Plame's Spy Novel Coming From Penguin in 2012

We heard last year that notoriously outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on a spy novel with mystery writer Sarah Lovett.  Today Deadline reveals that the publisher will be new Penguin imprint Blue Rider Press, and that the book will be out in 2012.  Plame previously penned a non-fiction memoir. She was also the subject of a Decemberists song, of Bourne Identity director Doug Liman's excellent 2010 spy movie Fair Game (review here), and served as a techinical advisor on the first season Liman's CIA-set TV series Covert Affairs (review here).  Covert Affairs: Season One is out today on DVD from Universal.

Special Features Revealed For Covert Affairs DVD

We already heard that USA's excellent freshman spy series Covert Affairs is coming to DVD on May 17th from Universal.  Now DVD Active has the list of special features. "Extras will include feature commentaries on 3 episodes featuring stars Piper Perabo and Christopher Gorham; executive producers Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) and David Bartis; and show creators Matt Corman and Chris Ord, deleted scenes, a gag reel, an exclusive tour of the Covert Affairs set, featurettes ("Welcome to The Farm", "Blind Insight"), and a descriptive narration of the visual elements of the series for visually impaired viewers." Sadly no commentary with technical advisor Valerie Plame Wilson or featurettes on the real CIA as a workplace like I'd hoped for, but still a good assortment of extras! I'm glad, as I loved this series.

Read my review of the Covert Affairs pilot here.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Covert Affairs

TV Shows On DVD reports that USA's summer hit Covert Affairs (which made my own list of the best new spy TV shows of 2010) will hit DVD on May 17.  Covert Affairs stars Piper Perabo as freshman CIA officer Annie Walker. While there are some of the soap opera elements that have haunted the genre since Alias, it's mainly a spy show as workplace dramady.  I've always been a fan of the "desk" side of the spy drama, and I think Covert Affairs handles the office politics better than any other US spy series I can think of.  Certainly better than the histrionics of CTU!  Of course, this is still a USA show, which means it's also got its share of in-the-field excitement as well.  It's a solid, fairly believable character-driven espionage series. 

No extras have been announced for this release, but I hope that changes.  With a show like this that goes out of its way more than most to depict a fairly realistic CIA, I'd love to see some featurettes about that attention to detail and attempts at realism.  I'd also like to see an interview or hear a commentary with the show's technical advisor (and obvious inspiration for Kari Matchett's character), Valerie Plame-Wilson, who has already recorded a commentary track for the DVD release of Doug Liman's movie about her, Fair Game (review here). Liman also produces Covert Affairs.

Covert Affairs: Season 1, a 3-disc set, will retail for $59.98, but obviously it will be findable cheaper than that.  This artwork is a mock-up, subject (and likely) to change. 

Read my review of the Covert Affairs pilot here.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Fair Game (2010)

DVD Active reports that Summit Entertainment will release Bourne Identity director Doug Liman's latest spy movie, Fair Game, on DVD and Blu-ray on March 29. Liman finds the Le Carré-esque spy story at the heart of the infamous Valerie Plame affair, and makes the most of it, bringing the same "in the moment" sort of hand-held, real-time camera work that captured the action in Bourne to the conference rooms of CIA headquarters in Langley–and making intense debates just as exciting as a car chase! (Read my full review here.) The only extra seems to be a commentary with the real Valerie Plame Wilson (played marvelously by Naomi Watts in the film) and Joe Wilson (played by Sean Penn), which is a bit disappointing.  I would have like to hear from Liman. Still, Fair Game is a fantastic spy movie (among my favorites of the year), and well worth checking out at home if you missed its limited theatrical run. Retail is $22.99 for the DVD and $30.49 for the Blu-ray, but both will inevitably be available online and in stores for less than that.

Movie Review: Fair Game (2010)

It’s interesting that both Bourne directors decided to make movies about the search for Iraqi WMD that was going on at about the time that the first Bourne movie hit theaters–and that both, though featuring very different approaches to the subject matter–turned out to be excellent spy movies. Whereas Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone (reviewed here) focused on thrilling, Bourne-like action, Doug Liman delivers an equally thrilling entry in the more realistic, serious side of the spy genre sometimes referred to as the “Desk Spy” sub-genre. (In this case, that moniker is a bit of a misnomer, though, as the protagonist does indeed go into the field. But the film’s most exciting moments are those in Langley conference rooms.) And refreshingly, in stark contrast to the Bourne series, neither of these films vilify the CIA!

Fair Game (not to be confused with the 1995 Cindy Crawford vehicle!) tells the story of a woman who, against her wishes, became the most famous American spy of the last decade: Valerie Plame Wilson. The story became a hot-button political issue sparking fierce debate on both sides of the aisles, but at its core it always seemed to me a classic spy yarn that could be torn straight out of Le Carré: a covert operative running dangerous missions in the field is exposed and hung out to dry by her bureaucratic masters for political reasons. That’s a log-line that with little tweaking could easily be applied to at least three Le Carré books (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War and The Honourable Schoolboy) and probably more. It’s the stuff of classic spy stories! And that’s exactly the approach that Liman takes to this material: he tells the spy story. In doing so (as with the best spy fiction), he tells many other stories too, and a film that begins as a flat-out spy movie very naturally morphs into a political thriller and a family drama by its denouement. In a genre landscape rife with popcorn explorations of spy marriages (Undercovers, True Lies and particularly Liman’s own Mr. and Mrs. Smith), it’s very interesting to see a fact-based tale of a marriage rocked by one spouse’s secret life. In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Liman used conventions of the spy genre to humorously explore relationship issues. In Fair Game, he achieves a blistering combination of spy movie and family drama. The former had a gunfight at the kitchen table; the latter has a disagreement that leads to raised voices in the same setting... and the stakes feel much higher in the latter.

Naomi Watts is excellent as Plame, as is Sean Penn as her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson. Even before Valerie’s exposure, her career inflicts constant trauma on their marriage. Valerie’s ceaseless business trips to Kuala Lumpur or Amman, Jordan take their toll on her home life. Her young children ask when their mom will be back, and their father can’t give them an answer. Even he doesn’t know where she is or how long she’ll be gone, though he is one of the few people who knows her true profession.

Besides the intense portrait of a possibly decaying marriage, Fair Game shines as a spy thriller. The movie opens with Valerie undercover in Kuala Lumpur. These scenes may be familiar ones, but that familiarity is essential to establishing the genre before shaking up its formula. That genre familiarity is aided immeasurably by an excellent score by John Powell of the percussion-heavy, pounding variety with which he has redefined the sound of the spy movie in the last decade. It occurred to me watching this film that Powell is really the first person to do that since John Barry defined it to begin with in the Sixties. Both composers have worked within a wide spectrum of sub-genres, from outlandish fantasy (You Only Live Twice in Barry’s case; Knight and Day for Powell) to grounded, serious action (From Russia With Love; the Bourne films) to gritty drama full of bureaucratic hurdles (The Ipcress File; Fair Game), applying their signature motifs across the board. While many great composers have worked in the spy genre over the last several decades (and some have experimented with totally different sorts of scores), no one has so exhaustively overhauled the sound of spy movies as Powell. Barry’s jazz-infused style remained the expected and accepted soundtrack of the genre up until the 2000s (when it may have been partially done in by Austin Powers). Now it’s propulsive percussion–which offers somewhat less room for variation, but perfectly compliments the high-energy spy movies being made today–and Powell brings that in spades to Fair Game, signaling spy to the audience as loudly as Barry-like trumpet flourishes did in the past. Granted, the visuals and the settings do that as well, but in the case of real-life subject matter that could have been handled a number of different ways, it’s important to establish the territory as early as possible.
 

The scenes of Valerie recruiting assets overseas and eventually sending them into harm’s way deliver exactly what fans of the serious spy genre want, but as with many of the best examples of that side of the genre, the scenes back in the office are even more rewarding. Liman operates the camera himself, and brings the same handheld craziness for which the Bourne movies are famous not to running-through-Baghdad action scenes, but to meetings in Langley conference rooms! The constantly shifting, cinema verite-style camera work combined with naturalistic lighting really makes you feel like you’re there–and it’s harrowing! Fans of the Le Carré school of spy novels know how harrowing and suspenseful a good author can make the bureaucratic side of spying, but I’ve never seen the day-to-day business of CIA officers conveyed with such a sense of urgency on film before. You really get the sense that this is important work, and that lives and indeed the very fate of the nation depend on decisions made within these cramped walls. If the Bourne movies (particularly Greengrass’s–for better or for worse) redefined the way that action is portrayed in spy movies, Fair Game redefines the way intrigue is portrayed. If there’s ever a movie version of The Sandbaggers, it should be filmed like this.

Despite accusations from people who probably didn’t see the film, Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone managed to explore the WMD issue without becoming a political film. I can’t say the same for Doug Liman’s Fair Game, although despite the presence of outspoken activist Sean Penn (whose own extra-textual persona unfortunately distracts from what’s really a very wonderful performance during a patriotic speech at the movie’s finale), the director approaches what became a hotly politicized story about as apolitically as could be possible. Liman doesn’t engage in any of the games of speculation so popular among media pundits on both sides about how high up in the administration the decision to expose an undercover CIA operative went. Instead he sticks to the non-controversial official version of the facts, laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of the only person convicted of a crime in the matter, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and self-confessed State Department source Richard Armitage.

Libby is the only key figure in the Administration portrayed with any substantial screen time by an actor. The only time we ever see the President or the Vice President, it’s done using actual TV footage from the time–not cut into the movie directly, but playing on televisions in the scenes. It’s a tricky approach that could have gone wrong, but it works. Having lived through this little bit of history so recently, I also found it neat to see Liman’s interpretation of what went on behind the scenes of those well-known soundbites. He gives the feeling of filling in the blanks, which works well. In a bold move, he solidifies that approach by ending with footage of the real Valerie Plame testifying before Congress instead of Watts. It’s a jarring move, but Liman pulls it off and it serves as a good reminder that this sort of intrigue really happens, and isn't just the realm of Le Carré and his ilk.

Fair Game is an excellent movie that doesn’t dwell on the political debate fueled by the events depicted, but instead delivers an incredibly satisfying spy story and family drama. The lead actors turn in excellent performances that should be recognized come awards season, but ultimately what this movie will be remembered for in the annals of spy film history is the way Doug Liman (aided by John Powell) brazenly redefines the backroom intrigue of the Serious side of the genre. Fair Game is to Serious spy movies what the Bourne films proved to be to Action ones.

Tradecraft: Lots Of Ludlum Developments, Including TV Series

Deadline files two reports today on Robert Ludlum adaptations.  First, the trade blog reports that writer Jesse Wigutow has signed on to do a quick rewrite on Summit's remake of The Osterman Weekend.  Presumably the draft he'll be polishing is Simon Kinberg's, since Deadline asserts that Kinberg (who at one time was set to make this his directorial debut) is still involved as a producer, along with Peter Davis, Bourne Identity director Doug Liman (who probably deserves his own blog label by now, since his name comes up here so often) and Jeffrey Weiner, who controls the rights to Ludlum's books.  As previously reported, RED director Robert Schwentke is circling the project, and apparently the purpose of this rewrite is to entice him to commit to it as his next film. Yes, please! Bring on more Ludlum movies, especially while the most promising one of the many in development, The Matarese Circle, is tied up in the hell that is MGM at the moment.

Second, and perhaps more interestingly, as though there have been several mini-series, there has never been a TV series based on the works of Robert Ludlum before, Deadline also reports that just such a series is now in development at CBS. According to the trade blog, Anthony Zuiker, the creator of CSI, is developing a spy series called Treadstone. Treadstone "centers on the workings of Treadstone 71, the black-ops arm of the CIA featured in the Ludlum novels. Yes, that's the shadowy group for which David Webb worked in Ludlum's novels, with whom he created and assumed his more famous identity as assassin Jason Bourne. Deadline doesn't indicate whether or not this Treadstone will be more closely affiliated with the organization in Ludlum's novels, or the one in Universal's recent Bourne movies. Whereas the motivation behind Treadstone in the novels is basically heroic, the Treadstone of the movies is a much more sinister organization.  It was also, I believe, officially shut down by Brian Cox's character, Abbott. If the series takes place in the movie universe (which seems likely), then it would make more sense to feature a reactivated Treadstone under new leadership than for it to be a prequel to the films set in the late 90s or early 2000s.  I think this is actually a really good way to keep the brand alive while the studio figures out how to progress with the Bourne film series without Paul Greengrass and very possibly without Matt Damon.  Depending on how closely the TV show is tied into the film universe (would Joan Allen do TV?), it could also serve as a breeding ground for new agents to carry the film franchise.  The project has a script commitment from the network, and considering Zuiker's involvement, I'd say it has a good chance to progress further quickly. John Glenn (Eagle Eye) is writing the pilot.