George Clooney to turn more festivals into fundraisers

From the Starpulse blog:

George Clooney is so impressed with the amount of cash his Not On Our Watch fundraisers have raised in Cannes, France and Las Vegas, he's planning to turn every film festival into a charity drive for Darfur aid groups. The actor and his Ocean's Thirteen co-stars staged dinners and galas at the Cannes Film Festival in May and recently at the film's Las Vegas premiere,raising almost $10 million in the process.

Now Clooney, who has become a leading celebrity advocate for action against the genocide in the Sudan after filming a documentary about the crisis last year, wants to turn every starry film event into a fundraiser.

He says, "I have every intention of doing this in other places. Film festivals sound like good spots."

This is without question a good thing in the larger picture, but I wonder how this will go over with the film festivals? Some of them have their own pet causes. Others have to work hard enough to raise funds to keep themselves going without the added competition. Not that the struggling festivals would attract Clooney in the first place, but it will be interesting to see the actual lineup of festivals he ends up visiting for this purpose.