George Clooney Was Mr. Popularity at the Telluride Film Festival

Ray Gustini
George Clooney Was Mr. Popularity at the Telluride Film Festival

Today out of Hollywood: George Clooney was very popular at the Telluride film festival, Katie Couric makes her ABC News debut, and the box office was off for the fourth straight summer.

  • George Clooney was "the undeniable star" at this weekend's Telluride film festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy. In addition to being feted at two tribute dinners in his honor, Clooney also starred in The Descendants for Sideways director Alexander Payne, easily the most talked about film of the four-day festival. ("I suspect you will be hearing a lot more about it soon," predicted A.O. Scott in The New York Times. "It will close the New York Film Festival in October and then, if cosmic justice and the marketing department of Fox Searchlight combine forces properly, make a good run at the Oscars.") McCarthy recalls seeing the actor headed to his car before a tribute dinner, only to have "a crowd of some 30 or 40 young ladies suddenly materialize out of nowhere to surround him, a sight unlike anything I had ever seen at Telluride before." We're guessing it was old hat to Clooney. [The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times]

  • Former William Morris Agency chairman Jim Wiatt and wife Elizabeth are "splitting up," but will continue to live together in their Brentwood home, a spokesman tells The Hollywood Reporter. Wiatt, who is currently a strategic advisor at AOL, supposedly relocated to Manhattan last year for less than 24 hours, before his distaste for elevators and high rises prompted a return to Los Angeles. [The Hollywood Reporter]

  • Katie Couric is making her ABC News debut tonight with an interview of Sarah Jessica Parker on Nightline. The Hollywood Reporter's Marissa Guthrie calls the interview "something of a soft launch" for Couric, which is perhaps the understatement of the day. According to Guthrie, Parker will be promoting her new movie I Don't Know How She Does It and lambasting  "the lack of critical thinking" that goes into celebrity media coverage. [The Hollywood Reporter]

  • Overall movie attendance was down this year for the fourth straight summer, according to The New York Times. Cinema attendance from the first week in May through Labor Day is projected at 543 million, which is the lowest overall total since 1997, when only 540 million showed up during the same period. [The New York Times]