Rod Lurie Wants The Politics To Play

Rod Lurie's new film, "Nothing But the Truth," is a round-about depiction of the Valerie Plame scandal that involved New York Times journo Judith Miller. Lurie, a former film critic who has also directed "The Contender," "Resurrecting the Champ" and "The Last Castle," is eagerly anticipating the reaction to his film, which comes out tomorrow. FBLA sat down with Lurie for the inside story: FBLA: How did you come up with the notion for this film? LURIE: Obviously, NBTT shares the same situation that Judy Miller found herself in -- but it is not at all the Miller character. In the film, Kate's character personally outs the CIA agent. Miller did not. Kate (Beckinsale) has a child she has to leave behind. Miller has no kids. I could go on but you get the point. In fact, I know very little about Judy's story and even less about Plame's - I was just curious what would happen if both the reporter and the subject of her piece had children and they went to school together ... I wanted to see where that would lead me. FBLA: Was this a journalist component or a political one? LURIE: I had wanted to do a reporter protecting a source story for quite a while now. In fact, I was doing one for my TV series "Commander in Chief" at exactly the moment Steven Bochco replaced me on the show. Of course, he wiped that idea out and most every idea that I was going to mount. The end result was a story that i could turn into a film. You should expect my next thirteen movies to also come out of that unfortunate situation. FBLA: Did the political situation affect the film? LURIE: I don't think that politics affected the film too much. It is really more of a thriller than it is anything else. However, I was careful to not be partisan. For one thing, one of the lessons I learned with my very partisan film "The Contender" is that audiences will turn on you if you seem to be attacking them. For another, the federal shield law -- which is the bill pending Congress that would protect journalists -- is well supported by both political parties.

Fishbowl

Rod Lurie Wants The Politics To Play

Meghan

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