Cinematical

In Part One of this interview, writer-director Stephen Gaghan talked about the political roots of his new film, Syriana; in Part Two, he talks about the creative process, how comedy and tragedy are a little too close for comfort when you research a film like Syriana and how, for good and for ill, it really is a small world after all. If you’re sensitive to profanity, you may not want to click for more, but you do, you’ll get a great look inside the consciousness – and the stream-of-consciousness – of a Oscar-wining screenwriter who may very well be able to repeat that honor this year.

Were there specific plot lines or ideas or concepts that you knew that you wanted to get in Syriana but you couldn't? I know there was an entire plotline featuring actress Michelle Monaghan that sort of fell off from the film.  Were there other moments or ideas like that?

Well, in the earliest incarnation, I try all sorts of ideas. There's lots of ideas, just things, people, ideas you want to explore.  You create scenes, then realize they don't fit in the movie. They're not going to be there.  You create – storylines start up like little sprouts that shoot up out of the ground, but then they're not the ones you – then you weed them out.  The strongest ones survive, and that's a continuing process. You know, the Michelle storyline ended up being only about 11 minutes of material. I threw it out right after I watched the film, almost like the first couple of times I watched it, something weird happened.  There was some X factor. In this movie, there are four completely separate, kind of original storylines that are not stories you've seen before a lot, but they have their own kind of weird logic. They definitely have beginnings, middles, and ends. A fifth one broke the camel's back.  It didn't make the movie 20 percent more confusing, it made the movie 20 times more confusing. ...
 ... But, anyway, that process goes on all along.  At the beginning, everything's possible and everybody gets equal time, all the characters, all the ideas. You don't know who's going to be the main characters; they're all fighting it out. It's like kind of the best time in a way. Oddly, that time, which is the best time, precedes what is the worst time, which is, 'Oh my God, how am I going to structure this thing? How is the second act going to work?' You kind of have a feeling where you want it go and you have all this fun shit happening at the beginning, and you kind of have a feeling how it could end up.  Just tonally, there's almost a musical note that's linking the whole thing and there's images – you've got colors and color palettes and ideas. But how the second act is actually going to work – [laughs] ooh boy, that's hard. Anyway, I can probably think of 50 examples, actually but I'll just stop there.
 
Actually, I thought about having the third estate, the press, in the movie, you know? I was very hip to – early on, what's happened to Bob Woodward recently in the press is quite interesting, the man who brought us Watergate is now having to publicly apologize to his editor for essentially lying by omission. You know, this is a fascinating story. I think that I understood what was going on with him early on, the conflict between impartiality and access that a Bob Woodward can write these books on the Bush administration that are predicated on unlimited access to the Oval Office and that unlimited access gets him multimillion dollar or million dollar, seven figure advances, which is very unusual for political books.  That money is -- you can come to depend on it.  I mean, in Hollywood, Dalton Trumbo in the early '50s had this great quote, he said, 'They pay you a thousand bucks a week and pretty soon, you think you need it.' The minute you think you need it, you know, you're vulnerable.  Somewhere between Watergate and now, something happened, and I was hip to that, certainly early in 2000, I was thinking about it.  I didn't see a single tough question asked of George Bush in the 2000 election campaign.  Where the fuck is my press, you know? It's pretty obvious there's a problem, you know. He's on this press plane, cracking jokes with these guys and they're all like, 'Hey, he's easygoing and comfortable.' And they didn't ask him any questions. They're never in print, never.
 
And so I thought I could– so I had a whole bunch of different (ideas), and I got to know (New Yorker journalist) Sy (Seymour) Hersh quite well and I really like Sy Hersh, I really admire Sy Hersh.  I think he's a friggin' hero, an American hero.  So the idea of having somebody like that involved, someone who was still holding a torch and fighting the fight, trying to uncover the truth, who doesn't give a shit about money, about politics, about anything, who's just after it. And I thought that could be really interesting and I did a lot of work on that, because I think that the corruption of the press is the story of the last decade. I think it's the story.  But at the end of the day, because it was the story, it didn't fit into this story. [Laughs] It becomes a different movie altogether. Think about Three Days of the Condor, the last minutes, Robert Redford on the steps of The New York Times with his little box of evidence and he's going to go in there and he's going to say, 'Look at this!' And the New York Times is going to save the day.  And Cliff Robertson is sitting there, going, 'You think they're going to listen? Who do you think runs things? It's big oil and the military-industrial complex.' Or the end of The Parallax View – it's big oil and the military-industrial complex.  There's that committee and “ … there was no conspiracy. …”  He's the best, (director Alan J.) Pakula.  You're watching this and it's like – I think he's one of the great directors of all time – and at the end there, 'No evidence of impropriety here.  The commission has [Gaghan makes a closing-door sound]!' I just thought, how interesting, you know, we all know it's big oil and the military-industrial complex. We all think that already, so, if that's all out in the open, all right, it's big oil, fade in, now what? I think it's a very interesting place to start from.
 
Syriana is done, and it opens wide very soon, you’re doing the gantlet of press … what do you think is going to be more challenging: Making the film or defending it – or, rather, articulating it’s positions outside of the reality of itself?

All the people who are criticizing Syriana right now in the right-wing radio and talk-show circuit ... they haven’t seen it. It’s like me talking about Ann Coulter; I’ve never seen her; I’ve never really seen a word she’s said; I’ve only heard people talking about her. So I feel like I should be an absolute authority on Ann Coulter, and I should be the one to really drag her through the mud. (Laughing) I don’t know anything about her firsthand; I’ve never seen her utter a word. I’ve never read in print anything actually she’s said or stood for; I just know that she’s evil, and I should have a conflict with her. It’s preposterous. But this is the world we live in; somebody asked me how I felt about this stuff that was coming up about people saying “well, I haven’t’ actually seen the movie, but it’s Liberal propaganda,” and all this stuff, and I think “You know, I met Richard Pearle (Ex-Chair of the Defense Policy Board); I met Paul Wolfowitz … I met a lot of these guys, and we had substantive talks. We don’t agree about everything – or even all that much – but we could talk about subjects we care about. Some of these guys have 30 years public service, PHds, expertise. They’re articulating points of view that for me often just simply don’t feel true." It’s just a gut reaction; and then, as I go around and do a couple of years of research, read a lot of books, I can then say “No, I think you’re wrong; I was in Iraq, or I was in Syria, and I was talking to this guy who came out of Iraq, and he said this and I think you’re wrong. I was talking to this guy who ran the tribes in the Western Desert knows more, and I don’t think democracy’s going to spring up; I think it’s going to be a civil war. Why? ‘Cause this guy told me, and I think he knows what he’s talking about.” But we’re not finger-pointing. We’re not saying “You have a conservative agenda, you’re evil, you’re a liberal wacko .. It’s just not like that. These people (Right-wing radio and talk shows), they’re like a sideshow. I don’t listen to them or watch them; I don’t care. I care about the relationships I have with very smart people who often have opposing opinions to me, I value the people I disagree with probably more than the people I disagree with. Starting in ’98 when I was researching Traffic. I got to meet really serious people in Washington, which for a screenwriter was kind of a great gift. And I really valued these guys; I stayed in touch with them, and I find their point-of-view quite interesting. And that’s what I think Syriana can do. And people are saying “You’re excusing evil! You’re sympathizing with suicide bombers! You’re making it look like a good idea! You’re showing people how to do it!” That’s what some people were telling me. And I think “None of this is true. …

You're showing them how to commit an act of terrorism after they go down to Ace Hardware and get a surface-to-air missile and a boat?

Yeah, a SAM-7 (surface-to-air missile). It’s a joke. But the point is when the demagoguery is turned up to the highest volume and the fingers are pointing firmest in one direction, that’s when everyone stops paying attention; that’s when everybody stops listening, and nobody is paying attention to what anyone else is saying.  My first reaction to ‘War on Terror’ is “Oh, great; we had the “War on Drugs”; that was a war on an abstraction; it was a war on brain chemistry; it was like a war on molecules. “Ooh! Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors are evil! Immoral! Lock people up who want to monkey with their serotonin re-uptake inhibitors! Now ... if you want to depress your GABA receptor with alcohol, that’s okay. That’s socially acceptable.” It’s absurd. It’s a war on an abstraction. When I first heard “War on Terror,” I thought “God, It’s a war on an emotion; it’s another war on an abstraction.” What is it about us that after the Cold War we’re just floundering around and we need these wars on abstractions to make sense of shit?  We’re so invested in having something to push against that we’re coming up with fucking clouds. I’m really – I continue to be – depressed by that. In ’98, when I went to the Pentagon to go to the bureau of counter-narcotics, and I finally found it buried in some ring of the Pentagon, and there’s a little sign on the door, and the sign says “Bureau of Counter-Narcotics and Counter-Terrorism.” It was the same place in the Pentagon in ’98. The same guy. “Hello! I have a six-billion dollar budget! What can I do for you? I’m a DepSecDef!” Deputy Secretary of Defense. “DepSecDef! I have two PHd’s.”  I don’t know. I don’t even know what the question was. I’m answering questions that weren’t asked. I’ve gone mad! More macchiatos!

Just to break away from the geopolitics and the petropolitics for a second … Some of the scenes that stood out for me in Syriana included the soccer game at the Islamic madrassa school when the two guys are talking about the science of Spider-Man, or why Prom in Pakistan sucks. And then you think back to all the Cheadle-and-Guzman scenes in Traffic, which are quite funny. Do you ever think “Screw public policy; I just want to write a funny movie?”

Yeah. I came to Hollywood originally writing comedy and writing satire. The first things I ever wrote were Saturday Night Live sketches; I mean, they weren’t produced, they were spec. It’s so strange that I’ve gone on this 10-year drama run, because my whole worldview, I would say, is kind of comedic. And it’s hard to say with a straight face; “You write these turgid dramas about stuff.” But everything is just one degree off of satire. And the research – the stuff that I saw? If I could have dramatized the scenes that I found myself in? It’d be Dr. Strangelove. Truly, Dr. Strangelove. And it was the wrong tone for this movie. But truly? Life serves up satire. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. I don’t know. You have to reel it in to drama. And from the earliest point, with those kids, the Wasim character (a Pakistani contract worker played by Mazhar Munir), I wanted to show – not in an overt way – that America’s pop culture exports are just everywhere. He uses the word ‘scram’; they’re watching The Outsiders – S. E. Hinton by way of Coppola – in their migrant worker camp in the Persian Gulf. And when they’re getting fired, Wasim’s dad can’t hear – these oil refineries are very loud – and the dad asks “What are they saying?” “They’re telling us to scram.” “Scram? What?” ‘Cause it’s that thing. The kid’s been watching movies; he knows about America through movies. He’s not just some kid with his head in a ditch. The world is a small place. It’s a small world. A guy in a cave in Afghanistan can bring down the World Trade Centers. Small. World. We’re all connected in ways we just don’t understand. You get on a plane with Bird Flu and you land six hours later, it’s a big deal. And this is the world we live in. And sometimes it seems overwhelming. And sometimes it seems confusing.