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Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty, which opened Wednesday, has generated a lot of comment about the realism (or lack of it) in the movie’s depiction of events leading up to the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. And this afternoon acting director of the CIA Michael Morell issued a statement to employees of the agency that was posted on its website. “Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatization, not a realistic portrayal of the facts”, the statement says. “CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product.”
Related: Senators Slam Sony For ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Torture Scene
Bigelow and Boal have taken pains to point out the film is fictional and they took a lot of creative license in telling the story. Morell says the movie’s attribution of the huge operation to a few individuals “may make for more compelling entertainment, but it does not reflect the facts.” And he says the film’s implication that “enhanced interrogation techniques” played a significant role in finding Bin Laden “is false.” In conclusion, Morell notes that “Commentators will have much to say about this film in the weeks ahead. Through it all, I want you to remember that Zero Dark Thirty is not a documentary. What you should also remember is that the Bin Ladin operation was a landmark achievement by our country, by our military, by our Intelligence Community, and by our Agency.”
Related: Will Criticism Or Praise Affect ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ In Awards Race?
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I don’t think anyone expects it to be a documentary.
Yes but when you juxtapose PResident Obama saying, we don’t torture with prior clips of overt torture something real comes out of that.
Two lies here. Cia director’s story and the movie. Bin laden died years ago. Kidney failure. Look it up! You’ll find the truth. U dump the body of public enemy #1 in the ocean and never show amyone? BS. propaganda that now with this back and forth has become disinfo to further muddy the waters
Also true is that Bin Laden was originally financed and supplied by the CIA he was our hero our Mujahedeen freedom fighter in 1980 when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Bin Laden has always been a CIA operative. He was transformed into a boogy man to blame 9/11 on and yes it was a set-up we allowed it to happen we facilitated it happening because the war on terror has been incredibly profitable for a lot of sectors. Why doesn’t the CIA tell us about the real facts?
Fuck you, birther. Go back to your hermetically sealed right wing echo chamber, where Faux News, World Nutjob Daily and Dead Breitbart.com are your hallowed sources of information. Don’t pollute the real world with your conspiracy garbage.
Actually that commenter is a truther and they are from the left so you should have said “shut up you truther go back to your Soros funded hermetically sealed echo chamber and watch MSNBC and read the DailyKos and quit pollutting the world with your conspiracy garbage”. There you go I fixed your dumb rant into the correct dumb rant. Get your pejoratives correct the next time. Crazy doesn’t just come from one side.
Dear PAUL H –
“Birther?” First of all, thet was a Hilary Clinton fabrication.
Secondly, he’s a “truther.” Which is a LEFT WING movement and always has been.
Thirdly, you are a complete idiot. Seriously, you are so ignorant of the most basic facts.
Bullshit on PaulH!
Get ‘em PaulH! LOL
I love you Americans… Conspiracy theories everywhere.
I’m very disappointed to hear this. There are so many awesome true stories out there………that would be very entertaining if they made it as true as possible. This seems like one of them. Was there really a need to take such creative liberties? I’m not as excited to see this knowing it’s not a realistic portrayal of facts.
Well color me shocked. Shocked! I say. A movie that is NOT true to life? From Hollywood? Oh the humanity!
Innocence lost.
I wonder if he is upset that Obama was cut from the movie. How dare they not worship this administration. The Admin wants their propaganda!
It’s fascinating to me to watch Boal keep blathering on about how he’s blending journalism with screenwriting. All he’s really talking about is writing scripts that require a lot of research. Screenwriters use journalistic methods all the time. And the more he tries to sell himself as hewing closer to “truth” because of it, the more he’s going to be called out for it. On some level, he must really be embarrassed that he’s working in movies, which is too bad.
Anyone expecting this to be a by the numbers account of the operation is fooling themselves. And Jessica Chastain’s character is clearly an amalgam, and a conduit for the audience to understand the emotions of the many people who worked to accomplish this mission. Like Oliver Stone’s JFK, the spirit of the story is what is most important. The dramatization of Chastain is there to link all the very real events, and help us understand how hard this was. As for the waterboarding, and the treatment of detainees, anyone who tries to tell me that didn’t happen, or that it didn’t produce some results or leads, is fooling themselves. The opening scene justifies the extreme emotions that led many of our men and women to do terrible things. Additionally, the film takes time to examine the effect that it had on the interrogators. I don’t feel like it tries to comment one way or the other. It just shows what happen, and let’s the viewer decide. These forensic films are important, because they help us understand aspects of our government and military, and how hard their jobs can be. At the end of the day, I don’t think the dramatic licenses the filmmakers took should take away from the quality and spirit of the film. I’m sure Katheryn Bigelow cold make more Point Breaks if she wanted to. It’s admirable that she is using her talents for greater goods. Hopefully, people will remember that at the right time.
“ZDT” is fiction just like “Argo”. What a surprise.
Of course the CIA would tell us what is truthful. News commentators will speak on this. Thats a joke. Fox news will spin whatever the right tells them too and MSNBC will spin it whatever way the Left instructs them too. Yes by all mean lets believe Michael Morells truth.
Thanks, Mark!
On the one hand, the CIA and the Senate intelligence committee are being really fussy in their little PR campaign against ZERO DARK THIRTY. On the other hand, if the movie does indeed over-play the role of extreme techniques in the hunt for Bin Laden, it runs the risk of implicitly endorsing torture. Impressionable moviegoers could think, “Hey, if torture was a major factor in taking down Osama, I’m all for it.” Obviously, that’s not the intention of Boal and Bigelow, but that can happen when it’s the good guy doing the inquisition.
I’m confused by your post. Have you seen it? Where is the “obviously” coming from?
The “obviously” probably comes from direct quotes from both Boal and Bigelow. I didn’t think their response to this was very confusing…
The trailer is awesome. The film is lacking. Set-up is pedestrian and the idea that a Mid-Level CIA agent becomes the shot-caller is very difficult to believe.
Nobody knows nothin’
Everybody’s lying.
big surprise. i remember the articles about hurt locker where actual people with the job portrayed in the film would watch it and laugh hysterically at the utter ridiculousness of the plot.
Kathryn Bigelow makes great movies about how civilians think war works.
Its funny how the govt now speaks out. Any Press is good press.
Of course this is how they found BL. Who cares. You don’t think other countries don’t use torture? How do you think people reveal things, by tickling them? Of course he was found because of things represented in this film. Stop arguing and lying and making excuses. BL was found by a female and her trusted team… The exciting thing about this movie is a FEMALE found him. Now lets move on.
We all know that Bigelow and Boal got top secret inside information about the raid courtesy of the White House. Democrat regimes just LOVE to hobnob with Hollywood – see all of Obama’s Hollywood fundraisers. They can lie all they want but we know it. And now we have the politicians riding on in and claiming that the movie is bullshit and that no torture was involved. More bullshit. More like they don’t want the public to know what they approved and participated in which of course begs the question of why they gave the information to a movie in the first place. We all also know that politicians are total star fuckers and will publicly denounce the movie while patting Bigelow and Boal on the back in private.
Torture? We prefer to call it “enhanced interrogation.” Just as kidnapping is now “rendition.” Do please make a note of it, Number Six. Be seeing you.
You’re not Number Two. Ian McKellen is the new Number Two. And he’s also in a waking dream where only Jim Caviezel can repair the subconscious … oh hell, did that miniseries actually happen?
@ Anonymous – agreed. It’s a shame the public isn’t aware that Bush Sr. Employed both Bin Laden and Hussein during the Iran Contra scandal to rid the world of communism. The mentality was “We’ll support religious fanatics…” Never thinking that it would bite is in the ass 20+ years later.
Yes, he was a bad guy. They both were. But we did at one point fund both of them. And when they asked to be paid, we declined. That’s when things got shitty.
Someone should do a film on the Egyptian air flight that went down by the suicidal pilot. All those US trained foreign intelligence operatives that happened to be on the same flight just before 9/11. Another tragedy swept under the rug.
I can only believe that with all the senators and congressmen and now CIA director coming out and saying that “the movie is not a realistic portrayal of facts” that.. in fact… it most be “spot on” accurate!!
I was thinking the same thing.
“he says the film’s implication that ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ played a significant role in finding Bin Laden ‘is false’.”
OK, but Bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed. What is the implication for justice here? That it is OK to kill an unarmed man, but waterboarding him is another thing entirely?
The CIA also said that Jessica Chastain looks nothing like the person she is playing.
Got a DGA screener. Watched it twice. What no one in the above comments mentions is – (I also read the Seal’s book “One Tough Day”) – the raid? That section of the film? Almost EXACTLY goes the way the Seal who wrote the book said it did. Almost exactly.
The shite about the fixation on her, “she’s an amalgam,” etc., – did I see another movie? No, I watched it twice, read the book once. There are tons of people covered in the film. It’s simply from her POV, as IT SHOULD BE.
The Seal (in real life) spoke to the woman. HE said she was the BIG player. And the movie shows TONS of other people working on it. What is lost here is the noise (Jesus, people get simple things twisted) about the torture, YES, talking about a courier, that is DEFINITELY in the film. The NAME of the courier, is a lead they followed, along with like, 100 others.
Then, you see in the film as it hops through the years, how the ball pretty much got dropped on Bin Ladin, because the BUSH people TOTALLY fucked it up, after sending us to Iraq on LIES, so, everybody got real squirrelly about torture (rightfully so) and THEN, YEARS later, this ONE CIA operative, (and YES, the theory was kept alive by ONE CIA operative, THIS woman) gets another call-back to the original theory, almost randomly, stating the guy has 7 brothers, his Mother lives in Kuwait, she gets calls from Peshwar, and the PREVIOUS intell ruled out the guy they thought it WAS – cause a detainee said he was DEAD in 2001. Wrong. MAYBE his brother, one of 7 other brothers, was dead. BUT, another brother, “got the gig” (literally) to courier for Bin Ladin, and because THE courier (other couriers to pass shit off to? Of course, but HE was the dude, going in and out of the compound, with the notes, from Bin Ladin).
She and others, with GREAT amounts of pushing against asshole superiors, get the theory run down – they AMAZINGLY, but VERY believably – in terms of HOW they finally located the courier, FIND him – he leads them to the compound.
THEN, the CIA spends an interminable amount of time having to endure this crazy woman (she’s obsessed, to put it mildly) pressure to make the case to take to Panetta, let alone Obama, that Bin Ladin is in the house.
The SEAL who wrote the book? Says, – I forget the name he makes up for her – she SAID TO HIM “I am 100% sure it’s him, and he’s in there.”
He ASLO says in his book, AFTER it was done, the raid, he was on the plane to Germany with her, before they then went to the U.S – and he saw her quietly sobbing in one seat, in one of those military cargo planes, and he went – sat next to her – and told her, to try to comfort her, “you were right. It WAS 100%.” He also says, he has no idea how she got it right, cause they NEVER could see inside, except the night of the raid, she got the interior, and where things would be, and WHAT things there would be, almost EXACTLY right.
So, take it up with the Seal who wrote the book, and was THERE. The dude they put make-up on, changed his voice, and interviewed – on 60 minutes, two months ago.
This is NOT Oliver Stone cluster-fucking the JFK story through his own psychedelic mind-set (or “Nixon” or his “history” series currently on Showtime).
This shit is refreshingly ACCURATE, and FASCINATING. You want to have SOME real idea of SOMETHING, to do with our own government, post 9-11? Read “One Tough Day,” see “Zero Dark Thirty” – then, think about how close they both are about the SAME things.
I think it is a great film, and a fascinating book, and whatever you have to say about intell fuck ups and lying asses, Presidents and Vice Presidents, who ABSOLUTELY should be in JAIL right now?
This woman? Deserves our complete and full support and thanks. Whoever she is.
The Seal Teams are UNBELIEVABLE. They are like SURGEONS. Great, experienced surgeons. In, out, no noise, no fuss, do your job, life and death. And don’t forget, they JUSY lost a Seal about a month ago getting an American OUT of captivity. Dead. One Seal. So, that the Bin Ladin raid went the way it did? Is worthy of our collective awe and thanks. They are deserving of MORE that we can ever give them, or any thanks we send their way. And we will NEVER know who they even are.
Great post.
The most bizarre thing you underscore is that the movie and its critics are almost saying the same thing: torture by the US did not lead directly to the capture of UBL.
This official “noise” around the movie raises objections that are not accurate. The movie does not show torture that leads to significant break-throughs. Torture leads to dead-ends and the significant break-throughs come from a buried report which did not come from torture.
thanks Matt!
You seem to have a major emotional investment in the historical accuracy of the film, as evidenced by the random use of capital letters. What you fail to offer are facts. You quote a book one of the Seal team members. He cites this woman, saying he believed she was an important player. And after the raid he notes her again. Yet no light is shed on what happened behind the scenes, about the debates within the CIA, about who exactly contributed what. For thyat you turn to the film itself. And now you have this statement that the film is not accurate, coupled with the fact that this mystery woman was not even promoted. I have no doubt there was this female analyst who played a role, just not as important as was depicted. If I’m wrong, you need to show evidence. The fact is that the filmmakers had a golden opportunity to twist the facts for cinematic effect, to turn a complicated story involving many people into “The Woman Who Caught Bin Laden.” That’s apparently what they did.
Everyone knows Bin Laden is in the Caymans with Elvis…get your facts straight!
Paul,
I’m impressed u can still type with ur head so far in the sand.
Saw it two days ago and loved it and our government going overboard to tell everyone that it’s not accurate pretty much confirms that it was.
I don’t get anywhere in the movie where it says that torture lead directly to the killing of Bin Laden. It was one of the methods used in interrogation. Is the government trying to tell us that water boarding never happened? That’s some pretty intense revisionist BS. The movie clearly states that the detainee program as well as torture methods that were originally used were stopped after the controversy that erupted over them. Isn’t that what actually happened?
A lot of what lead the actual finding of the Abadabad complex in the movie was not due to torture and I thought the whole character study and her obsession with getting Bin Laden came across very clearly and the more the movie went on, the more her character was revealed.
I know it’s kind of like comparing apples to oranges but as far as movies based on historical information this was way more interesting than Lincoln. At least Zero Dark Thirty told me about things I knew about in a way that was actually new. To me this is the best movie I’ve seen this year (I am a little behind) and I wasn’t even really into The Hurt Locker.
It won’t sway my opinions. I was all for torture before I saw the movie.