Like many spies, Valerie Plame juggled two lives – her job running covert operations for the CIA, and her family life as a wife and mother to twins.
Her and her husband Joe Wilson’s involvement in the events leading up to the war in Iraq made startling headlines – and perfect fodder for the big screen, with Plame’s story given the Hollywood treatment in Fair Game.
Yet, despite the intricacies of this true-life story, the focus of the film is more on the effects the whole affair had on the personal lives of Plame and Wilson, and the filmmakers have succeeded in effortlessly combining both the political and the personal aspects of the case.
“Certainly it was a fascinating story from a political point of view,” says Fair Game producer Jerry Zucker in the film’s production notes. “But the more we heard from Valerie and Joe about the effect this had on their marriage, the more we realised that here was a deeply personal human drama.”
Valerie Plame was an 18-year veteran of the agency. Her husband Joe Wilson was a former American diplomat, whose heroic work evacuating thousands of Americans from Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait was applauded by President Bush.
Yet when their respective findings on Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme is ignored, events snowball as Wilson writes a controversial article in The New York Times telling his version of events, causing uproar in Washington circles and leading to Plame’s identity being leaked, endangering her, her family and colleagues.
Their lives are turned completely upside down as Plame is made a scapegoat in the whole affair. MSNBC’s journalist Chris Matthews even called them to say that Karl Rove (then a senior adviser to President Bush) had said that Plame was “fair game”. “You couldn’t make this up,” says Janet Zucker, producer of the extraordinary story.
As the filmmakers examined the story in further detail they realised this was more than a political scandal; it was an issue that cut to the heart of the protagonists’ lives.
Joe was an inveterate truth-teller who wanted to fight back by firing on all cylinders; alleging that exposing Valerie’s identity was a criminal act.
She, on the other hand, having led a secret life for so long, learned that suddenly being thrust into the spotlight was a huge change of circumstances which she found hard to deal with.
The experience proved to be a terrible strain on her and her family and friends as she dealt with the fall-out of her ‘outing’ – including receiving death threats and the horrible truth of the danger her many contacts worldwide would face now her cover was blown.
It was Plame and Wilson’s characters and the conflict they faced that inspired screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. “I’m not sure I know how to write political scenes,” says Jez Butterworth. “But characters I know”.
Their work was cut out for them. Plame had written a memoir which would of course come in useful but it was off limits until the CIA vetted it.
Janet Zucker elaborates: “As we began developing the project we discovered that conveying what happened to Valerie Plame (who served as a consultant on the film) and Joe Wilson was complicated by a number of factors, including the fact that much of the work Valerie did for the CIA remains classified”.
So the writers conducted some of their own research to “fill in the blanks” and to seek out people to get the first-hand accounts so crucial to the creative proves. “The case was covered in the press (and) everyone took a side. We needed to know what actually happened,” says John-Henry Butterworth.
Although, understandably, they faced plenty of reluctance from various sources, they did end up interviewing many people and were finally given access to Plame’s heavily edited memoirs.
With certain blanks still left to be filled, however, it became necessary for a story as complex as this for the Butterworths to condense time and fictionalise certain events.
Some composite characters were also created for the story.
“These are meant to be representative of the types of intelligent sources Valerie might have contacted in her work,” explains Jerry Zucker.
Although the filmmakers have striven to present the story as accurately as possible, producer Bill Pohlad says, “Fair Game is not meant to be a purely historical document or political polemic. It is an emotional portrait of two extraordinary, brave and determined people caught up in the maelstrom of history and of a marriage that survived the ultimate test.”