Film: The Good Shepherd (original) (raw)
Film: The Good Shepherd
February 18, 2007
Reporter : Peter Thompson
Director: Robert De Niro
Wars always have tragic consequences but they're good for the movies. Some of the best American films of recent decades arose out of the Vietnam War; and the Iraq debacle will no doubt produce its own crop of soul-searching dramas. Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd has a relevance to contemporary world events that goes beyond its immediate focus on the formative years of the CIA. De Niro nursed the project for a decade, eventually settling on a screenplay by Academy Award winner Eric Roth. Roth wrote Forrest Gump but also The Insider and Munich. De Niro couldn't have known that the release of The Good Shepherd would coincide with an urgent debate about his country's foreign policy. But his film asks fundamental questions about American democracy.
The story is told through the life of one man, Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon. He's a fictional character with a number of real-life counterparts: James Jesus Angleton, for example, one of the founding fathers of the CIA.
The Godfather Part II is one of the high points of Robert De Niro's career; he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor in 1974 for his role in it, and Francis Ford Coppola is an executive producer on The Good Shepherd. The influence on De Niro's own directing style is clear. His film slows to a funereal pace at times and you will find it either irritating or, as I did, tremendously powerful. And his attention to detail is obsessive.
The Good Shepherd runs nearly three hours but it still leaves some hard questions unanswered. Many American critics feel it doesn't go far enough and it was largely passed over at the Academy Awards, to be aired next week here on Channel Nine. But I must say I enjoyed it very much and, if you're a sucker for spy movies as I am, I suggest you will, too.
And that's it from me. This is my last regular film review for Sunday. After 25 years, I'm moving on to other things although I will still contribute to the program. It's been a unique privilege to be associated with Sunday for so long, and I'm profoundly grateful for the chance to work alongside so many talented and dedicated people.
As for the world of movies, it's changed so much over a quarter of a century but that's a subject for another time. If I have one regret, it's that the Australian film scene looked fantastically exciting back in 1981. The first film I reviewed was Bruce Beresford's cheeky comedy Puberty Blues and Crocodile Dundee followed soon after. The future looked rosy but the national consensus in support of Australian film culture broke up and the political will soon evaporated. The last ten years, especially, have been disastrous. We now export our actors along with our iron ore and our woodchips and we're quite comfortable when they come back to us with foreign accents in other people's films.
Still, while there's life, there's hope. New generations of filmmakers will have passion enough to turn things around and put more of their stories, our stories, in front of us again. It needs political change but I'm sure it will happen.
Read the transcript from our Sunday chat with Milt Beardon, who served as the CIA Technical Advisor on The Good Shepherd.
Interviewer: Welcome to the Sunday chat room. ninemsn and Sunday present a Live Interview with Milt Bearden, former CIA agent and adviser on the film The Good Shepherd.
Interviewer: Thank you joining us today Milt.
Milt Bearden: I�m indeed glad to be here and I am looking forward to some interesting questions from enquiring minds over there in Australia. Let�s move forward. Stop.
ellen asks: How long were you involved in the CIA?
Milt Bearden: I spent 30 years between 1964-1994 with the CIA. Twenty-four of those 30 years I spent around the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, South Asia.
topsnoop asks: Did you have to obtain clearance from the CIA to get involved in this film?
Milt Bearden: No, you have to obtain clearance if you write a screen play or write a book. I have written two books and part of a third, and they have to be cleared by the CIA to determine if there was any classified information contained in the text. For the film though, absolutely not. There was nothing in The Good Sheppard that required clearance.
jason asks: After watching The Good Shepherd , it could be tempting to draw the conclusion that a dysfunctional family was an occupational hazard for CIA agents. Do you think that was the case?
Milt Bearden: You know, I have had that question asked to me many, many times. My answer has been that family problems among people from the CIA and those in the clandestine services are about the same rate as the rest of the population. In the period that we are discussing, we took great pains to meet with Bob De Niro and the screenwriter to meet with the sons and daughters of the founders of the CIA and indeed we might be able to say that there was more pressure on families in those early days than today. I don�t think we should judge an entire population on this film, but the film is accurate on the composite characters that we have, particularly the Matt Damon character.
Sunken asks: This film has taken the last decade to take shape - for what period were you an adviser and was it challenging to be involved for that period of time?
Milt Bearden: Bob De Niro contacted me in 1997 with an idea for the first three films on the CIA. We began wandering about the world so that he could get into this particular universe. Our travels took us to Moscow where we had long sessions with my old adversaries in the KGB. We met with perhaps the paramount eastern spy of the era, Marcus Wolf in East Berlin where these two great showman, De Niro and Wolf, played games with each other for hours on end. We wandered off to Pakistan and into Afghanistan, and by the end of the first year together De Niro had began to understand the world that he was trying to get into. Don't forget that Bob De Niro is the type of actor who, if he was going to play the role of a taxi driver in New York, would actually drive a taxi in New York for a month to get the feel for it. He did the same for any number of the classic roles he played. We had a couple of screenplays that we pulled together that never quite met our demands. Then De Niro got the Good Shepherd screenplay from Eric Roth (Forest Gump, The Insider, Munich) and at that moment we knew we had our first project in hand. It took some years tweak it, put it together and get the studio's on board, but the product made its debut in the US last December and its been a remarkable film. Overall, it took more than eight years for Bob and I, and his team to pull this project together.
GrumpyTomato asks: Do you think the film is an accurate representation of the CIA as you saw it?
Milt Bearden: As you can see from this film, it is the earliest days, I came into the CIA just after The Bay of Pigs which took place in 1961. But in the artistic sense, this film portrays events and composites of people that were very prominent in WW2 until the Bay of Pigs. Some of the old timers who were around in those years have taken issue with the characters as they saw them because they felt for example that Matt Damon was really one person and not part of another and I think they were perhaps looking more for a documentary type film than the type of film that De Niro wanted to put together. In all cases of movies such as this one, you create metaphors rather than clear cut, fundamental incidents and events. I would say though that all of the issues that were dealt with in this film of over two and a half hours were faithfully portrayed within the context of the film, that is still the metaphor which is the way that it must be. You portray the art and the story that is put together. So, in that context, don�t spend too much time to try and make the �Edward Wilson� character be James Angleton or �Phillip Allen� to be Allan Dulles, but those are good markers for an audience as they move through the story. As far as settings and period issues and props that are on and around the offices that you will see in the film, there is almost total accuracy. Some problems in doing a period film are insurmountable; such as trying to film in Washington where there have been so many changes in post 9/11 in terms of security. But De Niro had a world class team work this film, and I think everything that needed to be accurate was spot on accurate in this film.
Blueboy asks: Do you see any similarities between the illusions and sleight of hand in filmmaking and the techniques that might be used by the CIA in their work? Do you think actors and agents have a lot in common?
Milt Bearden: That is a wonderful question. After I joined the CIA in 1964, we came out of a period that was depicted in The Good Sheppard as involving almost unmanageable paranoia. During those early years characters like �Edward Wilson� believed that the Soviets had a �Monster Plot� that literally controlled everything that the CIA believed about the Soviet Union. This had a crippling effect on our operations inside the Soviet Union, but in the late 60s we decided to move forward more boldly. One of the first things we did was to quietly engage certain segments of Hollywood to assist us in the art of misdirection, or slight of hand, disguised, illusions, and all the visual effects, arts that made people be something that perhaps wasn�t there, or not see something that was there. This was the beginning of a bold effort in Moscow and the rest of the Soviet Union that we carried out with stunning success until the great betrayals of the 1980s and 1990s. The common factors between a great spy and a great actor have become obvious to me as I worked on this film and others.
ciaagent asks: It seems that the CIA recruited, or certainly attracted, a particular �type� of person. Was there any official (or unofficial) personality test associated with becoming an agent?
Milt Bearden: There was a battery of tests to select the personnel who would go into what we called the clandestine services � the actual spies of the CIA. I am not sure I could in a list of words describe that person for you, but in general terms they wanted someone who had well above average intelligence, a high IQ, but they wanted the intelligence to be within a certain bandwidth. The belief is that if you are below a certain point you will have trouble, or if you are too smart you will become the problem yourself. They tried to screen thousands of applicants with questions to determine who was able to go through. This carries on today.
chris asks: Do you miss being in active service or are you happier to be away from the pressures this job would put on its agents?
Milt Bearden: I believe that every life has a couple of acts. I spent 30 years in the CIA and wouldn�t trade a single day for it. My career spanned the height of the Cold War until the end of the Soviet Union and I found it a perfect time to leave. I have written some books, worked on some films and I think this is the third act for me now. Whether or not we are in a world of make believe makes it no less exciting. While I wouldn�t trade a day of my years in the CIA, I don�t reflect on it all as I go about in my new career.
friend asks: What did you find the most rewarding part of your past job(s)?
Milt Bearden: One of the most hopelessly romantic undertakings I had was to be in charge of the CIA covert war reporting the Afghan resistance in their fight against the Soviet army. I was there for the last three years of the war in a role that was very close to 19th century British political advisor and quartermaster on the north-west frontier of India. During those three years we fought the Soviet army to a standstill and then forced it to turn around and walk out of Afghanistan. They left a million dead Afghans and a million and a half wounded and another five million in exile. In February 1989 they lost their engagement in Afghanistan and two years later they lost their empire.
select asks: Does Skull and Bones still exist? What influences does it have on our world today if any?
Milt Bearden: Skull and bones does indeed still exist. The questioner has gotten into an area of great speculation. I personally don�t think that skull and bones members carry all that much weight in the world, but one should note that both George W. Bush and John Kerry who ran against each other in 2004 were �bonesmen�! Conspiracy theorists include skull and bones in all the dark forces that �rule the universe�. I will leave it to the questioner to take a position on this. I went to Yale but was not skull and bones. I will leave it at that.
ellen asks: Has there been a real need for the CIA to be active since the end of the cold war?
Milt Bearden: A pretty good question. When the Soviet Union slipped beneath the waves, many felt that the CIA no longer had a primary mission. But 9/11 woke us up again, and while it is reasonably clear that CIA was not up to the task of preventing 9/11, it is now fully engaged in dealing with the issues that have followed 9/11. One might question, however, if the intelligence community of the USA will ever be able to manage the numbers of enemies that might be created by adventures and misadventures of policy.
Blowback asks: Do you think this movie will change people's "image" of the CIA?
Milt Bearden: It might. Most of the spy movies have fallen far short of the authenticity that De Niro has sought in this first film and will continue in subsequent films. I think that James Bond films are terrific entertainment but have nothing to do with reality. I would say pretty much the same about Matt Damon�s characters in the Bourne series. He is finishing up a new one in London now. These are great movies as well, but it is Bob De Niro�s aim to take the audience where they have never been. He views this series of CIA projects as being for the CIA what the Godfather series was for the mafia. I think you are seeing that approach in Hollywood these days. Movies like Private Ryan took the audience into an entirely new world of war movies, and other great directors are trying to do the same thing in other genre.
Potato asks: What sets this film apart from others than involve US Government agencies?
Milt Bearden: I think the authenticity and the lack of an agenda on the behalf of the director sets this apart. You see any number of films such as Enemy of the State, Three Days of the Condor and other films about government intelligence agencies in America that are more driven by agenda than the desire to really capture a period of history. I think that alone would set this apart from anything that has been done in the CIA in the past, and I would hope that subsequent films by De Niro would continue like that.
Interviewer: We have run out of time today, are there any last words you would like to share with our viewers today?
Milt Bearden: I would only give them a little insight into De Niro the director. As an outsider, I spent all this time on the project and all the time on the set, I thought he was elegant in the way that he handled the actors and was able to get the most out of their performances. I think that my opinion of top flight actors has changed forever after working with people like Damon and Angelina -- they are some of the hardest working people ever in terms of commitment. We have impressions that they are prima donnas and causing problems on the set, I saw none of that working with this group or with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts or Phillip Seymor Hoffman in Charlie Wilson�s War which will be launched next December. I think the audiences should lean back and try and see this film from as many different angles as they can. It�s not a film however, where you can spend a lot of time looking at the lines of a 1950s automobile, you might miss important and subtle dialogue. In many ways you want to watch this movie like a spy would watch it. Pay attention.
Interviewer: This concludes our Live Chat with Milt Bearden, 18 February 2007
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