BlownPotential

Oh, What a Tangled Web Steve Weaves
The Writer / Director of “Syriana” talks about
how he created his Middle Eastern Oil Epic

Celebrity scoop with Joel Fowler

I should automatically like screenwriter / director Stephen Gaghan, but I don’t – not instantaneously at least. He sort of scares me.

Obviously, as someone who appreciates the written word, I should be totally jealous of his literary ability (a talent which has earned him both an Emmy and an Oscar), and I am. Yet, there’s something more to my initial aversion then just mere envy – I just can’t figure out what it is.

Maybe, it’s his appearance that puts me off kilter – painfully thin, oversized black-rimmed prescription glasses, a sharply angular face that makes him look like a cross between a younger Mick Jaggar and an older Jon Bon Jovi (a comparison he himself makes). His intelligence emits that ‘too cool’ arrogant vibe that so many Hollywood people pack with them for a trip to the East Coast. And yet, once we finally started talking, Stephen’s soft jovial tone and his funny self-indignation streak come to light, as did many other facts I did not realize.

First, we are both Kentucky natives. Nine years my senior, Stephen was shucking oysters at a local country club in the same city and at the same time I was sitting in a third grade classroom, learning penmanship and multiplication tables. At forty years of age and on the cusp of releasing “Syriana”, a fifty million dollar political drama set on four continents, a film he both wrote and directed that’s already garnering end-of-the-year award buzz, Stephen Gaghan is a true role model for any small town boy or girl who wants to live out his or her dreams, no matter how grand they might be.

The kitchen gig was just a wayward stop for Gaghan, who graduated from a Louisville high school and moved to Lexington just to get out of his parents’ house. At 19, his journey led him to first New York City (where he struggled just to find a job, occasionally catching on with literary magazines like ‘The Paris Review’), and then in 1993 with a move to Los Angeles (where he struggled to find a non-television writing job). After seven years of writing on both hits (‘NYPD Blue’, ‘The Practice’) and misses (‘Sleepwalkers’, ‘New York Undercover’) for the small screen, the turn of the century changed Stephen’s life irrevocably.

In 2000, two screenplays Stephen composed made major impacts both personally and economically. The first, the Tommy Lee Jones & Samuel L. Jackson military law drama “Rules of Engagement”, paired Gaghan with a mentoring figure in famed director William Friedkin who Stephen describes as ‘such a larger than life figure. He’s really bombastic and really smart, though I don’t always [artistically] see eye-to-eye with him.’ Gaghan is such a fan Friedkin’s masterpiece “The French Connection”, that he actually met with cinematographer Owen Roizman before production on “Syriana” began just to technically understand how that ‘perfect film’ was shot and borrow from it whenever he could.

As for 2000’s second release, the drug trade drama “Traffic” earned Stephen Gaghan both critical and professional respect from the Hollywood community. It was on this film that Stephen learned how to sculpt the multi-layered narrative that has become his staple – a method he continues in “Syriana” with George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Jeffery Wright all playing equal protagonists from around the globe.

So, how did his avant-garde writing style come about? “On “Traffic”, I actually started with a single protagonist, but it just seemed like time traveling [to me] – from growing the crop in Columbia to processing in Mexico then [smuggling it] to the border, and then on to D.C. – [at some point, the reality] just stops holding water. In T.V., you do an A, B, C, and maybe a D storylines. Never did multiple protagonists enter the picture until Soderbergh introduced me to the [Simon Moore British] miniseries.”

Does Gaghan feel that a multiple narrative is necessary when examining controversial subject matters like “Traffic’s” illegal narcotics or in “Syriana’s” case, foreign oil dependency? “I don’t necessarily think you have to fragment your protagonist in order to tackle such weighty topics. It’s really just a technical solution to a simple problem, which is, if you have a large canvas, you have no way of putting your protagonist in all the places he needs to be to cover the topic [you are trying to address].”

Critics might point to “Syriana” as a liberally slanted piece critical of the U.S. government (and the C.I.A specifically). Gaghan couldn’t disagree more. “I do feel the entertainment obligation [to my audience]. I was looking at [doing something like] “Three Days of the Condor” – a paranoid thriller, which was sort of a genre film… With those [1970’s] films though, in the last five minutes, someone shows up and explains ‘it was big oil that did it!’ and the audience goes ‘ohhh… big oil…’ In the intervening thirty years, now that [big philosophical idea in which someone is up to no good] is the starting point rather than the ending.”

As Stephen explains it, his latest venture was one born out of necessity to explore a rapidly evolving world. “In 1998, when I was researching “Traffic”, I went to see the head of counter-narcotics at the Pentagon, which was in the same little suite with counter-terrorism, just three or four little offices [strung together]. You think of what has changed and it’s just staggering… So, George Clooney and I wanted to explore oil and its intersection with Middle Eastern politics as [the U.S.] is engaging in this democracy export project [in Iraq]… But, there are other facts to consider, like there are ten million cars in China and in another twenty years it expected to grow to 100 million – not to mention the fact that the Chinese hold the most U.S. Treasury bills. Who’s getting the oil then?”

So, were there any other oddities that Gaghan stumbled upon while he was research this project? Did I even need to ask? “Yeah, it turns out Bob Baer (the former C.I.A. agent whose book “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism” was the basis for “Syriana”) is on a first name basis with most of the big heads in the oil business. The former Iraqi bureau chief of the Central Intelligence Agency can pick up the phone and talk to a billionaire vacationing in the South of France and be treated like a son?”

“Isn’t that strange?” Stephen appends to this last statement in order to heighten the sarcasm such an interlocking connection breeds. Though, as Gaghan points out, CIA agents really are the Nexus point for information transfer around the globe, which is why they make such a perfect cinematic character to use in trying to tie all these ideas together.

So, what of the many geopolitical philosophies addressed in “Syriana” worries Stephen the most? His answer was not only surprising, it was bitingly candid --- “what scares me and scares me for [the future of] my children is all this strident certainty, from both the right and the left [political points of view]. As a skeptical American, I’m fearful of demagoguery, even if I believe in the points [being addressed]. In this film, I have tried to go around the issues and [factually] show all sides of them.”

Now I realize why I didn’t take too easily to Stephen when I first met him! I’ve interviewed so many self-absorbed performers and even more egotistical directors in the past few months that when someone as frank and honest as Gaghan comes along, he puts me ill at ease. Minds like his are uncommon in Hollywood, which is exactly the reason why American audiences should be grateful that such a talented artist chose to explore such issues – issues that will continue to affect the present and future perceptions of the United States to the world at large.

I know I certainly appreciate Stephen Gaghan a whole lot more… that is, now that I’m not afraid of him any more.