Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney

by Morgan, Piers

  Another accused me of being ‘polarising’– in a way that implied I would be upset by this assertion.

  ‘I love being polarising,’ I said with a laugh. ‘It’s more fun. The idea of being some saintly figure in modern television must be unbearable. I think television should be provocative.’

  Asked about the ‘dangerous’ promos that have been running, I said: ‘Guests have a choice of a safe, easy five-minute ride on another interview show to plug their movie, or they can come on for an hour and joust with an annoying Brit and, if they succeed, be the toast of America.’

  I could tell that some of the critics ‘got’ my humour, and some of them most definitely didn’t.

  Washington Post writer Lisa de Moraes blogged later: ‘Based on tweets afterwards, half the room fell in love with him, the other half loathed him, and think it’s the beginning of the end for CNN.’

  Oprah, meanwhile, appeared at a cocktail party to launch her new OWN network, and was asked about our interview.

  ‘Wow, it was one of the toughest I’ve done in twenty years,’ she said, then laughed. ‘Listen, I had to go and have a hot bath and take a couple of painkillers afterwards. Piers is a tough cookie!’

  I couldn’t wish for a better endorsement.

  I assumed the horrifying assassination attempt on a congresswoman would lead to tougher gun laws in America, but nothing happened.

  CHAPTER 3

  FRIDAY, 7 JANUARY 2011

  ‘’Allo old son,’ Rod Stewart cried as I arrived to interview him this morning, prancing out of his Beverly Hills mansion in red tartan trousers. ‘Have a load of this!’

  Then he produced a toy hand grenade and tossed it at me.

  ‘Whoaaa!’ I yelped, not sure what the hell he was doing.

  ‘Relax, you big girl’s blouse … I heard your show’s dangerous, so thought I’d come prepared!’

  Later he took me up to see his secret model train set room. Very few people ever get to see first-hand the hobby he’s pursued most of his adult life.

  I have never seen anything like it in my entire life.

  Rod has personally built an extraordinary model city, based on Manhattan a few decades ago. Inch by inch, tiny detail by tiny detail.

  It’s breathtaking in both the quality and the creativity.

  ‘How many hours do you spend on this?’ I asked.

  ‘Three or four a day. Even when I’m on tour. I take all the tools with me.’

  Later in the afternoon, Jonathan and I drove over to Mel Gibson’s house in Malibu to try and persuade him to do an interview.

  He’s been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent months after claims – reinforced by explosive tapes leaked to the internet – that he’d physically and verbally abused his Russian musician lover, Oksana Grigorieva, and spewed racist insults.

  In terms of TV interview ‘gets’, he’s about as hot as it could be right now.

  We drove up a long, hilly dirt track until we found the house and rang the bell.

  Mel answered, unshaven and slightly wild-eyed.

  He took us inside.

  ‘Can I get you a beer?’

  ‘Sure, thanks.’

  We sat in his living room, which was full of rare religious paraphernalia.

  And for the next two hours, Mel outlined the extraordinary pain and bitterness he feels toward Ms Grigorieva, with whom he has a child.

  He was by turns outrageously offensive, hilariously funny and deeply, deeply sad.

  This is a man who was one of Hollywood’s all-time top-grossing movie stars, and who had a famously long, successful marriage to Australian dental nurse Robyn, which produced seven children.

  But since their separation in 2006, days after he was arrested for drunk driving, his life seems to have descended into utter professional and personal turmoil.

  I’ve been through a divorce, so I know how raw and unsettling they can be.

  Even ‘civilised’ ones are nasty, horrible things.

  Mel’s divorce from Robyn was heavy enough (it’s said to have cost him a near Hollywood record four hundred million dollars), but the split from Oksana, even though they never married, has been far worse.

  He now has conflict with his ex-wife, his kids and his young lover.

  Not to mention with virtually the entire movie community, many of whom haven’t forgiven him for his anti-Semitic outbursts when he was caught drunk driving.

  We went outside to the patio and had another beer.

  Coyotes were howling in the hills, and I noticed that Mel had blood on the side of his ear, where it looked like he’d been scratching himself.

  He ranted some more, and at several moments had tears in his eyes.

  This was a guy right on the edge, and I felt for him.

  ‘I don’t think I’m ready to do an interview,’ he finally said. ‘I don’t trust myself not to explode and say stuff I’d regret.’

  The interviewer in me would like nothing more than Mel Gibson exploding on my show – it would be gripping television, and great for ratings.

  But the father in me agreed with him. This was no time for Mel to be talking on air about this stuff.

  ‘Thanks for listening to me,’ he said, taking us back to our car.

  ‘I hope you sort things out,’ I replied, and I meant it.

  Jonathan and I waited until we were out of earshot before both exclaiming at the same time: ‘What the fuck was that?’

  SATURDAY, 8 JANUARY 2011

  I flew with John to New York, and as we were still up in the air, news broke that a congresswoman called Gabby Giffords had been shot at a rally she was attending in Tucson, Arizona.

  Within minutes, multiple news outlets were reporting that she’d died from her injuries, along with at least six other people, including a nine-year-old girl.

  The plane had CNN, so I watched the dramatic developments unfurl in real time.

  And it made me stop and think hard about the reality of the job I was about to take on.

  There’s no way I’ll just be doing taped celebrity interviews of the kind I’ve conducted in L.A. this past week.

  At some stage, a big story’s going to break and I’m going to have to anchor it live on air for CNN around the world.

  And I’ve never done anything like that on television – a slightly unsettling realisation.

  Suddenly, on Twitter, news filtered through that Gabby Giffords was still alive.

  Everyone began reversing their reporting and saying now that she was still in surgery and definitely not dead.

  My mind went back to all those big breaking news days when I ran the Daily Mirror.

  So many times, initial information was wrong, but we usually had time to correct it before we actually went to print.

  On live TV, you don’t have that luxury. And I can already sense that Twitter has changed the news game irrevocably.

  Note to self: ‘This is dangerous. Be careful.’

  John and I discussed the potential ramifications of this mass shooting.

  ‘Gun violence in America is out of control,’ I said. ‘We just don’t have this problem in Britain. Nobody expects to be able to own a gun, very few people want to own a gun, and it’s illegal for most civilians to have one anyway.’

  ‘It’s completely different here,’ John replied. ‘The Second Amendment to our Constitution allows everyone the right to bear arms. And the majority of Americans have guns. It’s part of the culture, whether to hunt, shoot for sport or defend yourself.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. I know what guns do to people. My brother’s a general.’

  ‘Surely they will change the gun laws after this?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘But you can’t have a congresswoman shot in the head and do nothing?’

  ‘Hey, we had two Kennedys and a civil rights leader all shot dead within a few years, and nothing changed.’

  ‘Why don’t people want things to change?’

&nbs
p; ‘Because, to many Americans, rights are more important than life.’

  But what is this right?

  It all comes down to the precise wording of the Second Amendment to America’s Constitution, which reads: ‘A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.’

  The pro-gun lobby insists this amendment gives every American the right to own and use guns.

  The anti-gun lobby argues that the exact placement of the commas shows that the Founding Fathers intended the ‘right to bear arms’ only to apply to members of a militia – which, in the eighteenth century, meant an army composed of ordinary citizens, not professional soldiers.

  Those commas have thus become the most deadly, expensive and controversial punctuation marks in the history of language.

  Whatever your view, I find plainly ridiculous the idea that what Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts had in mind when they wrote the Constitution was defending the rights of Americans to legally and easily buy high-powered assault weapons to murder other Americans.

  SUNDAY, 9 JANUARY 2011

  First rehearsal at CNN.

  It was quite a moment as I walked in to find this vast studio with ‘Piers Morgan Tonight’ branded everywhere. A Perspex desk sat on a raised stage in the middle, and the walls were a psychedelic mishmash of mainly bright blue and green squares, intermingled with other colours. It was totally different from Larry’s famous darker studio with dotted maps on the walls.

  In the centre of the wall was a large video screen, featuring a giant image of Condoleezza Rice, whom I am interviewing tomorrow.

  ‘That’s the magic wall,’ Jonathan explained. ‘It can do anything – play video, display still photos, banners, whatever we want. All while you’re doing the interviews.’

  I loved it. The whole thing looked dynamic, modern, newsy and entertaining – the perfect mix for this kind of show.

  Then Jonathan played the theme music, which was a really upbeat, exciting, vibrant sound.

  I sat at the desk, imagining what it will feel like a week from Monday when the Oprah interview airs.

  MONDAY, 10 JANUARY 2011

  My first interview in my actual studio.

  I’d been warned that Condoleezza is a very private lady and probably wouldn’t welcome any intrusive questions. But it’s all in the way you ask them.

  After half an hour of pretty heavy Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush and 9/11 interrogation, I turned to lighter matters.

  ‘You remain one of the most eligible women in Washington,’ I said.

  ‘Well, actually I live in California now!’

  ‘If I was to try and woo you, how would I?’

  Condoleezza stared at me for a second or two in what looked like horror, then burst out laughing.

  ‘Convince me that you’ll spend Sunday afternoon watching football,’ she replied, ‘and I’ll even cook.’

  ‘What would you cook me?’

  ‘Fried chicken, chili, corn bread – I’m quite good at corn bread – or perhaps because of my half-Creole grandmother, I’d cook gumbo.’

  ‘What’s gumbo?’

  I could hear Jonathan groan. A clear sign that I’d just exposed my Britishness in the most ghastly manner possible.

  ‘You don’t know what gumbo is?’ she replied, laughing.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go to New Orleans, they’ll tell you.’

  ‘You sound like the perfect woman: you make fried chicken, you watch football all day.’

  ‘Yes! I just haven’t found the dream man yet, but, you know, we all keep trying.’

  This afternoon, Harrison Ford was asked about me by reporters in London, where he’s promoting his new movie.

  ‘Piers is promoting his show as looking for the truth from his subjects, so I shall have nothing to do with him,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in the truth; I’m interested in selling a product. If you want the truth, go somewhere else.’

  Ironically, this is one of the most truthful things I’ve heard a celebrity say.

  TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY 2011

  Jonathan emailed me early this morning.

  ‘We’re doing a potentially problematic taped interview today with The King’s Speech stars.’

  ‘Why potentially problematic?’

  ‘Because Geoffrey Rush will be in Australia on a two-second delay, Helena Bonham Carter will be in London on a one-second delay and Colin Firth will be here in New York with laryngitis.’

  ‘Ah … I see.’

  It went about as badly as he predicted, three of us talking over ourselves repeatedly, Colin Firth barely talking at all.

  And the discomfort was compounded by the behaviour of Firth’s publicist, who was one of the rudest, most objectionable human beings I’ve met in my entire life. In direct contrast to the man himself, who was charming.

  The power of publicists in America is quite extraordinary.

  In Britain, most of them are ranked lower than traffic wardens in terms of authority.

  Over here, they hold supreme sway over anyone working in the media, and some of them abuse that strength relentlessly.

  Cross them, and they’ll fuck you over until eternity. And they do it by simply refusing to let you interview any of their clients again.

  If you’re in the interview business, this is not a risk you want to take.

  But I was so appalled by the way this particular woman spoke to one of my producers that I decided to get in first by phoning her boss and telling her I was banning all her firm’s clients from the show until we got an apology.

  Then I slammed down the phone, and saw my booking team looking at me in abject horror.

  WEDNESDAY, 12 JANUARY 2011

  Fascinating opinion piece about guns in the New York Times by Nick Kristof.

  He detailed some shocking facts, sourced from several leading academics, including David Hemenway, a top Harvard professor of health policy:

  320 or so Americans have been killed by guns since Tucson.

  Every day, 80 Americans die from guns, and several times as many are injured.

  There are about 85 guns per 100 people in the United States.

  Handgun sales rose by 60 per cent in Arizona, immediately after the shooting, as people raced to beat any strengthening of gun laws.

  American children are 11 times more likely to die in a gun accident than in other developed countries, because of the prevalence of guns.

  The chances that a gun will be used to deter a home invasion are unbelievably remote, and dialling 911 is more effective in reducing injury than brandishing a weapon.

  Suicide rates are higher in states with more guns, simply because there are more gun suicides. Other kinds of suicide rates are no higher.

  Because most homicides in the home are by family members or acquaintances – not by an intruder – the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of a gun murder in that home.

  Hemenway’s ideas for how to stem the tide of gun violence enveloping the USA include better background checks, a limit on gun purchases, a crackdown on gun dealers who sell to traffickers, a twenty-eight-day waiting period (as in Canada) to buy a handgun and a ban on oversize magazines such as the thirty-three-bullet magazine used in Tucson.

  He also cited what happened in Australia in 1996, following an appalling mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania that killed thirty-three people. The government banned assault weapons and bought back 650,000 of them. Australia’s firearm homicide and suicide rate dropped by almost half in the next seven years.

  Hemenway might also have cited the school shooting massacre in Dunblane, Scotland – also in 1996.

  What’s interesting about these two examples is that neither was a political debate.

  Australia had a Conservative prime minister, John Howard, who brought in the gun bans. Britain had first a Conservative prime minister, John Major, and then a Labour one, Tony Blair, who both worked on the gun ban legislation.


  Here in America, it’s very different. If you dare breathe the words ‘gun control’, you’re instantly branded a ‘libtard’, short for ‘liberal retard’.

  If you’re pro-gun, you’re a right-wing loon.

  It’s a hideously polarising, very angry discourse, which conspires to ensure nothing ever gets done.

  THURSDAY, 13 JANUARY 2011

  Interviewed George Clooney today, and in a pre-taped tease, I said: ‘Probably the biggest problem for George in this interview will be how to deal psychologically with being only the second biggest heartthrob in the room.’

  He laughed, more out of pity than amusement, when my producers played it to him, and responded with his own tease:

  ‘You know, I’ve never seen Piers sober, but I’m a big fan.’

  Ostensibly, George had agreed to an interview on the grounds that most of it would be about his latest passion, the Sudan.

  But we both knew I’d be getting personal at some stage. Nobody can ever interview Clooney without asking him about the one thing every one of his adoring female fans really want to know – his love life.

  I used the pretext of his parents’ fifty-one-year marriage as an excuse (his father, Nick, was in the studio with me, George was in Los Angeles).

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever remarry, George?’

  ‘Here we go,’ he groaned. ‘You just waited for the last segment to pull it out …’

  ‘I’m allowed one, aren’t I? You don’t have to answer …’

  ‘I’m not going to. Piers, are you married?’

  ‘I just got remarried. That’s why I asked you the question.’

  ‘Oh, you did?’

  ‘Yeah, about six months ago.’

  ‘Congratulations. And they said it wouldn’t last!’

  I left it there. I’d had my fun, and he’d responded in an amusing way without actually giving an answer. Which is entirely his prerogative.

  In a final commercial break, Nick Clooney mentioned it was his birthday today.

  ‘It’s your dad’s birthday,’ I told George. ‘Anything you want to say to him?’

  He smiled and nodded. ‘Yes there is. Happy birthday!’