Telluride 2011: Press Asked to Refrain From Photographing George Clooney at Indoor Events

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George Clooney was the inadvertent subject of what one festival director called "a kerfuffle" early Friday when fest organizers informed press that there were not to be any photos taken at any Clooney events, including his Silver Medallion tribute Saturday. As it turned out, the fest's publicity team quickly clarified that it had been their decision to curtail access, not Clooney's. That turned out to be obvious at the Patrons Brunch later in the day, where Clooney genially took photographs with the small mob that he attracted upon entering the grounds.

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Alexander Payne, Werner Herzog, Ken Burns, Lynne Ramsay, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Jim Burke, Agnieszka Holland and, yes, Clooney strolled the lawn at the Grey Head Ranch above the Telluride Airport Friday just before the Telluride Film Festival was about to start. The occasion was the annual brunch, and the location and weather couldn’t have been more heavenly.

Sundance fest director John Cooper, Leonard Maltin, Peter Goldwyn and Michael De Luca were also on-hand to chat animatedly about the movies they hoped to see over the following three days. Among the most mentioned were Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist, Steve McQueen’s Shame and Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.

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Inarritu, who showed his film Biutiful in 2010, brought his family this year and said he was hoping to break his previous record of seeing 12 films in three days. Payne’s enthusiasm was just as palpable. When asked if he planned to see other movies this weekend even though his new one, The Descendants, would keep him occupied, he joked, “Are you kidding? The fact that I have a film here is a nuisance.”