table whined about how journalists are being treated, CNN played a bit role in the public's mistrust. "

I would have liked this to have been aired on CBS, just as Murrow was. I would have relished a middle-finger-salute to Trump's law suit against them.

Jordan Catalano said: "...The first time a Broadway show has ever been broadcast live."

See: NPR's "Fresh Air" June 6, 2025, beginning at paragraph 3 of the transcript.

Trump has signed an executive order cutting funding to public media, which will effect both PBS and NPR. He appears to be determined to silence/cripple institutions of higher education, free speech, and media outlets that offer alternative viewpoints from his own.

In the spirit of "Good Night and Good Luck"'s final message, anyone who feels inclined to do so can help preserve Public Radio by visiting: https://goacpr.org/

It’s already available for streaming in 4K - rent or buy digital download, on Amazon Prime.

Deadline.com: George Clooney reveals why it took 'balls' to air 'Good Night, and Good Luck' live & why it's coming to Prime Video. (And he compares Murrow vs. McCarthy to Kimmel vs. Trump.)

''Grant [Heslov] and I were talking about the play. It was just this ridiculously big hit and it broke all the box office records, by a lot. And we were looking at it and we thought, well, I always hear how great 'South Pacific' was with Mary Martin. And I’m like, well, I didn’t see it. I don’t know what it looked like. And I thought, let’s record it. Let’s have a record of this, and let’s do it live. Let’s make it a challenge for us, and not just record it to put it out. Let’s do it as a live show. We went to a bunch of places and nobody really was up for it. And then CNN jumped in, which was great, and Magnolia jumped in and we said, okay, let’s do it. So we started planning two weeks before we did it.

''We had 27 cameras. We loaded in on Friday night while we were doing the [Broadway] show, we had a kind of run-through. We got nine trucks out on the street we loaded in Friday night. Saturday we did our first dress rehearsal, which was our actual Saturday matinee, and Saturday night we’re live on the air, man. The balls it took for everybody to jump in and do this, I can’t explain to you how crazy it was that we pulled it off. Because it’s one of those things where you go, I don’t know that this is going to work. Because we’re shooting it all from the front. When you see it, we shot it like a movie, really elegant and beautiful. It was important to us to make sure that you got to see this as not just sticking a camera on the front seat of a play. We wanted it to look like a film, and we captured that, although we also wanted you to be able to understand there was an audience there. You could see that too.

''We were all very proud to do it because one of the things you got to see is, this is a form of resistance.''

https://deadline.com/2025/10/george-clooney-kimmel-trump-biden-good-night-and-good-luck-1236567941/

Updated On: 10/5/25 at 03:26 PM