David Gergen spends weekend with George Clooney at Italian lake villa, gets ‘hammered’

"I lost track of time, but by 2 a.m. or so--when I was hammered and was reasonably certain that others were, too--we had become raucous. Out of nowhere, Clooney jumps out of his chair and starts climbing a fence that overlooks the lake below. From the top, fully clothed, he counted, One ... two ... and jumped. I heard three just before hit the water. Within seconds, he was challenging our masculinity. Okay, guys, let's see your stuff. One other guest was next up and jumped. Hell, I thought, I have an early morning plane and I don't want wet clothes. So... what choice did I have? I stripped down to my skivvies, climbed that darn fence ... And whoa, it seemed like I was 30 feet above the water. One ... two ... I was in the water by three. It was very dark, a little cold, but terrific. So we kept jumping. Eventually we repaired to his kitchen in bathrobes, trying to warm up. Out came a bottle of limoncello, and the conversation flowed on until I finally crawled up to bed at 4:30."

-- David Gergen, CNN senior political analyst, Harvard professor and former adviser to four U.S. presidents, on a recent weekend he spent with George Clooney at the actor's Lake Como, Italy, villa. Gergen was asked by Parade magazine to profile Clooney ahead of the release of the politically charged film, "Ides of March," starring Clooney and Ryan Gosling.