Richard A. Clarke Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Lambs just aren't enough for Robert Redford. On November 8, Lions for Lambs hits theaters, the Redford-directed/starring drama about a professor, journalist, and senator in Washington during the battle in Afghanistan (check out the trailer here). Now, because you can't be tired of war, mess-ups, and political drama yet, Variety reports that he's set for more with an adaptation of Richard A. Clarke's memoir, Against All Enemies. Clarke was the counterterrorism adviser for three presidents, and his book criticizes the Bush administration's actions before and after 9/11.

Jamie Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay, and the film is being produced by John Calley under Capitol Films. (Columbia Pictures used to have it, but they had slipped it into turnaround.) However, ol' Red's involvement depends on financing. I imagine they'll pull it together -- especially if they plan to get it out before the 2008 elections. While George W. Bush might not be running again, there's nothing like a little incendiary cinema to heat things up.

The memoir doesn't lack for troubling claims, although these days, many of them have become widely accepted. Clarke says there was a lot of terrorist "chatter" before 9/11, and that he kept making requests for meetings about his information. After the dreaded date, the ex-adviser claims Bush asked him to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, and when he wrote a report saying there was no evidence to support that, he was told to "update and resubmit" the document. And the big one -- that the war on terror that led to the invasion of Iraq played into Osama bin Laden's hands, rather than hurting Al-Qaeda.

Picking a project to follow up the either trite or brilliant Crash (and, since it won best picture, no one really cares about the haters, do they?), writer/director Paul Haggis has gone in an interesting direction: he's in final talks to direct Against All Enemies, an adaptation of Richard A. Clarke's condemnation of the Bush administration's handling of the threat posed by al-Qaida. Though Haggis won't be writing the screenplay himself, he's expected to "supervise" the next draft, which is in the hands of James Vanderbilt. Haggis himself is currently writing and will direct Death and Dishonor for Warner Brothers, and it's not clear which project will be made first.

Aside from its intensely political nature, what's interesting about a movie version of Clarke's memoir is its cast: George W. Bush, for example, is sort of a main character in the thing. Is Columbia actually going to hire someone to play him? What about Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld? While I'd be the first to admit that such a thing could work (Nixon, which is packed to the gills with portrayals of well-know politicians, is fantastic), the fact that the central figures of Clarke's book are still in the public eye complicates things. Will we, for example, be able to see a Bush on screen without giggling, and thinking immediately of SNL?