For someone who claims he doesn’t campaign for awards, George Clooney is certainly in all the right places and getting plenty of publicity: red carpets, trendy restaurants, receptions, parties—the man seems to be everywhere at once.           
    Not long ago I was a guest at a private party he hosted in a room at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a few friends and journalists before the premiere of The Descendants in which he stars and for which he has already picked up a few awards. 
   He dutifully shook hands with everybody, posed for pictures and made Hollywood small talk. It was a star-worthy performance.
     Seeing him on the red carpet at the Palm Springs film festival the other day and at a party in New York’s trendy Cipriani restaurant the next prompted me to go back through my notes to an interview I had with him at the Toronto Film Festival back in September. 
    “It’s harder selling a movie than it is making it in a weird way,” he told me. “You’re much more exposed so I’ve closed some of those curtains. 
   “I’m harder to get to. Honestly, it’s true. I don’t do junkets anymore because that’s not selling the movie, that’s selling me and I don’t really see any use in it so I’ve really backed off those kind of things just to have a normal life.”
    Hmmm. Well, if you say so George.