Written Interview: Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (“Fair Game”)
Today’s interview is with a pair of brothers who frequently collaborate, Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, including the current political thriller Fair Game. The plot summary from IMDB:
[Valerie] Plame’s status as a CIA agent was revealed by White House officials allegedly out to discredit her husband after he wrote a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece saying that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Yes, that Valerie Plame. From WGA.org:
Though it may seem a somewhat odd choice that two self-described apolitical Brits penned the new film Fair Game, based on the politically supercharged events surrounding the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, it makes good writing sense. Playwright, screenwriter, and director Jez Butterworth and his younger brother and frequent writing partner John-Henry Butterworth were tapped for the gig after working on Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Fair Game director Doug Liman, and they brought something this potential vacuum of a story needed.
Fair Game confronts some politically and historically fraught stuff: the Bush administration’s alleged outing of Plame (Naomi Watts) after her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), publically questioned a centerpiece of their evidentiary argument for invading Iraq. Jez Butterworth, who says he hasn’t “found a reason to vote for the last 15 years,” and his brother are accomplished writers, who bring a crucial degree of separation to this story, allowing it to focus in on this story’s least publicized, most crucial script element: the relationship at its center. The Butterworths, who are two of a gaggle of five arts-involved siblings, felt early on that, while they would need to immerse themselves in extensive research, utilizing both the husband and wife’s books, reams of documents and dozens of firsthand interviews inside the Beltway, Valerie Plame-Wilson and Joe Wilson were the latchkey to a great script.
Some interview excerpts:
What, if anything, did you do to ensure your own political dispositions didn’t affect your work here in a detrimental way?
John-Henry Butterworth: I don’t think that I’ve got a particularly strongly held political position. I don’t think anything we’ve done has been politically inspired. We were quite careful when we were approaching this material to not allow it to become a trap, something that had a very clear agenda behind it.
Was there an attempt to remain impartial?
John-Henry Butterworth: Yeah, we tried very hard not to bias any of the stuff, and where we could, find the truth and be as diligent as we could in researching it. Obviously, there’s elements of this that are classified and will probably remain classified.
You’re obviously not bound by any journalistic responsibility, but…
John-Henry Butterworth: There’s responsibility to the people involved.
Jez Butterworth: More than anything we’ve written before, we’re bound by what actually went on. But what really drew us both to it was meeting Joe and Valerie for the first time and realizing what an extraordinary experience they’d gone through as a couple. It felt like such a powerful story.
In terms of the politics, I didn’t know anything about American government. It was a tremendous amount of research that got us there. All of that stuff had to happen so that we could get at the relationship. Equally, I’m not a massively political person. I haven’t really found a reason to vote for the last 15 years. It’s not what inspired us.
It was the story of this couple?
Jez Butterworth: It’s just great. If you’ve got a couple where she has to keep everything secret, and he wants to make everything public — both because of a sense of duty. You’ve just got yourself a great dynamic. In the end, you feel there’s kind of a duality to this story, the great historical/political drama and then this great interpersonal relationship story.
Those are the stories you seek out, the ones that resonate on both of those levels; one that resonates on a personal level but also one, as far as I can tell, that everyone went through after 9/11.
— —
Going in, I’m sure you discussed the fact that this is a highly political, low-action true story that you wanted to make into an entertaining film. Did you see that as a challenge, and how did you navigate that?
John-Henry Butterworth: We were very keen to make it as entertaining as possible. Sydney [Pollack] used to have a phrase — he would refer to some films as being spinach because you’re supposed to eat it because it’s good for you. We were very keen for this not to be spinach.
This could, on the face of it, very easily become spinach. What were the key ways you…
John-Henry Butterworth: It was just focusing on their relationship and getting that right and getting that central dynamic that Jez was just talking about to really sing and catch the light. Through that, you can sort of evince all the different pressures that were taking place in the wider world at the time.
Jez Butterworth: It was a very simple reversal that they were living. She is, in full effect, fighting the war on terror, [and] Joe’s career is somewhat in decline, so their roles have been reversed. She’s in a much more traditionally masculine role. Then, at the half point of the film, those roles get reversed. She’s completely thrown out and given no mandate or agenda, and he’s suddenly galvanized. That felt like a really strong in on a decade that has been incredibly complex, not just for the Plame-Wilsons, but for the country at large.
Notice how they zeroed in on the emotional core of the story: the relationship of the couple. All the things that happened to Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, much of it front-page events, means nothing as far as a movie is concerned unless the viewer cares about the characters. Moreover from the very last observation, you can see how they, as writers, were drawn to the dynamic where each member of the couple’s roles were reversed. That creates conflict and conflict creates drama.
Here’s the movie’s trailer:
For more of the interview, go here.