It's been a crazy seven months for director Doug Liman, who went from scrambling to finish his new film Fair Game ahead of its Cannes premiere to the whirlwind of press ahead of this month's opening in the States. In between he's taken lumps from the right, been the subject of Oscar speculation, and observed just how difficult it is to tell a story about the Central Intelligence Agency -- specifically, the true story of how agency operative Valerie Plame (played here by Naomi Watts), her husband Joseph Wilson (Sean Penn), and their marriage withstood her infamously blown cover in 2003.
Liman spoke with Movieline recently about the CIA learning curve, his family's history of exposing secret narratives, and what's in a name -- especially when it's connected to an agency official.
I was just looking at the press notes and noticed there are character's surnames redacted from the cast listing. What's that all about?
It's pulled from the credits.
For security risks or... what? Because of the CIA?
Yeah. The interesting thing is that "Jack" is actually "Mike." They made me change the first names, too. I'm like, "You have to be kidding me." They said, "Sorry, it can't be Mike." I said, "It has to be Mike. I cast Mike." This was our insurance company. As a filmmaker you get used to calling a character a certain name. You can't just change his name! Like I can't just change my name. It was an epic fight where I was like, "I'm not changing his name, I'm not changing his name." And lo and behold, I changed his name and got used to it.
When you're dealing with subject matter like this, how often do these considerations come into play? Say, during development, pre-production, post-production? Press?
Well, it comes into play from the first second you're doing it because you're investigating the CIA. That place pretty closely guards its secrets.
You're kidding.
I had an interview with a reporter from the New York Times who covers the CIA, and we were comparing notes. It turned out to be one of those interviews where I asked her more questions than she asked me. We were just bonding over how hard it is to extract information from the CIA.
Even quotidian stuff? What's an example?
Just from the first meeting with Valerie, I said, "I need some specific facts about what you were doing." And she was like, "I can't tell you. I can't tell you anything." I was that character in that scene in the film where she says, "I can't tell you anything." I asked, "Well, did you carry a gun?" "I literally can't tell you anything." So it's like, "All right. Who can tell me?" And that started a process of probably about a dozen interviews with other people in the CIA, and then cross-referencing those interviews with each other -- extracting information. Nobody thought they were giving away anything; they didn't know that somebody else had given us another piece and that we were putting it together and holding ourselves to a standard of trying to find two sources for every piece of information.
That's interesting. I mean, it is just a movie in the end -- based on "true events," as the marketing tells us, but a movie nonetheless. At what point do you just take that license of letting the movie be a movie?
I let the politics go. Some of my producers who are more liberal than I am said, "Let's be more political." I said, "I'm not going to be more political. I'm interested in these characters, and I'm interested in the politics as we know them to be facts. I'm not going to go after people just because I don't like them -- or because somewhere in my gut I feel they're guilty even though I don't actually have any facts to back it up." My goal was to create the historical record of this time, and I approached it with that level of serious.
My father ran the investigation into Iran-Contra, and in a way, it was a similar process: He had to unravel what Oliver North had done with the enterprise. It was secret CIA -- run out of the NSA -- and he had to tell that to the American people through televised hearings. People don't realize that those kinds of hearings... I mean, my father already knows the story. He's not finding it out in the room. He's bringing those people back and putting TV cameras on them and asking the questions that he already knows the answers to -- to try to create a compelling narrative of Iran-Contra for the people to watch on TV every night.
Today -- and I think we see this in Fair Game -- it's a very fine line between revelation and activism. The movie has Joe Wilson's big monologue at the end, for example. How did you balance the two?
I was most worried about the monologue as never wanting to preach or talk down to the audience. But the reality of Joe Wilson is that that monologue is 100 percent truthful for Joe. In fact, when we were at the Cannes Film Festival, the film screens at the Palais, there's a standing ovation, and there's a party on the beach afterwards. On the Riviera! All of the sudden there's squeal of feedback, and Joe Wilson has found a microphone. He's found an amp and a microphone at a party on the beach -- God knows where this thing came from -- and he starts giving a speech about the Bill of Rights and the responsibility of Americans... It was something I'd actually never heard him say before" "The Bill of Rights is a Bill of Responsibilities." I'm like, "Oh, my God. Anybody who thought I was exaggerating anything I put in the movie just needs to be here at this party right now."
Between stories like that and the movie itself, you must have known the political right was going to come after you. And sure enough, it did. Was there any way you could have avoided -- or considered avoiding -- this?
Call me naïve, but I'm hoping this film transcends the polarized debate that has consumed our airwaves. This film, at the end of the day, is a celebration of a CIA officer who gave 20 years of her life in the service of this country -- every day, going into work, never taking credit for what she did, working on a government salary to keep this country safe. In this case, she was an NOC -- a non-official cover -- which means that millions of dollars were spent to create her covert status and an identity that had no visible ties with the US government.
Part of that was sending her to business school; she ultimately worked for a company called Brewster Jennings & Associates [a front developed by the CIA -- Ed.]. She ultimately made half a million dollars, every cent of which went back to the government -- so that she could then go collect her $110,000 government salary. So here's a person who says, "You know, I could just quit the CIA and stick with the cover job, because I can make five times as much money." But she didn't do that. So to me this film is a celebration of Valerie Plame and, by extension, the thousands or tens of thousands of covert officers who fight every day to keep this country safe. As we're having this conversation, there are probably 1,000 CIA officers who are lying to a friend about what it is they did that day -- as we speak. Or they're lying to a spouse so they can do the missions they've been tasked with.
So maybe I'm naïve, but I'm hoping that's what comes through: a story of a couple speaking out. One of the foundations of this country to our ability to criticize our government without fear of reprisal. That's not a left-wing ideal, that's not a right-wing ideal. That's an American ideal.
As far as polarization goes, do you think we're beyond the ideological point of no return?
As far as a country, we may be beyond the point of no return. I try to fight a different fight and just stay on a different playing field. If you want to do something that's purely political and be left-wing or right-wing? I think Obama's finding out the hard way: It's very hard to find middle ground in this country. But I kind of did an end run around it. I said, "Let the left and the right beat each other up about the war. I'm going to do a film about more universal themes -- the kind of themes that both sides can agree on."
[Top photo: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images]