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Reese Witherspoon at the premiere of "Rendition" held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif. on October 10, 2007.
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New Line Cinema’s compelling new thriller Rendition takes a provocative look at the complex political issues surrounding the U.S. government’s policy of “extraordinary rendition,” which is the abducting of foreign nationals who are deemed a threat to national security, for the purposes of detention and interrogation in secret overseas prisons.
Spanning two continents, the film tracks the lives of Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a CIA analyst based in North Africa, who is forced to question his assignment after he witnesses the brutal and unorthodox interrogation of an Egyptian-American, by secret North African police; Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), the Egyptian-American chemical engineer whose family emigrated to the States when he was a boy, and who is now suspected of a terrorist act; his pregnant wife Isabella El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon), who does everything in her power to find her missing husband, who has seemingly disappeared during a flight from Cape Town, South Africa to Washington, D.C., by enlisting the help of a politically-connected college friend; Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), who uncovers the troubling fact that Anwar has been shipped off, on the orders of the CIA’s head of terrorism, Corrinne Whitman (Meryl Streep), to a third world country for interrogation; and Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor), the head of the secret prison, who has personal problems of this own, with a rebellious daughter, Fatima (Zineb Oukach), and her Islamic fundamentalist boyfriend, Khalid (Moa Khouas).
Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon and Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal talk to MediaBlvd Magazine, along with director Gavin Hood, about the reality of Rendition.
MediaBlvd Magazine> Why do you think people should see a movie about this policy?
Reese Witherspoon> I think it’s a film that has a lot of different, wonderful elements to it. There is definitely a romance to it, and there are thriller aspects. It’s not just a film about a message, where you sit there for two hours. It’s a movie that raises a lot of questions and it really makes you think about a lot of the practices that are going on nowadays, and whether or not they are legal, ethical or even constitutional.
MediaBlvd> Jake, you play a man who gives ups his career for what’s right, as opposed to Peter Sarsgaard’s character, who decides not to? Did you ever consider playing his role, or were you happy with the role you had?
Jake Gyllenhaal> I would much rather be the guy who makes the really good choice. I’d hate to be Peter’s character. The irony is that most likely, in reality, we would both make the opposite decisions. I would make the bad choice and he would make the right one. And, also, I don’t think, if you were to ask the character whether he does the right or the wrong thing, that’s what he’d say. I think he’s pretty practical. For him, it’s between what works and what doesn’t work
MediaBlvd> Gavin, what made you want to take on Rendition as your next project?
Gavin Hood> After Tsotsi, I was looking for a film that I felt would be something good to follow with. Kelley’s script came across my desk and I started reading, and I didn’t know much about rendition, frankly. I read Rendition on the cover, and it could have been Beethoven’s 9th. I didn’t know I thought that maybe it was the rendition of a song. So, I opened the script and started reading, and I just found that I was captivated and kept turning the pages because I wanted to know what happened next. I thought that Kelley had drawn incredibly diverse characters that were all emotionally rooted and real. And, when I got to the end of the script, I also had a lot of questions. And I thought that, if I had been emotionally engaged and wanted to know what happened next and, in addition, the script raised questions that I wanted to talk to somebody about, then maybe an audiences would feel the same way. But, of course, when you’ve read a script, there is no one to talk to. So, I googled rendition and I found out a lot I didn’t know about. Then, we engaged, over a period of months, in discussions with Kelley, and met with CIA agents, with whom we discussed the pros and cons of this current policy. And, I said, “This is something I feel we should talk about.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it briefly now, I grew up in a country where we didn’t have a constitution. We had detention without trial in the ‘80’s, when I was a young law student there. And, we looked at the American Constitution as a document that we felt our country desperately needed. To feel that that great document, and The Geneva Conventions, which America was largely behind writing, after the horrors of the second World War, and to see these great principles potentially being chipped away, was quite a shock. Now that I have American kids, I feel even more strongly about it because I believe in the founding principals of this nation. So, I felt that this film would, perhaps, in some way, contribute to a discussion that I feel is important, if we are going to chip away at those principals, in any way.
MediaBlvd> What was it like, doing your first studio film?
Gavin> To be honest, when I initially started on this movie, I was somewhat intimidated by many of these illustrious actors, but they very quickly put me at ease. I remember the first day with Reese, there were paparazzi everywhere, down the street. And, what’s so amazing is that she really doesn’t remember. On the first day we shot, she was playing soccer with the boy who plays her son. She really is the pro that goes, “Let’s just do the work.” But, I had never been exposed to that level of paparazzi scrutiny and it was really quite intimidating, for a moment. Reese said to me, “Gavin, let’s just ignore them and do the work.”
MediaBlvd> What city were you in?
Gavin> We were shooting in Pasadena. We shot the only scene that was in Chicago, in a house that closely resembled a house in Chicago, as if that really matters, in the context of the themes and ideas of the story. And so, we were in Pasadena, and there were a lot of paparazzi trying to climb over the barricades that our assistant directors had put up. Shooting on long lenses and I thought, ‘My god, what does this mean?’ And Reese literally said to me, ‘Don’t worry about it. Let’s just do the work.’ And as much as it affected her, I found after a couple of days that it no longer affected me either. It was a little baptism by fire and then these guys made me feel very at home. I think the great thing about these actors is they are actors first and foremost and they focus on the work and that’s what we did.
MediaBlvd> Reese, what was the most challenging thing about this film for you?
Reese> Certainly, I think the challenge of doing an ensemble piece is that your storyline is so short that every scene you are doing is a pivotal moment in that character’s journey. So, everything was heightened and very dramatic. I definitely was nervous, the day I had to work with Meryl Streep. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it. Definitely, the ride to work that day was nerve wracking. But, she was wonderful. She’s completely intimidating, completely professional, and she had a thousand ideas.
Gavin> She contributed enormously to that scene, in terms of some of the dialogue we used.
Reese> Definitely. She immediately helped the scene, and elevated it. She’s definitely worth every minute of screen time. She definitely makes the film better.
MediaBlvd> Was she there for every take?
Reese> Yeah, she was. She was always in character and, as soon as you cut, she’s the nicest, warmest, funniest person. She was great.
MediaBlvd> Did you talk to any women who had husbands that were not American?
Reese> I think that is what really drew me to the part. I was excited about imagining a life that is very much like my own. She’s a mother with two children, and she’s fallen in love with a Muslim man and married him. As someone who has lived a life without having religious intolerance or racial profiling ever touch her world, my character was suddenly experiencing an extreme of one of those circumstances. I guess all you can do, as an actor, is imagine it. But, I think that was one of the more interesting parts of the character that drew me to the script.
MediaBlvd> Why call the location for the torture North Africa, instead of Egypt or wherever it’s actually supposed to be?
Gavin> Kelley’s script originally did set the film in Egypt, and we were going to shoot in Egypt. And then, we were not able to because we simply could not get the cast insured to go there, so we had to look for somewhere else. But, we found that there was a tremendous amount of fury on the Internet about us making Egypt look bad. We know that renditions have happened in Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Guantanamo Bay, etc. So, there are black sites in a number of countries. And, we very quickly realized that many of our cast and crew come from countries which do not enjoy the kind of civil liberties that Americans enjoy. Any of those countries I named would potentially cause some backlash to our cast and crew. So, we used “North Africa,” in the interests of the safety of our cast and crew. It was also in keeping with the notion that nobody knows where anybody is when they are rendered. We did it because Reese has no idea where her husband has gone, and he has no idea where he is. People are flown to destinations and they are not sure where they are. These things happen to real people, and there are greater risks for some of our cast and crew, in terms of the realities of the possibilities of detention and torture.
MediaBlvd> Jake, how did you go about researching this role? Did you get to meet with anyone in the CIA, who had done this in the past?
Jake> Not in person, no, but over the phone. I never talked to anybody who I don’t think would admit or say they were involved in any sort of extraordinary rendition situation. But, I only talked to CIA officers for fact checking. I found that, when you talk to someone who has a job like that, its very technical and the questions you want, as an actor, are a little bit more emotional, but I think that’s a real key into a character, anyway. And so, a lot of it was actually watching movies of people who played CIA agents and officers. And then, I also watched a couple movies with people who have played alcoholics.
MediaBlvd> Which movies?
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Jake Gyllenhaal at the premiere of "Rendition" held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif. on October 10, 2007.
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Jake> The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which is a merging of the alcoholic and the spy. And then, I watched The Good Shepard, which I thought was a pretty incredible performance from Matt Damon. It’s more about the less he does than the more he does, and that’s the kind of performance that I look up to. So, I just tried to copy that.
MediaBlvd> With the stories being so separate, were there separate units shooting different stories?
Gavin> No, we shot single camera through the movie. We started in the States with Reese and Peter’s story, and then we went to Morocco and shot Jake and Omar. We were moving between shooting their story, and Zineb and Moa’s story. In a way, it was like shooting different short films and weaving them together. The actors were absolutely immersed in their own stories, and some of them have said that it was a bit of a shock to see all the stories come together. It was great fun to work with these actors, who are all very talented, in very different ways, and then weave the stories together. I liked the fact there was a Romeo and Juliet story, as a love story about two young people, where the world is acting upon them. And then, there is the other story about these young men being forced to make decisions that define who they are, and Reese in between. And then there is another generation of stories, with Alan Arkin and Meryl Streep, who have decided who they are and are acting out on their already formed beliefs. I like the three generations, and that’s a credit to Kelley’s writing. That was there, and I felt it would be great to tackle those different stories and weave them together.
MediaBlvd> How come the film never completely explains whether Anwar El-Ibrahim is guilty or innocent?
Gavin> That is deliberate because the real issue is not whether this man is guilty or innocent. When the movie starts out, you feel he’s innocent. Then, you feel he’s guilty. Then, you feel that maybe he’s innocent, but there’s the possibility of his guilt. The real question for you to analyze is whether the process of Extraordinary Rendition is good, regardless of guilt or innocence. We drew that out of reality. We’ve got all this sophisticated monitoring equipment tracking one call, except you don’t necessarily monitor whose hand it’s in, at the time of the call. Because these Then, you’re left to ask the question, “Do I still think the rendition program, and the absence of judicial oversight, and the act of right of access to a lawyer, a good thing?” We give murderers lawyers. We give potential rapists and child abusers lawyers. But, when a guy might be a terrorist, we just suddenly strip everything away and end up with thousands of people in Guantanamo who we now don’t know what to do with because we’ve stripped them. We’re in a judicial mess and we’ve got to sort out that mess. Whatever our point of view about torture is, we can’t become a lawless society.
MediaBlvd> How do we get past society’s “us versus them” attitude?
Gavin> Patriotic Americans should stand up for what America stands for. To be accused of being unpatriotic is just the height of right-wing propaganda. If people are going to strip away anything that this country stands for, we need a serious discussion about it. There are people in this film from Israel, Morocco, Algeria, France, the United States and South Africa. I’ve always believed, and I hope it’s at the core of my work, that we have far more in common with each other than we don’t. There is a common, human need for family connection and friends, and the only way we can go to war with each other is if we deny that those absolutely universally human needs actually exist in some other group. As long as we see each other as profoundly human, we might be able to get past the “us versus them.” I would like to make it very clear that none of us, in any way, condone suicide bombing. It is a tremendous manipulation of a young person, to push them into such a space.
MediaBlvd> Is this a hopeful film?
Jake> To put it frankly, I think that hope is dangerous. I think that practicality gets things done, which leads you to a good place. My character asks himself the question, not if he’s doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but whether it works or doesn’t work? It’s very simple. If he weren’t an analyst, I think the decision would be very different. But, it comes down to the fact that this particular situation doesn’t work. It’s nice to think that someone would be able to see through all of those complications, and all that ego, and make the right decision. We always say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but we never say, “If it’s broken, don’t use it,” or “If it doesn’t work, don’t use it.” I think that’s the decision my character makes. And, I think Gavin’s intention was that this wasn’t a heroic move, but a very practical move.
Gavin> I absolutely agree with Jake, in terms of where his character is coming from. Jake was very clear that he never wanted a heroic moment where his character says, “I am going to do the right thing.” I believe in some sort of sense of justice that exists within 99.9% of us. Maybe that’s naVve, but that’s what I believe. People actually do have, within them, a deep sense of what is right and wrong. It gets confused and it’s full of arguments, but what I like about what happens to Jake’s character is that he doesn’t really know why he’s doing what he’s doing, except that it’s welling up from some place. I just wanted that one moment where you feel it’s crept up on him, and Jake gave that performance beautifully. His character has done the right thing, not because he was being heroic, but because it just snuck up on him.
Jake> The reason why hope is a dangerous thing is because it takes you out of the present, and I think this character makes a decision very much in the present moment. There is a lot more muck than we think that there is. Hope is the wrong message right now. Really working at it is the right message. I don’t know how successfully that was portrayed. That’s an audience’s decision to make.
Gavin> There’s a danger of saying, “Okay, it will all work out fine in the end.” Rendition is real. Omar and Reese’s characters will have an enormous amount of healing to do, if they ever can heal. We’re hopeful that the film will say to the world, “Look at all these different people and look at their common humanity.” To that extent, I believe in humanity. This isn’t just going to go away tomorrow morning because we made a movie.
Jake> I also don’t think that the white man is the one who makes the right decision. Because of where he comes from and because I think modern cinema is all about that, Gavin was very clear that it’s about humanity. It was a very difficult line for us to walk in. This one person ends up holding a key that he doesn’t even know he’s holding. Reese’s character is desperate for that key and, if my character could just give it to her, she’d unlock the door. If he gave it to Peter’s character, he could prove what was happening. If he could give it to anybody in this situation, they would know how to do it. But, he didn’t. And then, he just sort of realizes there is a lock and he has a key in his hand, and he does it. But, he’s not the guy who makes it happen. That’s very important.
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Director Gavin Hood at the premiere of "Rendition" held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif. on October 10, 2007.
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Gavin> We need hope, but my hope is that we will be pragmatic. It’s about saying, “We can’t just turn a blind eye to what’s going on and, if the rules are going to change, we would like a discussion about how those rules are going to change.” If the ticking time bomb argument has a validity, which it does, then tell me how you’re going to legislate for that reality. Don’t just throw all the rules out. I don’t happen to think that torture is justified, under any circumstances, but there are those who feel it is. So, if that’s a possibility, and a valid point of view, tell me how you’re going to manage it legally. Don’t tell me that we’re a third world dictatorship where there are no rules. There are lawyers currently at work saying, “If in special circumstances we need torture, then we need to legislate for what that involves.” How do we register the fact that Jake’s character is about to torture someone? Put it in a form. Fax it to a judge. Get a five-minute warning, if you need to. We do it all the time, in other criminal investigations. We apply for warrants overnight. We apply for rights to search a house overnight. We don’t just bash down people’s doors and invade their homes without some form of judicial oversight. Right now, the rendition policy has removed judicial oversight. For me, that is deeply un-American.
MediaBlvd> Why do you think all of these political films are coming out now?
Jake> We’re pretty near-sighted when we think about time. Five years (since 9/11) is not that long. Any film from the ‘70's, or movie about a war, was made five or six years after that war either ended or began. It takes people, particularly artists, some time, so that they can get some perspective. If someone said to you, “Okay, write it right now,” you would need time for opinions to come up, or a point of view to form, and I think this is actually very quick.
Gavin> I want to thank our producers, Level One and New Line, for making this film with us. We have no idea whether this film will “do well,” whatever that means, or not. What matters is that, if we’re just going to become a culture that is driven by the pure decision of, “Hey, if we feed them this popcorn, will we put more money in our pockets?” Then, we’re a dumbed-down society. I would like to see this country revert to the stories of the ‘70's, where people made films that lasted. Whether this film does five cents, or $50 million, matters to keep my producers in business, but they had the courage to make a film based on the decision that this story needed to be told, and I thank them and applaud them for letting us do that.
Jake> That’s why Gavin is doing Wolverine next.
MediaBlvd> Why did you decide to do Wolverine for your next film?
Gavin> One answer is for a college fund for my twins. It’s not often that a script like Rendition comes across your desk. We think that scripts are just out there, and they’re not. I read 70 scripts. The truth is, at first, when Wolverine was offered to me, I said, “I’m the wrong guy for this.” And then, I spoke with Hugh Jackman, and what’s great about the Wolverine character is that he’s really a character who suffers from a great deal of existential angst. As somebody who loves actors and emotions, I looked at it more closely. I was raised on Greek mythology, not comics. I don’t know anything about the details of the movie yet, but what I do love about the Wolverine character is that, within that character, there is a great deal of disconnection from who he really is and what it means to be human. I happen to be a big fan of the X-Men movies because I think that, especially with what Bryan Singer did, those are movies about prejudice, and they happen to be done in a very accessible and commercial way. I think there are a great deal of themes and ideas to explore in Wolverine, beyond just three claws.
MediaBlvd> What is the experience of doing big special effects like?
Gavin> It’s another reason I wanted to do it. I work in a visual way. My first film world was still photography, and I love the visuals. To work at a level of heightened visual effects is going to be an amazing experience.
MediaBlvd> When will you announce casting?
Gavin> We’re currently involved in the casting process. We will not know for a good couple of months. We start shooting the film in December, or possibly January. We’re very involved in the prep process now, and will be casting over the next couple of months.
MediaBlvd> Will it have a PG-13 rating?
Gavin> Yeah.
MediaBlvd> How long will the shoot last?
Gavin> Probably three or four months.
MediaBlvd> Will you shoot on location, or in the States?
Gavin> It will be in Australia and New Zealand. A lot of it will be done in the Fox Studios in Sydney.
MediaBlvd> Reese, how much did winning an Academy Award change things for you?
Reese> Obviously, it creates opportunities for me to be in different types of films. I think it helped me get this job. It has provided me with the opportunity to work on a lot of different kinds of films.
MediaBlvd> Where do you keep you Oscar?
Reese> In the living room.
MediaBlvd> Are you doing something now?
Reese> I’m doing Four Christmases (with Vince Vaughn) for New Line.
