People Involved

Director:
Doug Liman

   

A graduate from Brown University (1988) and the USC School of Cinema-Television (1992), Doug Liman has directed 16 titles including the Bourne series, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Jumper. According to IMDb, he is widely known for his unusual use of humor and for depicting the characters in his movies as secret spies or agents. Fair Game is his most recently directed film.

 “The movie I end up with is the movie I aspired to make.” This is one of Doug Liman’s most notable quotes. When he wants something nearly impossible done in one of his movies, he will get it done. In an interview with Cinematical discussing Fair Game, Liman states: “We're the only American film to ever have shot in Iraq. Only a small part of this film takes place in Iraq but it was really important for me to go to the real place, to show people ... what Iraq really looks like, not how we fake Iraq in some other country. I also wanted to just see the country with my own eyes because although this is a film about abuse of power by the president of the United States, that abuse of power was about going to war, and I wanted to see with my own eyes what we did, what was going on in Iraq.” His passion for reality makes him the director that he is. He enveloped himself in research. From interviews to finding day-to-day conversations between Valerie and her husband, he made an effort to make Fair Game a great movie and as accurate as possible.

 Just like every other classic Hollywood director, Doug Liman knows what factors are needed to draw attention to his film: a love story and conflict. Liman loved the entire Valerie Plame situation, but the aspect that interested him the most about the story was the struggling marriage between Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson. A large focus was put on Wilson and how he responds to being married to a spy. Explaining this social focus, Liman said: “...that's really what I want the movie to be. How does Valerie balance having twins with a job that sends her to foreign countries where she can't tell her husband where she's going or when she's coming home?”
 Bush Administration

 youdontknowdickcheney.wordpress.com
George W. Bush, at the age of 54, became the 43rd president of the United States. On January 29, 2002, he began his State of the Union Address in which he claimed that Iraqi-allied terrorists were posing a threat to the United States interests through weapons of mass destruction. It was "the famous 16 words" of his address that pushed Joe Wilson to write an article in the New York Times essentially stating that what was said in the State of the Union Address concerning yellowcake uranium was inaccurate. At Bush's request, the United States invaded Iraq. Following the invasion of Iraq, Bush was forced to face numerous accusations concerning the rationale behind the war and the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The famous 16 words

Valerie Plame Wilson


Valerie Plame Wilson played by Naomi Watts


 Valerie Plame Wilson as depicted in Fair Game:



Naomi Watts did a wonderful job portraying Valerie Plame Wilson as who she really is. Like many professional actresses, she made a strong effort to get to know Valerie's character through emails, interviews and her autobiography. "It's not about 'this is my chance to take a stance or opinion.' It's about the essence of the character." In an interview with Katie Hasty, Watts mentions that she, along with director Doug Liman, focused on the relationship between Joe and Valerie rather than on the political aspect of the movie. This is where we separated the character from the real person.


The real Valerie Plame Wilson
Valerie Plame Wilson in real life:
After reading her autobiography, we learned a lot of context about Valerie Plame Wilson. She is a very clever woman who was able to be a mother, a wife and a spy all while keeping a light personality. Her quick-thinking is what set her apart as a woman battling her way through the process of becoming a spy. She wrote about her ability to comfortably get information from any source residing in large crowds or parties thanks to her sorority/fraternity days in college. Another example of her whit was shown in her initial CIA interview. The woman interviewing her asks, “Imagine you are meeting an agent in a foreign hotel room and there is suddenly a loud banging at the door. You hear ‘Police, let us in!’ What do you do?” Valerie quickly responds, “I would take off my blouse, tell the agent to do the same, and jump into bed before telling the police to come in.” (Wilson, Pages 5-6) She seems to be such a clever woman with a little sense of humor and that is the one trait Naomi Watts did not hit.


Joseph C. Wilson
Joseph Wilson played by Sean Penn
Joseph C. Wilson as depicted in Fair Game:

     Joe is an integral part to the film. The part of Joseph Wilson is portrayed by actor Sean Penn. He plays husband to Valerie Plame who is a CIA agent. Joe and Valerie have a set of twins in their family named Samantha and Trevor. Throughout the film, viewers see a problem in Joe and Valerie’s marriage. Joe struggles with all the secrecy in Valerie’s job and they encounter a lot of turmoil. Joe was a former United States diplomat who had certain expertise when it came to Africa. In the movie, Valerie is asked by the CIA to send Joe to Niger to check on allegations of yellowcake being sold to Iraq. He comes back reporting that the allegations have to be completely false. When Valerie’s position as a covert operative is compromised in an article, Joe becomes a complete advocate for his wife and fights to get retribution from the government. He is a very strong-willed person with many opinions. He has a lot of experience as a public speaker as well. Joseph Wilson, although not the main character, helps with many elements that create the story within the movie.
The real Joseph Wilson
Joseph C. Wilson in real life:

     Joseph has a lot more to do with the story than the movie lets on. While not portrayed in the film, after a bit of research we discovered Valerie was actually his third wife. Besides the one set of twins we see in the movie, he actually has another set of twins with his first wife. He ran into many marital problems, which is partially portrayed in the film between him and Valerie due to the secrecy behind her career. Also, Joe’s ties into the government go deeper than the movie lets on. He entered the United State Foreign Service in 1976. He was stationed in five different African nations. From 1988 to 1991 he was made Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad, Iraq. One important fact they don’t specify in the movie when he makes the comment to his friend, "Have you met Saddam Hussein?" is that he was the last American diplomat to meet with Hussein. Aside from being an advocate for his wife and family, he actually had a lot more involvement within the government.




Scooter Libby
Scooter Libby played by David Andrews
Scooter Libby as depicted in Fair Game:

Scooter Libby is portrayed as the snitch who leaked the top-secret information about CIA agent Valerie Plame. According to World Affairs Journal it is believed that Fair Game distorted the character of Scooter Libby entirely, “Fact is, Libby was acquitted of the only charges that involved him leaking to reporters, and his conviction for lying to Russert to cover up crimes he didn’t commit makes no sense. The defense’s efforts to rebut the prosecution claim that he lied about his conversation with Russert were crippled by the judge’s rulings. The missing testimony, including expert testimony by memory scientists — something the jury said they wanted to hear — could well have changed Libby’s fate.”
The real Scooter Libby
Scooter Libby in real life:

Lewis “Scooter” Libby graduated from Yale University and later got his law degree from Columbia University. He had three different jobs in the White House including: Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, second assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs and an assistant to the president. Libby was convicted of giving false statements within the case of Valerie Plame. In 2005 when he was convicted of perjury and false statements he immediately resigned from his positions. His civil rights were restored in November of 2012.  George W. Bush was in presidential office at the time Libby was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison. According to True Life Bio, "In July 2007, President George Bush commuted former White House aide "Scooter" Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak investigation stating that the sentence was too harsh.”

Who was left out of the film?

Judith Miller
http://www.voltairenet.org/article30050.html
Judith Miller was born in New York City and raised in both L.A. and Miami. She attended Ohio State University and furthered her education at Barnard College and the College of European Studies. She is an author who has written and published four books. She was a writer for the New York Times and left her career there due to conflicts with government. According to an article written by Nicholas Lemann, "[Miller] seems to have spent more time on Wilson and Plame than any other reporter, but she never published an account in the Times; and, of six reporters whom Fitzgerald subpoenaed, she is the only one to have resisted to the extent of going to jail rather than reveal a source." In an article written by Judith herself, published by the Wall Street Journal she explains this point in time as such, “I went to jail in the summer of 2005 to protect the identity of a confidential source who spoke to me about Valerie Plame, the former CIA spy whose identity was disclosed after her husband publicly challenged part of the evidence that President Bush cited to justify his invasion of Iraq. I'm the only person to have gone to jail in what became known as Plamegate. But you wouldn't know it from the recently released movie Fair Game.” Miller was not featured in the movie, “There is no character based on me in the film — and that turns out to be a good thing. Although the movie is brilliantly acted, it is also a gross distortion of a complicated political saga,” Miller said.



  Richard Armitage
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1924412/posts
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the man responsible for the leak in the Valerie Plame case. In July of 2003, Armitage informed columnist Robert Novak of Plame's affiliation with the CIA. Without Richard Armitage, none of us would even know who Valerie Plame is. However, in the movie Fair Game, Scooter Libby is depicted as the original leaker and as the stereotypical "bad guy" of the film while the man responsible for the leak appears nowhere in the movie and nowhere on the list of IMDb cast credits for the movie. 



 Robert Novak
http://aarontallent.com/?p=2770
 Robert Novak, who was working for the Washington Post when he published an article outing Valerie Plame only appeared in the movie Fair Game as a name on a piece of paper. Based on the information he was given by Richard Armitage, Novak published an article in the Washington Post as a rebuttal to Joe Wilson's claim that he found no yellowcake uranium in Niger. Toward the bottom of the article, Novak uses Valerie Plame's name and outs her as a covert agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Novak in his memoir entitled, "The Prince of Darkness," stated that he was forced to spend $160,000 on legal fees since his involvement with Plamegate and that his income took an immediate dive following the scandal. In 2005, Novak left CNN to become a Fox News commentator. In 2008, he was reported to have struck a pedestrian with his car in a hit-and-run accident which Jon Stewart used on his show to discuss Novak's "true character" (see movie below). Novak was later diagnosed with brain cancer and died on August 18, 2009. 

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