A POLITICALLY PROVOCATIVE PAIR, BY GEORGE.

Byline: - Bob Strauss

You want your hard-hitting, socially relevant, controversy-courting fall movies that Hollywood's too timid to make much anymore? Well, your go-to guy is George Clooney.

Yes, ``Ocean's Eleven's'' good-time George. This season, the industry's favorite playboy is putting his political interests into his work. Clooney co-wrote and directed ``Good Night, and Good Luck,'' about CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow's confrontation with anti-Communist witch- hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and his company produced ``Syriana,'' a kaleidoscopic look at corruption in the Middle East oil trade, directed by ``Traffic'' screenwriter Stephen Gaghan. Clooney co-stars in both films as well.

``The one that I wrote and directed is, in many ways, a historical reference that people can draw contemporary parallels to,'' Clooney says of ``Good Night,'' which he filmed in the black-and-white of a '50s TV show and integrated with archive footage from the era.

`` 'Syriana,' on the other hand, is a fictional piece that people can draw parallels to, but whose characters remind us of a lot of things that do exist.''

For his role as a CIA agent in the latter, Clooney put on 33 pounds, which led to a serious spinal injury when he tried to perform a stunt.

``That was the result of thinking I was still 175 pounds,'' he says, ``and trying to do something that I couldn't at 208.''

Suffering for his art probably isn't over. The right-wing media has gone after Clooney before, and with one film extolling crusading liberal journalists and another that tries to represent all viewpoints related to the war on terror, he's sure to be in conservatives' cross hairs again.

``Bill O'Reilly did a half-hour show about why my career was over because of my political views,'' Clooney recalls. ``I'm a big kid, I can take all of that, I don't mind it.''

He says he hopes the new films will get people talking in terms other than absolutes.

``It's so much more complex than good and evil, there's nothing cut-and-dried about these things. What's important is to understand what the reasons are why people do things, and we're going to have to have open discussions about it.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) ``GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK''

Oct. 7

(2) no caption (George Clooney)