By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Stephen Gaghan: execute it so well they have to make it
Over at Written By, Stephen Gaghan‘s ire remains on fire as he talks about the personal reasons Traffic and Syriana had to be written. “What is it about us that we need war on an abstraction to define ourselves? And why are the details of actual life such a potent defense against that abstraction?
“To paraphrase Lyndon Johnson: All politics is personal. To quote Robert Caro, Johnson’s biographer, “Absolute power doesn’t corrupt absolutely; it reveals absolutely.” We hold a mirror up to ourselves and find our political institutions in the reflection. We are our government. We are what is done in our name. So what kind of government are we? If our self-interest is borne out in our personal ambition and we wish the world to be shaped in that image, then what is the shape of the world? And what is the shape of us? … “You realize they will never make that movie. That movie will never get made. It’s too political; people don’t go to films they can see on the news. You can’t show the War on Terror to be wrong or, worse, absurd and tragic. There’s no clear-cut antagonist. No hero. No victory. No life-lesson to go home with. Too much is left unanswered. Politics is personal? The limits of self-interest? Where are the easy answers? … Well, as a filmmaker friend of mine said, “Isn’t the goal always to write something unmakeable, but then execute it so well they have to make it?” [Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, several letters to the editor examine the factuality of an op-ed that attacked Syriana‘s factuality.