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Or how spies, lies, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq has Doug Liman seeing RED<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to be dazzled by the high-tech gadgets and superhuman invincibility of the spies portrayed in Ian Fleming\u2019s James Bond novels.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another side to espionage, the John le Carr\u00e9 world, where the \u201cspooks\u201d are regular people with mundane day-to-day routines. Think covert operative Richard Burton in Martin Ritt\u2019s masterful film, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold<\/em>, shopping at his corner market for tins of beef and asking for credit from a disapproving and judgmental grocer (played by actor Bernard Lee, more famous for his role as \u201cM\u201d in the Bond films).<\/p>\n Triple-hyphenate (director\/cinematographer\/producer) Doug Liman, whose credits include The Bourne Identity<\/em> and Mr. and Mrs. Smith<\/em>, admits to being fascinated by how the game of spy vs. spy plays out in the real world. \u201cMy mantra was always, how come we never see James Bond pay a phone bill?\u201d he puzzles. \u201cI don\u2019t care who you are, you still got to pay your phone bill! It\u2019s sort of trite, of course, but that thought affected how we did the action sequences for Bourne Identity<\/em>. Jason Bourne lives in our world. He actually gets hit and hurt, just like in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n Who Can You Trust?<\/strong><\/p>\n Reality, of course, is at the center of Liman\u2019s newest film, Fair Game<\/em>, which relives the Bush Presidency\u2019s scandal of CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson (Sean Penn), who after being sent by the U.S. government to Niger to confirm reports of large uranium purchases by the Iraqi government, determined the reports to be unfounded. And no uranium meant no reasonable justification for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n Wilson was no fan of Saddam. He\u2019d been the last American diplomat to meet with the Iraqi dictator and had, in fact, demanded that Saddam\u2019s forces be withdrawn from Kuwait. However, Wilson became outraged when he saw the same reports he\u2019d confirmed as being untrue, being used anyway to help topple Hussein\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n The angered diplomat decided to write a New York Times op-ed piece debunking the White House claims, thus setting off a chain reaction that would threaten his career and marriage. In an attempt to discredit Wilson, an \u201canonymous source\u201d inside the Bush Administration leaked the covert identity of Plame, then leader of the CIA\u2019s Joint Task Force on Iraq.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to tell a personal story set against the larger canvas of the march to war in Iraq,\u201d explains Fair Game<\/em> producer Janet Zucker, whose husband and noted director, Jerry Zucker was also a producer on the film. Both Zuckers had met Plame and Wilson at a social gathering during one of their many trips to Washington, D.C., fighting for their own personal cause – stem cell research.<\/p>\n \u201cValerie and I really connected,\u201d Janet Zucker recalls. \u201cThe first night we met, we stayed up until three in the morning talking. The film accurately portrays Joe\u2019s feelings of dismay when Valerie won’t defend him publicly, as well as her initial anger at Joe because the impact on her life was profound. Valerie was a good soldier. Her father was in the military. She was recruited by the Agency out of college, and she loved her life in the CIA.\u201d<\/p>\n As dramatized by screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, Wilson and Plame\u2019s complex and threatened relationship draws the audience into the larger issues at play during America\u2019s so-called \u201cwar on terror.\u201d And because of that, the filmmakers wanted to avoid a patronizing history lesson.<\/p>\n \u201cI worked on the Obama campaign,\u201d Liman continues, \u201cand I saw that the average American doesn\u2019t want to be lectured by New York or Hollywood liberals, whose world is very different from their own. I understand why the average American feels alienated by the film business. So I fought very hard during script development to make sure the story we were telling was not at all preachy.\u201d<\/p>\n It Takes A Thief<\/strong><\/p>\n With a modest $22 million budget, Fair Game<\/em> shot in numerous locations including D.C., New York, Jordan, Egypt, Malaysia and even some on-the-run scenes in Iraq. To get a variety of shots, especially ones reflecting the passing of seasons, Liman exploited his love for small and stealthy \u201cbandit\u201d production teams.<\/p>\n \u201cDoug found out there was a St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade going on,\u201d Janet Zucker remembers. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the money to stage a parade. So we went on a weekend while still in pre-production with a small unit and Naomi, and shot that piece. As a producer, my office was a tree stump in the rain! I soon realized that I needed to be prepared for anything when shooting with Doug.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe operates well in controlled chaos,\u201d echoes second unit DP Robby Baumgartner of the director\/cinematographer. \u201cHe likes everybody to be in this heightened state all the time. It\u2019s total guerilla filmmaking. We had guerilla units, rogue units and finally we went terrorist. It was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, not every scene required such battle plans. The everyday life of Wilson and Plame was a relatively safe and inviting at-home haven before Wilson\u2019s article was published, and the ominous forces soon threatened from without and within.<\/p>\n Liman, who says he enjoys shooting intimate handheld interiors, puts the approach this way: \u201cWhen I have a conversation, I\u2019m not always in the same room with someone. And when you\u2019re married, you don\u2019t always need to look that person right in the eyes, unless you\u2019re asking them if they\u2019re cheating or something.\u201d<\/p>\n Having worked with the RED One for some sequences in Jumper<\/em>, he decided to use the available (at that time) Mysterium chip and firmware build 17, for Fair Game<\/em> as it suited the intimate, handheld workflow.<\/p>\n \u201cMy favorite camera is the Aaton 35, a small documentary-style 35 mm camera,\u201d Liman explains. \u201cThe Aaton is why Swingers<\/em>, Go<\/em> or Bourne Identity<\/em> didn\u2019t look like the movies that were coming out around them. However, the Aaton isn\u2019t really a (good) synch sound camera. It sounds like a sewing machine. So I would wrap a down jacket around it and then wrap a down comforter around that! During Swingers<\/em>, Jon Favreau described it as acting to a giant snowball. It was this big, fluffy-looking thing on my shoulder. Usually the camera is black and it looks like a weapon. I guess there\u2019s a style of directing where it\u2019s useful for the actors to be staring at a weapon,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut I\u2019m much more interested in creating a safe space.\u201d<\/p>\n Liman calls the RED One he employed \u201ca better version of the Aaton 35, because it\u2019s the same size and reloads just as quickly. But my AC, Nick Demas, can see a high-def image, so if there\u2019s a focus problem, it can be fixed on the spot as opposed to waiting for dailies.\u201d<\/p>\n Baumgartner states that he was very happy with the footage shot inside the Wilson\u2019s District of Columbia house, a practical location in Westchester County, NY. \u201cIt was almost always 360 (degrees) all the time,\u201d he explains. \u201cWe worked closely with (gaffer) Steve Ramsey to maintain a natural, uninterrupted look. Key grip Kevin Smyth and Ramsey were able to screw (lighting units) into the ceiling to give Doug the freedom to move around. It also meant good pre-planning with a lot of hidden lights carefully placed to augment the natural light.\u201d Like lightweight Kino Flo units rigged directly over interior windows to augment daylight.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can create a space where the director and actors have the freedom to perform, and it’s lit in an acceptable way, that’s the best of all worlds. Doug was happiest if he came onto set and did not see lighting units and C-stands. It was best if he wore a baseball hat because then he could block out all the lights rigged to the ceiling. I was always asking him to give the guys a foot \u2013 all we needed was a foot of wall-to-ceiling space and we made the 360 happen,\u201d says Baumgartner. \u201cLet the directors and actors have the stage, then figure out the way to shoot within that.\u201d<\/p>\n Real Life Shot The Real Way<\/strong><\/p>\n Liman outfitted his RED system with Master Primes and Zeiss Superspeeds, which were put to good use for Fair Game\u2019s<\/em> moments of intense and eruptive action. One Iraqi sequence takes place inside a car stuck at a checkpoint, as gunfire suddenly ensues. To convey the required sense of claustrophobic panic, Liman felt it imperative to shoot the entire sequence from the backseat of the tiny car.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first, Doug thought he\u2019d have to shoot with a 235 because he didn\u2019t think the RED would get small enough,\u201d explains DIT Eric Camp. \u201cWith the RED you end up tacking a lot of little things onto it in order to get it to do what you want. I told him I could build some cables and electronics to allow him to remove all the stuff from the camera, but that I was going to need to rob electronics and pieces from a RED battery charger. The camera house was more than likely going to bill us for this charger, and (Doug) had to trust that I could build this thing in one night!\u201d<\/p>\n Camp says Liman gave his immediate consent, and the DIT ended up in an Egyptian machine shop, \u201chaving them cut me out the pieces I needed, as I soldered it all together. We called it the \u2018Frankenstein rig,\u2019 and it worked! At one point I had some stripped screws and I\u2019m trying to explain to an Egyptian machinist what I want him to drill out and what I don\u2019t want him to drill out. It was a great and trusting collaboration on Doug\u2019s part.\u201d<\/p>\n And shooting in the Middle East was not without real-life regional politics. The story calls for Plame to recruit an Iraqi doctor (Liraz Charhi), now living in the United States, to go to Iraq to ask her brother (Khaled Nabawy), a scientist, if Saddam is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Originally, a sequence of the doctor\u2019s arrival at a Baghdad airport was to be shot in Cairo. However, some in the Egyptian film community objected to the actress, an Israeli, working in Egypt. Undeterred, Liman mobilized one of his bandit units, and led them to the Baghdad airport where the sequence was shot. Once in Iraq, Liman also grabbed shots of mosques and military convoys.<\/p>\n While the tense and unpredictable documentary style dominates much of Fair Game<\/em>, Steadicam operator Brant Fagan, SOC augmented some scenes.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of Doug\u2019s style is \u2018You\u2019re right there and the tension is palpable,\u2019\u201d the veteran operator recalls. \u201cBut there were other times where instead of having the audience feel the tension of the handheld frame, Doug wanted the actor to be the lightning rod. For example, there\u2019s a scene where Joe (Wilson) is hounded by a reporter at a restaurant and finally blows up at her. A series of takes featured me on the Steadicam because it allowed Sean (Penn) to explode inside the space, to be the focal point as opposed to the frame being alive. We did cover it so there’s good coverage. But some of the big pieces were centered around the Steadicam.\u201d<\/p>\n Liman says that with a real-life story like Fair Game<\/em> (based on separate books by Plame and Wilson), he prefers shooting where events actually took place. Unfortunately, it was not possible to shoot the uranium mine scenes in Niger. Instead, the Giza region of Egypt became a stand-in (perhaps the only film company to purposefully turn their cameras away from the pyramids). The challenge though was finding actors who were not Arab to play Nigerian extras. The production found a church for Sudanese refugees, and employed many in the parish, which had the collateral impact of giving the refugees some much-needed income.<\/p>\n Overall, the director\/cinematographer reports being \u201cextremely impressed,\u201d with the RED\u2019s performance. \u201cWe had two cameras. They never broke, even in some really brutal environments,\u201d he recounts. \u201cYou have to keep ice packs on a camera in the Middle East to keep it from overheating. Sometimes the crew would catch me pulling the ice pack off the camera and putting it onto my own neck. They\u2019d take it back saying the camera\u2019s going to short out. I told them I was going to short out. The cameras had more people tending to them than I had tending to me,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n Zucker, who spent more than four years bringing the Plame-Wilson story to the screen, calls the project a true labor of love. \u201cWe had extremely ambitious days,\u201d she concludes, \u201cand had to use every bit of our ingenuity throughout. Naomi Watts was always prepared and game for anything, and Doug wanted everything to be very authentic in every area. This is much more than a spy story; it\u2019s the story of a marriage with incredibly rich characters.\u201d<\/p>\n By Ted Elrick \/ Photos by Ken Regan<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or how spies, lies, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq has Doug Liman seeing RED<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-web-exclusive"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.icgmagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/images\/fairGAME2.jpg\")
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