Director Michael Cuesta on CIA Secrets and the Importance of Journalism in “Kill The Messenger”
Any thought that
the ‘70s-inspired political thriller genre is dead need look no further than Kill The Messenger, the true story of San Jose mercury News reporter Gary
Webb(played by Jeremy Renner), who back in the late ‘80s and
‘90s was leaked information by an
unlikely source revealing that the CIA knew about crack cocaine being imported
into the country by druglords, who in turn used the profits to fund Nicaraguan
Contras.
Also co-starring Mary Elisabeth Winstead, Michael Sheen, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry
Pepper, Oliver Platt, and Andy Garcia and more, the film creates
a direct resonance to what is going on in the world today in terms of how news
is reported both in the world of “entertainment journalism” and real-life
political events of far greater importance.
It also reteams
Renner with Michael Cuesta, who directed him in the little-seen indie 12 and
Holdingback in 2005, but who has gone on to become an Emmy-winning television
director on shows like Showtime’s “Homeland,” following a run of acclaimed
indie films like L.I.E. “Homeland” and “Messenger” has transitioned Cuesta into
a filmmaker who has become deeply invested investigations into government and
CIA involvement in controversial actions, something he is already exploring for
his next film project.
You
started out on the same indie and then went to TV…
Yeah, I
remember that he read a script that I wrote many years ago he wanted to direct.
I had never gotten that request from someone, another director wanting to
direct something I’ve written. Anyway, the movie never got made. It was a small
odd film that I wrote and he had notes about it but he wanted to come on board
as a director and at the time, I was like, “Miguel I love your work, but I kind
of want to do it.”
Which
one of you found this script?
My
representatives brought it to me. It was
developed by Universal Pictures and it was put in turnaround, I think
because journalism movies weren’t hot at the time. One had failed at the box
office—“State of Play,” that Russell Crowe thing—so it went into turnaround. I
think because of the timing, me coming on board, I’ve been known to take on a
couple of difficult subject matter as well. It’s my involvement with “Homeland”
and the success of that show and it’s showing of the inner workings of an
imperfect powerful agency. And then of course, I had worked with Jeremy before.
He came with the script—he was already attached—so that to me was a no-brainer.
Any chance to work with him again. I remember
the true story of the guy, but I didn’t know the extent to which he was discredited
and how his own kind turned on him. That I found heartbreaking but also
important to tell that story.
As
we saw in the title credits sequence, this broke after this huge war on drugs
campaign by the government.
The last thing
they wanted out there while Nancy Reagan was out there saying “Say No to Drugs”
was that they actually had a hand in that, absolutely.
Peter
(Landesman, the screenwriter) also has a background in journalism. I have to
imagine he did a ton of research.
I used Nick Schou’s
book in terms of digging in deeper. I talked to Peter but Peter worked as a
screenwriter on the film but he adapted those two books. I would say for me to
have a full understanding of the project was of course going back to Nick
Schou’s book “Kill The Messenger” but then going into Gary’s book , because it
was important to come from Gary’s point of view, so if you read Gary’s “Dark Alliance,” which is the whole story.
It’s 500 pages, a dense account of who all the cast of characters are , as well
as his journey through putting this story together.
I
was around at that time and what I remember was the outrage about the CIA
potentially putting crack
into poor neighbourhoods, which was
never really the story , but that’s what ended up being what the public remembered , more than anything else.
More than a
reporter that actually never said that it was this sort of conspiracy plot, but
it was spun like that, and that was one of the things that brought him down. I
make a point of that in the movie. A lot of the way the story was packaged and
what people turned it into was the CIA targeted
bad neighbourhoods, but what Gary was saying was that there was a
connection, but ne believed that it was just bad timing as far as crack being
invented and also people looking the way, turning a blind eye to just drugs
ending up on the streets of America in general.
If you’re dealing with guys who live in the States who are sending money
back, where are those drugs going? They knew.
Jeremy
was attached early on, but there are a lot of different roles and characters
like Ray Liotta shows up for a great scene we can’t actually talk about. In
fact, a lot of actors show up just for one scene, so how do you go about casting
something like this?
It was pretty easy to cast, as far as getting
big names or really great actors like
that, because they all play an integral art of Gary’s story, either for the
good or for the bad. I think that felt like they were all playing a real big
part of this story rather than just a cameo that could get cut, and they all
had their own agenda. Ray Liotta’s character is a combination of a few people.
(NOTE: Semi-SPOILERS for the next section although we cut out a few things to
keep it sort of vague) He’s more representatives of a story that Gary did get
that he was not allowed to use, so the timing was very close to reality in that
it was a DEA Agent who came with a lot of information about a CIA pilot that
was running drugs during that time, and Gary wasn’t able to use that story. We
combined that character with an ex-CIA operative that Gary need at this moment?
He needs that golden tickets to show up at his doorstep and just appear before
him. The irony was that that guy, his agenda was to use Gary as a priest so he
can confess, but almost like a psychologist, Gary can’t use it. He even says,
“You can’t use this.” And he tells him, “I’ll end up dead. This is something
you can’t use, so if I’m not going on record, this not going to help you.”
I’m
a little way of including that as that may be a pretty big spoiler for some.
No, don’t ,
because that was the straw that broke his back. Well, no, the straw that broke
was the paper writing a letter retracting (the story) but in reality, Webb did
go in with that but was not allowed to use it.
What
about the other aspects of doing a period piece even if it’s just 20 years ago?
Is it hard to do that kind
of thing?
I thought
the story was timeless. We did some screenings and people were confused
what time period it was, but it almost didn’t matter because the story is the
story, but it did matter in that this story was printed in ’96, so it came out
ten years after the fact. The story was never reported on much in the ‘80s
except for the Kerry investigation that went on and he was stone walled, so none
of the papers picked it up, very little. If anything, everything was buried, so
Gary’s story, the mob mentality that went on is the result of a lot of
jealously. A lot of these papers knew that thet had the story and they didn’t
get it.
That
still goes on with the internet and the
different trades who are always chasing each other to claim a story as an exclusive before anyone else
can get their story up.
Yeah, to get
scooped, right.
Sometimes
it’s just about who has the fastest fax machine receiving the press release.
Or to stay
behind a reporter who has brought the big one, like Gary did, I would think
that there are other reporters that have gotten close and were told to not go
down that path.
Especially
the L.A. Times and The Washington Post, they weren’t there.
Sure. He says
(the editor) at the L.A. Times that “five miles from our door. How did we miss
this?”
I’m
sure there were reporters with better CIA contacts..?
Like the
Washington Post.
This
film is a true testament to really good journalism.
Or the need for
it.
Like
with “State of Play,” because there is a need for the public to know that this
stuff happens in the world of journalism.
No completely.
I would say that if there’s one thing I would like people to take away is that,
the importance of dogged investigative reporting, journalism, and the
importance of these guys. The importance
to have cops on the beat like Gary was.
And
journalist who really stick to the story and do whatever it takes to get as
much facts and people on the record as possible.
Look, but you
can see why the Merc pulled away. You might not agree with it but you can
understand them sending other reporters back and getting conflicting stories or
this person disappeared.
It happened in
reality was very complicated so I felt like dramatically we had to have it be
like “your source is now gone and all these things are taken away and untrue.”
They didn’t actually print that. They just printed the apology letter saying
that mistakes were made in never getting CIA operative on the record, and Gary
made a point of, “Is that ever going to really happen?” A lot of the other
papers used their supposed CIA operatives as “unknown sources” and an “unknown
source” can be anyone! It’s like what you get on Fox News now, who comes on.
Some analyst comes on and “Who the hell is that guy?
That
also seems to happen all the time on the internet where someone reports a story
and backing it up only with “our source says…”
But no, they
put their sources on the internet, they were the first paper to do that,
because they felt the story—and this is from Webb, he said it in the
movie---had a high unbelievality factor , so they were the first paper to list
the links to his sources on the website, plus the transcripts of the interviews, essentially
letting people into his notebook. No one has done that before, so the irony is
that this guy did responsible reporting. Look, can anyone ever prove this? It’s
unprovable, “because it’s the CIA, they’re a secret organization, Jerry, they
don’t talk!” We have it in the dialogue.
You
would literally have to start secretly trailing CIA operatives which would be
almost impossible. Have you talked to any reporters who were working the news
beat during the time this was going on?
I have some across
two people who were at the Merc during that time. One person showed up at a San
Francisco screening—I was just there two days ago, in the Bay Area of
Berkley—and he was just thankful that the film got made, and then another guy called
into NPR and started to take it apart. He started to take Gary apart and I just
thought that was inappropriate. I’d say, “Give some facts about what Gry got
wrong” and he couldn’t. At least I got him to admit that mistakes were made by
the paper, too.
I’m sure there’s a lot of
stuff to be explored there.
It’s great drama
and there’s comedy in it. There’s the mistakes the CIA made…there was something
called “Codename: Bail,” a of people don’t know about it, and it was basically
a program that the CIA was working secretly outside of the other CIA, so the
left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. It was dealing with all
that we’re dealing with now, multiple alliances in the Middle East and I don’t
think our country knew how to deal with it at the time. When you had six
different versions of groups that were in Lebanon and Hezbollah came out of
that. That early ‘80s was they were formed. It’s not political, didactic…it’s
educational but also fun
“Kill The Messenger” is released and distributed by CAPTIVE
CINEMA.
SHOWING ON OCTOBER 15.
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