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RD: Charlie, you’ve said that Winston Churchill is your hero. Why?
Wilson: There’s a story there. I used to drink a lot. On one occasion, they made me go to a class, at 7.30 on Saturday mornings, about not drinking whisky. The teacher was a radical former drunk and there’s nothing more insufferable. At one point he said, “Can you imagine the contribution Winston Churchill could have made had he not been an alcoholic?” I said, “I suppose it depends how you look at it. But he won the Nobel Prize for literature. He wrote his first serious book in his 20s. He wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. And in his spare time, he saved Western civilisation. So if it’s all right with you, professor, I’ll take him drunk.” RD: You secured billions for a secret war in a country most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Has anything like that happened before or since?
Wilson: Not that I know of. On the other hand, we had a case in which there were no grey areas. I don’t think there are any people in Congress, whether they’re liberal or conservative, who are not patriots. We were able to make this work for years without partisanship and without a single damaging leak to the press. That’s what’s unheard of. I did love to have a good time and I did break all the rules. I got caught sometimes too. But I hated communism because I hated tyranny of any kind. Still do. RD: What’s most interesting about the film is that the heroes aren’t all good and the villains aren’t all bad.
Wilson: Let’s take the Russians out of it. On our side, the villains truly weren’t all bad. Our opponents were CIA people who had been doing things their way for 40 years and couldn’t imagine doing them any other way. They were heroic guys in their own right, but they would say things like “We don’t want to irritate the Soviet Union.” I would hear that and not be able to breathe. RD: Tom, Charlie Wilson’s War is more complicated than some of your other films. I’m thinking of Saving Private Ryan, in which we know whom to cheer for at every moment.
Hanks: This is a tale that deals with something that is probably impossible to capture on film: how politics works. Politics and storytelling in films are antithetical processes, because in films you always have to see progress and in politics you don’t always get progress. My desire was to make as complex a film as possible: here’s what happened, here are the people who did it and here’s how they did it. I think we’ve done OK. My hope is that [viewers] spend time talking about this film when it’s over—what it meant, what the repercussions were, what was good or bad about it. RD: Throughout the film, we see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes in Washington. Do you think people get to hear enough about the details?
Hanks: I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but by and large the popular media isn’t that interested in telling the whole story, because they can’t wrap it up succinctly. There’s not always a good guy and a bad guy. If you try to actually explain the particulars of a complicated issue, you’re going to get laughed at. Hanks: Charlie, do you think you could have got away with this today? Given the media now—with things like the Internet and bloggers—what would have happened to your secret war?
Wilson: We couldn’t have done it.
Hanks: I don’t think so either. I’m one of those who are trying to figure out if the constant blaring of the media, from the left and the right, has taken us to a point where there’s no legitimate discussion. And as a result, there’s no chance of balance and respectful compromise. How do you arrive at a point where you get any sort of overall bigger picture? Click here to read page 3 (of 3) |
